Approximately 6 million acres of government land at over 2000 FUDS and BRAC sites along with active training and test ranges are contaminated with UXO. Costs of remediation may be as high as $100 billion. Sites vary in topography from flat to mountainous with vegetation ranging from barren or low grass to heavy shrubs and trees. Sites such as Spring Valley, a residential area outside of Washington, D.C., may also unexpectedly be found which contain UXO. Manual excavation by experienced EOD technicians generally involves careful use of shovels and garden trowels to remove soil in thin layers after the mechanical equipment has stopped 6 inches to a foot above suspected UXO.

Key benefits for using CEG Safe Excavation equipment and technology for UXO include:

• Offers the ability to dig in areas that have sensitive vegetation.
• Digging with air jets and vacuum is traditionally much faster than hand excavation.
• Since upwards of 90% of objects excavated during the course of UXO operations are found to be non-hazardous false alarms, costs should also significantly reduce.
• Offers improved safety for the operator if combined with remote digging operations.
• Finally, has wide application to other hazardous and radioactive waste applications in the DoD and DOE complexes.

Halo Trust Afghanistan

In 2004, a Humanitarian Demining Trailer was deployed in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mr Phil Straw, consultant to the US Army NVESD, trained four Halo Trust operators, the senior EOD officer, and the senior in-country expatriate on the use of the AIR-SPADE^®. After initial in-compound training, the system first under went additional testing at a non-hazardous field location. According to Mr. Straw's report, "Both the air and water systems were operated in a variety of soil conditions. During the initial trials, the air system proved to be very effective in all soil conditions encountered. Generally the ground in Afghanistan is very hard baked soil." Live trials were then conducted in an area where ammunitions had been kept in dug pits. Over time these pits had collapsed leaving a large deposit of subsurface munitions. The pictures show the AIR-SPADE^® in use in these pits. Discussions with the senior in-country expatriate indicate the system demonstrated good potential. It will be deployed as required from site to site as requested by field operatives. Halo believes, for example, clearance of anti-tank mines from road verges is also an ideal application since these are hard packed soil and aggregate.

UXB International

The AIR-SPADE^® excavation tool and cart compressor unit have been evaluated by UXB International Inc. against anti-personnel land mines and UXO at a training field near Manassas, VA. With the AIR-SPADE^® cart unit passes were made down three demining lanes containing 8 to 10 flagged and monitored mines buried at various depths. Using the AIR-SPADE^® tool, the operator successfully uncovered these mines, which included PMN and PMD-6 types, without triggering. Against the PMD-6 box mine, even direct airflow from the AIR-SPADE^® did not set it off. In an additional un-flagged lane with more overgrown vegetation, 3 anti-personnel mines were uncovered. Testing of the AIR-SPADE^® was also done against 2 trip wire arrays holding the nozzle just shy of physical contact. Neither trip wire was set off while the jet moved up, down, and side to side along the entire length of the wire.