How Safe Should Our Weapons Be?

Congress incorporated language into the Fiscal Year 2002 Defense Appropriation Bill requiring the Secretary of Defense to ensure our munitions are developed or procured to be safe, to the extent practicable, from unplanned stimuli throughout their life cycle. However, to date, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) is the only major Air Force weapon system to meet the insensitive munitions criteria for full compliance. This paper provides an objective assessment of whether there are compelling arguments that would lead the Air Force to expend the resources required to achieve a fully compliant insensitive munitions inventory. To facilitate the understanding of the basic issues and thus the compelling arguments for achieving or not achieving insensitive munitions compliance, this paper provides the reader with a basic understanding of insensitive munitions including: a definition of insensitive munitions with an explanation of the criteria required to achieve insensitive munitions compliance; a summary of munitions related accidents/incidents to establish the risk associated with non-IM compliance; a historical perspective of insensitive munitions within the Air Force; and a series of compelling arguments assessing the law, the changing world environment, and the operational impact of insensitive munitions. From the framework of these assessments, this paper recommends a way forward for the Air Force in addressing this federally mandated requirement.