BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
The Defense Logistics Agency’s reverse logistics team has recently begun building out a framework for pulling critical materials from property turn ins – like germanium from night-vision optics or titanium from scrap metal – to help grow its ability to mine elements from excess property and generate feedstock for industry.
But Reutilization, Transfer and Donation remains a core DLA Disposition Services mission, and excess equipment and material sourcing continues to produce dividends for warfighters and readiness. Last summer, personnel from the agency’s Battle Creek-based RTD office, the Receipt and Warehousing Branch, and DLA’s Red River property disposal field site in Texas coordinated to identify and assist a non-traditional reutilization customer that could accept multiple direct shipments of sodium perchlorate worth an estimated $63 million turned in by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
Russell Manuel is the RTD branch chief for the DLA Disposition Services Property Management Division. He said the DTRA chemical lot, the result of an overseas seizure, required “receipt in place” for its custody transfer to DLA. Once the agency identified a recipient through its Air Force reutilization contacts, there was a “smooth, safe transition” of the unique and potentially volatile material.
Dr. Susanna Back serves as the strategic and critical materials section lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. She said sodium perchlorate is a precursor for potassium perchlorate, used for a variety of military applications such as flares, fuses, smoke and flash bang grenades, and simulator devices.
Back said her directorate is the Executive Agent Program Office (EAPO) for Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III, which manages a multi-billion dollar contract portfolio of high-visibility projects designed to “create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore domestic industrial base capabilities essential for the national defense.”
A Colorado-based defense chemical supplier specializing in solid rocket motors, propulsion research, and black powder production reached out to Back’s office when its personnel were informed of the potential sodium perchlorate reutilization opportunity. The EAPO DPA Title III team requisitioned the material on the supplier’s behalf as part of a Technology Investment Agreement. The DoD Grant and Agreement Regulations 32 CFR §37.695 allows the government to provide property to a recipient. However, since this is material that will be subsumed during the performance of the recipient’s agreement, EAPO also referenced the more specific incidental authority at 50 USC §4533 (d) which states, “The procurement power granted to the President by this section shall include the power to transport and store and have processed and refined any materials procured under this section.”
The AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate develops materials, processes, and advanced manufacturing technologies for aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, rockets, and ground-based systems and their structural, electronic and optical components. Air Force product centers, logistic centers, and operating commands rely on the directorate's expertise in materials, nondestructive inspection, systems support, and advanced manufacturing methods to solve system, expeditionary deployment, and operational challenges.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency helps the U.S. and its international partners deter strategic attacks; prevent, reduce, and counter weapons of mass destruction and emerging threats; and prevail against WMD-armed adversaries in crisis and conflict.