The United States is falling behind China and Russia in a critical element of military technology: bang for the buck in high explosives. The kinetic punch that U.S. explosives deliver per pound is only about 70 percent of what China and Russia get from their “energetics.”
The even more astonishing failure is that the powerful conventional explosive used by our adversaries was invented in the United States with taxpayer money, but then neglected by our military and allowed to be acquired by our adversaries.
But more generally, the Defense Department has been slow to deploy CL-20 in its weaponry. So in a conventional war, our men and women in uniform could be outgunned by enemy ordnance that is lighter, faster, packs a bigger punch, and goes further.
Folks are starting to complain.
Scientists were the first to do so, but many gave up after years of being ignored. Then specialty press like naval and defense magazines began alerting the broader military community, which failed to introduce the invention into weapons contracts.
The Russia-Ukraine war makes the Pentagon’s failure to properly equip our men and women in uniform more obvious. Not only do we not have the best explosives—also known as “ordnance,” “kinetics,” or “energetics”—but we don’t have enough.
Deterring wars such as in Ukraine requires not only nuclear security guarantees to the smaller, relatively unarmed democracies, but the provision of the world’s most powerful conventional explosives up front and in quantity.
U.S. politicians are starting to get serious about our relative lack of high-yield explosives. On May 21, The Wall Street Journal reported that Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) plans to “push for CL-20’s expanded use,” including through a bill requiring the Pentagon to “implement a pilot program that incorporates CL-20 into three missile or munitions systems of its choosing.”
But that would still leave the sourcing of raw materials and precursor chemicals in jeopardy. Not only did Beijing acquire CL-20, an acquisition not sufficiently explained to the American public, but we are dependent on China for some of the precursors of this and what we normally use, such as RDX and HMX.
The Journal noted in its report that “Regulatory and other costs have driven overseas the production of almost all of the base chemicals used in energetics, as they have for many pharmaceuticals.”
The assessment found that “In many cases, there is no other source or drop-in replacement material and even in cases where that option exists, the time and cost to test and qualify the new material can be prohibitive—especially for larger systems (hundreds of millions of dollars each).”
The increasing grip that China has on developing-country production of strategic materials necessary for the production of explosives, especially in Latin America and Africa, is an additional threat to U.S. supply chains upon which our national security relies.
Therefore, one must ask: what genius bean counters in Washington not only allowed the U.S. military to lose CL-20 technology to our most dangerous adversaries, but also allowed us to become dependent on China for the chemicals necessary to produce CL-20 and other military explosives?
The lack of judgment among some members of the U.S. government can, at times, be mind-boggling.
