Mapping of life cycle aspects on new ammunitions in an environmental perspective

In the USA there is a trend towards design for demil, i.e. to adjust the manufacturing of munitions in a way that simplifies the final disposal. There are Swedish ammunitions where problems have occurred due to manufacturing without any thought of long time storage and final disposal. Many actors are involved in the life cycle of ammunition and the lifetime of ammunition stretches over a long period of time. Therefore the demands on a well functioning system are high. If the system does not work well there is always a risk that recycling will decrease and the disposal will be unnecessary expensive. There is an obvious risk that competence will be lost due to reductions or retirement of staff. An overview of the system has begun by the means of intervjues with key persons within the Swedish Armed Forces, FMV and the Defence Industry. The goal is to identify possible weaknesses and to suggest solutions in the final report next year. The trends seen from the intervjues are e.g. that the cooperation between the actors is good, but there is a lack of knowledge feed back. Poor documentation and difficulties to find information are other problems mentioned. The transition of knowledge from an individual to the organisation is not done in a systematic way. A greater openness and long term planning should facilitate the work and make it possible to reduce demil costs.