NDIA 2018 International Explosives Safety Symposium & Exposition
MSIAC Improved Explosives and Munitions Risk Management Workshop
1
Motivations for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Standardization of Hazard Classification (HC) Procedures
By Brent E. Knoblett,
Policy Development Division,
United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD) Explosives Safety Board (DDESB)
INTRODUCTION
This paper explains why, within NATO nations, I believe the standardization of HC
procedures, specifically as those pertain to classing explosive substances, mixtures and articles
bound for military applications, a.k.a., military munitions, is so important and necessary. The HC
procedures I am primarily referring to are those included in or derived from the United Nations
(UN) Transport of Dangerous Goods Model Regulations, and Manual of Tests and Criteria, which
I will refer to hereafter as the Orange Books (OBs). The HC assignments resulting from applying
those procedures are appropriately applicable throughout an explosive’s life cycle, including
during storage in magazines and in other situations, so long as the explosives remain in their as-
packaged-for-transport configuration. Therein seems to lie the most fundamental connection
between HC assignment and explosives safety management (ESM). The very first question always
seeming to need answering in every explosives safety siting approval situation is, “What is the
germane HC of the explosives configuration at the site?”
If the explosives at the site needing approval are unpackaged in any way, then applying an
additional set of “in-process” analyses and procedures is necessary to determine the appropriate
Class 1 Division to use for explosives safety siting purposes. I believe such analyses and
procedures could also benefit from standardization across NATO nations.
BACKGROUND
My involvement in HC spans the period from when I began working for the DDESB in
1995 to today. I began my DDESB career with over a decade of Army and Navy engineering
tenure in explosives development programs, including fuzing systems, and weapons systems
safety, including insensitive munitions (IM); but HC assignment and ESM, including the
application of quantity-distance (QD) criteria, were not specifically within my skill set yet. It has
been over my past twenty-plus years of working at the DDESB that I have come to learn – and
sometimes question – DoD’s application of HC procedures to its military munitions. Many of my
DDESB work experiences have also precipitated the development of my ESM skills over the years.
Immediately upon joining the DDESB Secretariat (as we were known back then), I began
routinely attending biannual NATO AC/310 "Safety and Suitability for Service of Munitions and
Explosives (S3)" meetings and participating in their standardization activities, some of which I
was familiar with from my prior Navy weapons systems safety work. In the summer of 1997, I
became involved with the U.S. DoD Insensitive Munitions (IM) Integrated Product Team (DoD
IM IPT), as it began its meetings and activities that continue today, as does my DoD IM IPT and
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