BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
In 2005, the U.S. military began fielding Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts, or ESAPI, for use in standard issue deployment body armor. The ceramic armor plates, crafted primarily of material like boron carbide, are both lighter and harder than metal armor of similar size, and exceed the survivability of previous generation plates by withstanding the penetration of three armor-tipped .30-06 rounds.
Despite the improvement to warfighter protection that ESAPI brought, cracks, deformities, and material expiration dates all contribute to the established need for regular inspection and replacement of countless individual plates. When ESAPI is declared excess by the services, Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services has long provided the contracting might to properly demilitarize and pulverize discarded plates collected from units all over the world.
But as of August 2026, DLA Disposition Services has officially removed itself from the ESAPI reverse logistics cycle. Over a timespan of about two years, DLA changed the rules of the game and championed a military-to-recycler direct pathway for reclaiming boron carbide on the Department of War’s behalf.
As one of the hardest known materials behind boron nitride and diamond, boron carbide serves as a superior radiation shield for nuclear applications, is useful for spacecraft reentry, and is ideal for warfighting equipment like vehicle and personnel armor. Over the past several years, the U.S. defense industry’s access to boron carbide’s essential ingredients became precarious due to twin factors – diminished production and export capability from previously leading global producer Ukraine due to Russian invasion, and export restrictions imposed by China on “superhard” materials like gallium, germanium, and boron nitrides.
When DLA Disposition Services leadership began fully exploring the potential of excess property as a source of critical materials for manufacturing feedstock in 2024, they quickly identified projects to test the feasibility of tapping its property stores for elements like titanium and germanium.
Don Helle is a process engineer in the DLA Disposition Services Business Support Directorate’s Research and Development office. He has worked on the effort from its inception and said that since the moment the major subordinate command’s leadership became aware of the recycling potential in ESAPI, constant effort was required to enact process changes.
“We changed from demilitarizing ESAPI into a landfill in Georgia, made changes in shipping instructions and demilitarization processing, in adding Defense Contract Management Agency oversight, in securing the contractor a DoDAAC for shipping destinations and authorizing them to receive property for recovery,” Helle said. “Major process change is never easy. It takes time.”
In May, the pieces finally fell into place for the services to begin shipping ESAPI directly to the recycler – with installations east of the Mississippi River sending items to Virginia and with property flow directed to a California facility for bases in the western U.S. Helle said the contractor is performing all required demilitarization with oversight by the Defense Contract Management Agency. The boron carbide powder produced through the recycling partnership will first refill DLA Strategic Materials’ National Defense Stockpile and excess powder will be sold to support the manufacturing of hypersonic missile and spacecraft reentry shielding components.
According to Receipt and Controlled Property Division Chief Bernie Ponce, DLA’s property disposal field sites began holding on to all ESAPI in its possession in early 2025. From the time the order to pause destruction came down until this month, installations like Camp Pendleton, Fort Hood, and many other DLA sites across the world held nearly 29,000 plates originally valued at just under $16 million. Once new guidance on recycling had been approved, the agency’s Reutilization, Transfer and Donation team processed 959 Material Release Orders and shipped all remaining excess ESAPI in DLA’s possession for material reclamation.