British and Belgian officers stand beside an unexploded German shell in Flanders, during the First World War.

Unexploded ordnance (or UXOs/UXBs, sometimes acronymized as UO) are explosive weapons (bombs, bullets, shells, grenades, land mines, naval mines, etc.) that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk of detonation, potentially many decades after they were used or discarded. While "UXO" is widely and informally used, munitions and explosives of concern (MEC) is the current preferred terminology within the remediation community. Ultima X development has ceased. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 407 pixelsFull resolution‎ (893 × 454 pixels, file size: 71 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 407 pixelsFull resolution‎ (893 × 454 pixels, file size: 71 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... For other uses, see Flanders (disambiguation). ... Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ... For other uses, see Weapon (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Bomb (disambiguation). ... This article is about firearms projectiles. ... A shell is a payload-carrying projectile, which, as opposed to a bullet, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage includes large solid projectiles previously termed shot (AP, APCR, APCNR, APDS, APFSDS and Proof shot). ... Grenade may refer to: The well-known hand grenade commonly used by soldiers. ... “Minefield” redirects here. ... Polish wz. ... Gasoline explosions, simulating bomb drops at an airshow. ... A weapons cache is detonated at the East River Range on Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan Detonation is a process of supersonic combustion in which a shock wave is propagated forward due to energy release in a reaction zone behind it. ...

Extremely corroded Iraqi artillery shell dating from the Gulf War of 1991. Live and dangerous.

Discarded RGD-5 hand grenade (live but unfuzed) in Northern Kuwait dating from 1991.

Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1596x1044, 603 KB) Author: Tom Oates. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1596x1044, 603 KB) Author: Tom Oates. ... Corrosion is deterioration of useful properties in a material due to reactions with its environment. ... For other uses, see Artillery (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Iraq war (disambiguation). ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1560x1008, 332 KB) Author: Tom Oates Source: Photo taken by Tom Oates in 2000. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1560x1008, 332 KB) Author: Tom Oates Source: Photo taken by Tom Oates in 2000. ... The RGD-5 hand grenade is an anti-personnel fragmentation grenade currently in Russian service. ...

Unexploded ordnance worldwide

Unexploded ordnance from at least as far back as the First World War still poses a hazard worldwide, both in former combat areas and on military firing ranges. A major problem with unexploded ordnance is that over the years the detonator and main charge deteriorate, frequently making them more sensitive to disturbance, and therefore more dangerous to handle. There are countless examples of civilians tampering with unexploded ordnance that is many years old - often with fatal results. Believing it to be harmless they handle the device and it explodes, killing or severely injuring them. For this reason it is universally recommended that unexploded ordnance should not be touched or handled by unqualified persons. Instead, the location should be reported to the local police so that EOD professionals can render it safe. Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ... The Longest Walk: a British Army ATO approaches a suspect device in Northern Ireland. ...

In the Ardennes region of France, large-scale citizen evacuations were necessary during UXO removal operations in 2001. In the forests of Verdun French government "demineurs" working for the Department du Deminage still hunt for poisonous, volatile, explosive munitions and recover about 900 tons every year. The most feared are corroded artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas. According to the film "Aftermath", these demineurs "have gathered more than twenty million shells but have lost six hundred demineurs. At the current speed, France will be fully cleared and safe - in seven hundred years." French farmers still find many UXOs when ploughing their fields; the so-called "iron harvest." The Ardennes (IPA pronunciation: ) (Dutch: Ardennen) is a volcanic region of extensive forests and rolling hill country, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France (lending its name to the Ardennes département and the Champagne-Ardenne région). ... Verdun, (German: Wirten) sometimes also called Verdun-sur-Meuse, is a city and commune in northeast France, in the Meuse département, of which it is a sous-préfecture. ... Chemical warfare is warfare (and associated military operations) using the toxic properties of chemical substances to kill, injure or incapacitate an enemy. ... Airborne exposure limit 0. ... Iron harvest WWI ordnance (left) placed on a manhole structure beside a field for disposal by the military in 2004 near Ieper, Belgium. ...

German artillery shell from WWI (1914-1918) left beside a field for disposal by the army in 2004 near Ieper in Belgium. Live and dangerous.

A dramatic example of the threat of UXO is the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery off the coast of Kent, which still contains 3000 tons of munitions. When a similar World War II-era wreck, the Polish Kielce exploded in 1967, it produced an impact measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1148x712, 393 KB) Summary Author: Redvers. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1148x712, 393 KB) Summary Author: Redvers. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... Ypres (French, generally used in English1; Ieper official name in the local Dutch/Flemish) is a municipality located in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of West Flanders. ... The SS Richard Montgomery was an American Liberty ship built during World War II, one of the 2,710 used to carry cargo during the war. ... For other uses, see Kent (disambiguation). ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The Richter magnitude test scale (or more correctly local magnitude ML scale) assigns a single number to quantify the size of an earthquake. ...

According to US Environmental Protection Agency documents released in late 2002, UXO at 16,000 domestic inactive military ranges within the United States pose an "imminent and substantial" public health risk and could require the largest environmental cleanup ever, at a cost of at least $14 billion. Some individual ranges cover 500 square miles (1,300 km²), and, taken together, the ranges comprise an area the size of Florida. EPA redirects here. ... This article is about the U.S. State of Florida. ...

In addition to the obvious danger of explosion, buried UXO also entails the risk of environmental contamination. In some heavily-used military training areas, munitions-related chemicals such as explosives and perchlorate (a component of pyrotechnics and rocket fuel) can enter soil and groundwater. A prominent example exists at the Massachusetts Military Reservation (MMR) on Cape Cod, Massachusetts (USA), where decades of artillery training has contaminated the only drinking water for thousands of surrounding residents. An expensive UXO recovery effort is under way there. Cape Cod Cape Cod (1033 km²) is an arm-shaped peninsula forming the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ...

The country of Laos has the distinction of being one of the world's most heavily bombed nations. During the period of the American Vietnam War, over half-a-million bombing missions dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos, most of it anti-personnel cluster bombs. Each cluster bomb shell contained hundreds of individual bomblets, "bombies", about the size of a tennis ball. An estimated 30% of these munitions did not detonate. Ten of the 18 Laotian provinces have been described as "severely contaminated" with artillery and mortar shells, mines, rockets, grenades, and other devices from various countries of origin. These munitions pose a continuing obstacle to agriculture and a special threat to children, who are attracted by the toy-like devices. Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000... Cluster bomb exploding A cluster bomb is an air-dropped bomb that ejects multiple small submunitions (bomblets). ...

In the aftermath of the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, it is estimated that southern Lebanon is littered with^[1] one million undetonated cluster bombs - approximately 1.5 bombs per Lebanese inhabitant of the region, dropped by Israeli Defense Forces in the^[2] last days of the war.

In the United Kingdom

A British NCO prepares to dispose of an unexploded bomb, during the First World War.

UXO is standard terminology in the UK, although in artillery, especially on practice ranges, an unexploded shell is referred to as a blind, and during the Blitz in WWII an unexploded bomb was referred to as an UXB. Most current UXO risk is limited to areas, mainly in London, that were subject to the Blitz and to land used by the military to store ammunition or to train on. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 528 pixelsFull resolution‎ (878 × 579 pixels, file size: 79 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 528 pixelsFull resolution‎ (878 × 579 pixels, file size: 79 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... NCO may mean: a numerically-controlled oscillator in electronics a non-commissioned officer in the military   This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ... For other uses, see Artillery (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Blitz. ... German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ...

Detection technology

Modern techniques can combine geophysical and survey methods with modern electromagnetic and magnetic detectors. This provides digital mapping of UXO contamination with the aim to better target subsequent excavations, reducing the cost of digging on every metallic contact and speeding the clearance process. Magnetometer probes can detect UXO and provide geotechnical data before drilling or piling is carried out.

Currently in the U.S., the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), and Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP), Department of Defense programs fund research into not only the detection, but also discrimination of UXO from scrap metal. Much of the cost of UXO removal comes from removing non-explosive items that the metal-detectors identified, so improved discrimination is critical. New techniques such as shape reconstruction from magnetic data and better de-noising techniques (to name a few) will prove invaluable to reducing cleanup costs and enhancing recovery.

References

See also

• Ordnance
• Land mine
• Bomb disposal
• Clear Path International

Ordnance is a general term for a quantity of military equipment, usually specifying the ammunition for artillery, bombs, or other large weapons. ... “Minefield” redirects here. ... The Longest Walk: a British Army ATO approaches a suspect device in Northern Ireland. ... Clear Path International (CPI) is a non-profit organization based in the United States. ...

External links

The external links in this article may not comply with Wikipedia's content policies. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links.

• US Department of Defense UXO Awareness web site
• Barry Yeoman, Deadly Dependence, Creative Loafing
• USA Today item from 2006: Children in California killed while playing with unexploded 40 mm shell
• CNN News - 5 Somali children killed playing with land mine in July 2007
• Filipino civilian picks up unexploded mortar shell and is killed by it
• Vietnamese scrap metal merchant killed in 2005 when unexploded US shell detonates
• Palestinian teenagers tamper with unexploded artillery shell and are killed
• Photo showing highly unsafe behaviour with an unexploded 60 mm mortar shell
• Unexploded German 500 lb bomb from WW2 found on building site in Plymouth, UK
• Unexploded German 500 lb bomb from WW2 found in garden of house in Christchurch, UK
• Unexploded German 500 lb bomb from WW2 found in Bexleyheath, UK
• Unexploded German 500 lb bomb from WW2 found in Bethnal Green, London, UK
• Recent photos of unexploded artillery shells from the First World War
• RPS Explosives Engineering Team - UXO Consultancy
• The Texas Engineering Extension Service - UXO Training
• PLANIT EOD Ltd - Unexploded Ordnance Survey, Clearance & Disposal
• {http://www.fes.co.uk/ Unexploded Ordnance surveys provided by Fugro Engineering Services
• Tetra Tech EC Inc and Tetra Tech EC Australia - Unexploded Ordnance and Environmental Remediation
• Bactec - Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Landmine Clearance Company
• DEMIRA Deutsche Minenraeumer e.V. - German Mine Clearer

Image File history File links Broom_icon. ...

Videos

• Detonation of unexploded ordnance - #1
• Detonation of unexploded ordnance - #2
• Detonation of unexploded ordnance - #3