Plan for Ridding Syria of Chemical Arms Includes Brute Force and Chemistry
The United States and its partners are planning a series of rapid steps to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons program, a strategy that is intended to guard against backsliding by President Bashar al-Assad and limit the time that international experts need to work in the country, according to senior American officials.
A major step is to be taken in early November, when equipment for producing chemicals and filling warheads and bombs with poison gas is to be destroyed by the Syrians under international supervision. That move can be carried out by equipment as simple as sledgehammers and bulldozers.
But a major centerpiece of the disarmament effort will be a mobile and highly sophisticated system developed by the Pentagon that will probably be set up outside Syria to neutralize large quantities of chemicals transported out of the country.
The system, known as the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System, is designed to convert chemical agents into compounds that cannot be used for military purposes by mixing them with water and other chemicals and then heating them.
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