DU : depleted uranium

Newsvine - Is an Armament Sickening U.S. Soldiers? I feel for these guys. Back in 1983 I worked for a company EBASCO, in five upper floors of the World Trade Center. Their division, Envirosphere does the environmental impacts for power plants, their siting and construction. I was hired to test Fort Drum Army Military base in Upstate New York for archaeology potential, digging hundreds of gridded holes. There were a few recorded sites there one a "palisaded village" of the once so-called "lost Iroquois" one of the earlier groups associated with the "Peacemaker" of pre-Contact times. At over 105,000 acres Fort Drum has many ranges where tanks fire weapons, off-limits, and the total area has been in constant use since 10,000 people were moved from it where dairies and foundries were once around 1945, a smaller Pine Camp there previously. Today it is the permanent location of the US Army 10th Mountain Division, moved there from Camp Hale, Colorado, and started by another Dole, though former Senator Bob Dole served with it in Italy. Prior to the relocation of the A-10 squadron from Griffis Army Airbase near Syracuse, NY to "out west" I would watch everyday it seemed as A-10's accompanied by Phantom F-4's (perhaps in case the A-10's with DU ammunition got off their flight way) fly in and unload on a range against a delivery truck, with yardage markers. I had no idea most of those rounds perhaps were DU back in 1983. Bradley's to serve in front of tanks instead of infantry, were just being ordered. One proposal was to tell everyone at the facility that powder blue ordnance was "H.E." instead of duds to keep all the people out of it.