Photo: Army.mil via Flickr

While President Obama’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan has been met with mixed reactions, one local company sees an upside to troop escalation. Edina-based ATK, formerly Alliant TechSystems, expects to see demand for bulletproof vests go up — and, after U.S. troops leave, a surge in ammunition sales to the Afghan army.

On Thursday, ATK’s interim CEO John Shroyer told a Credit Suisse conference that Obama’s strategy should boost demand for vests and other accessories, with more sales expected after U.S. forces leave. “We’re in a very good pole position as they get pulled out,” Shroyer said. “This Afghan weapons and ammo business, I see, as a huge opportunity for the company as that shift takes place.”

The Wall Street Journal lists ATK among potential “beneficiaries” of expected military spending spikes, and reports that the company has a contract to provide ammunition to the Afghan army.

Washington Technology ranked ATK on its list of the top 100 U.S. government contractors at number 37, with $581,514,667 in contracts in 2009.

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. has spent around $227 billion, according to Congressional Research Service. Adding 30,000 troops could cost around $20 billion a year, says Kenneth Mayer, professor in the Department of Political Science at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Parachutes and packaging from BLU-97 cluster munitions dropped by the U.S. lie in a MAG clearance area near Deebaga in northern Iraq, February, 2004. Photo: MCC

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has vowed to co-sponsor a bill that would restrict the United States’ use of cluster bombs, rendering as many as a half billion stockpiled weapons off-limits. That’s according to activists who say the announcement — at a meeting with her Wednesday, after months of pressure by Minnesota citizens and peace groups — came as a surprise.

Klobuchar’s staffs in Minnesota and Washington, D.C., were on retreats Thursday and didn’t respond to requests for confirmation.

At the meeting Klobuchar seemed impatient with a presentation on the issue, says Virgil Wiebe, a University of St. Thomas law professor who advises the Mennonite Central Committee, a leader in the worldwide campaign to ban the weapons, by virtue of being one of only two United States aid groups working in Laos after the Vietnam War.

Wiebe says he took a couple minutes to tell stories Southeast Asian and Croatian victims of the so-called submunitions — bomblets packed into a larger missile container that, if unexploded, pose risks similar to land mines when people come into contact with them later.

The reason for Klobuchar’s impatience became clear after Roxanne Abbas of the Minnesota Peace Project posed the question to which activists had long sought a firm answer: What is the senator’s position on the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2009? Klobuchar had already made her mind up.

“I will co-sponsor it,” was the senator’s reply.

There was a pause in the room as activists realized they had achieved their goal.

Klobuchar, they said, had been waiting for the Obama Administration to complete a policy review on cluster bombs, all the while hearing from constituents who want them banned. Her staff had been attentive at earlier meetings, appearing to take copious notes on the issue.

Her decision to act came the day after the Senate lost its leading liberal, Ted Kennedy, whose death Tuesday also meant the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2009 had lost a co-sponsor. The timing of Klobuchar signing on was “purely coincidental,” Wiebe reckons, “but nonetheless fortuitous. In a sense she’s stepping into that gap.”

The bill, authored by Diane Feinstein of California (pdf), is not a complete ban. It prohibits the United States from using the weapons, unless unexploded bombs go off less than 1 percent of the time. That figure depends on how it is measured — for example, in actual war environments or more favorable testing situations. Manufacturers have tried to mollify an increasingly skeptical world market by adding devices meant to de-activate the explosives that don’t fire as planned.

The bill also authorizes the president to lift the ban on use of cluster bombs if “it is vital to protect the security of the United States.”

And it doesn’t tell the military it must dispose of its stockpiles.

Feinstein’s bill represents progress, Wiebe says, but it’s “still behind the curve” when compared to other countries’ efforts. The United States hasn’t signed the Oslo Treaty, an international agreement banning the production, use or trade of cluster munitions that goes into effect at the end of the year.

Klobuchar’s support carries extra significance because Minnesota is home to ATK (formerly Alliant Techsystems), which holds licenses to manufacture cluster bombs, according to Wiebe and as reported by the Minnesota Independent’s Tom Elko last year.

Sen. Al Franken’s staff didn’t return messages for this story. An ATK spokesman didn’t have immediate comment.

Coinciding with the survey’s publication, the labor organization launched the Executive PayWatch Database, a searchable Web site that shows how 2008 executive compensation compares to earnings by workers in other fields — or how much CEO pay could provide in, say, health insurance. For instance, Daniel Murphy, Jr., chief of Edina-based defense contractor ATK, raked in total compensation of $7,221,396 last year, according to AFL-CIO data,  equivalent to the combined annual compensation of 18 U.S. presidents. Ecolab CEO Douglas Baker, Jr., took home 25 percent less in 2008 than in the previous year, but his $7,157,832 compensation package breaks down to $57 made every minute.

A big gainer: Target CEO Robert Ulrich made ten percent more in 2008 than in 2007. His $20,106,361 package, if put to other uses, could provide health insurance for 4,724 uninsured workers or a year’s worth of daycare for 2,838 working moms.

Pictured: ATK’s “air bursting munition”

The deal saw intense media scrutiny and domestic pressure on several fronts, including charges that the sale to a US firm would put Canada in violation of the international landmine-ban treaty (Canada signed on, the US didn’t). Perhaps a more prevalent fear is that the sale would put sensitive technologies — like MDA’s Radarsat-2, a remote sensing satellite that monitors the country’s Arctic region (pictured) — under the purview of the US government and its security laws. It’s a historic, yet possibly temporary, ruling. Canada has never before blocked the sale of a domestic company to a foreign buyer, Reuters reports, but Alliant has 30 days to contest the sale and stands a good chance of having the decision overturned.

ATK delivered 1.2 billion rounds to the military in each of the first three years of the war in Iraq, and increased production to 1.4 billion in 2006. All told, ATK has delivered 6.4 billion rounds of small-caliber ammunition over the past five years to the military alone. But even that wasn’t enough, because in 2004 a military shortage in small-caliber munitions resulted in emergency contracts and the addition of General Dynamics of Falls Church, Va., as a second source of supply.

The two senators described the earmark in a press release after the bill was passed by the Senate in September 2006:

The bill appropriates $3.9 million in funding to continue development of scramjet technology needed to integrate and demonstrate hypersonic strike platforms, such as the United States Air Force’s X-51B vehicle. In a continuing effort to push technology forward, this Air Force program seeks to bring the HyTech engine to a flight test and provide a flight test platform for future technology development. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) advocates working to integrate an alternate engine concept into the X-51A program, thus broadening the program’s technology base. Additionally, this program is coordinated with continuing NASA research to ensure broad potential applicability.

Continued: Click “Read more” As previously reported, ATK has a successful munitions business that produces everything from bullets for commercial and military use to highly controversial cluster bombs and land mines. But it has been rapidly developing its space systems operations through multiple acquisitions of firms in that sector.

Video: The X-51 in action

According to Global Security, scramjets “compress air as it moves through the engine at supersonic speeds — without the need for moving parts.” The X-51 is a continuation of work done by ATK on the X-41, a “High-Speed Strike Weapon.” The X-41 was successfully tested in 2005, “marking the first-ever free flight of a scramjet-powered vehicle using a conventional liquid hydrocarbon jet fuel and a major step forward in  advanced hypersonic weaponry.“

Hypersonic weapons traveling at Mach 8 deliver 64 times the force of a similar weapon traveling at Mach 1, making them attractive for rapid delivery and the ability to penetrate 12 meters below the surface at Mach 4.

While Ireland’s investment is merely a drop in the bucket for companies like ATK, which had sales topping $3.5 billion in 2007, it could add up to a sizable chunk when considered along with investments withheld by countries including Norway, Austria and Belgium. Ireland’s decision followed the lead of Norway’s Government Pension Fund, which divested from ATK in 2005.

Last month, 85 nations — the United States notably absent — endorsed a tough draft treaty (pdf) for a global ban on the “use, production, stockpiling, and trade” of cluster munitions. In May, Ireland hosts the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions, where final negotiations of the treaty will take place.

Photo: Unexploded bomblet from a cluster munition, via Common Dreams.

The widening controversy over an Edina-based munitions firm extends from the suburbs of Minneapolis to the capital of Canada to battlefields of Lebanon and Iraq.

ATK, formerly known as Alliant Technology Systems, won unwelcome headlines following its January acquisition of two divisions of the Canadian defense firm MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates. As Minnesota Monitor reported Monday, ATK’s purchase prompted the resignation of two MDA engineers, one of whom charged that ATK munitions “kill civilians and soldiers indiscriminately.”  ATK subsequently responded that it only supplies treaty-compliant weapon systems to NATO and allied countries, subject to U.S. government approval.

At the heart of the controversy is an ATK-manufactured bomblet known as the M85. Packed in missiles and dropped on military targets, the M85 bomblets wreak destruction over a much wider territory than conventional munitions. And because some portion of the missiles’ multi-cluster bomb payload fails to detonate on impact, they can go on causing civilian casualties after combat is over.

“Indiscriminate weapons,” like conventional “dumb” land mines and cluster munitions, have been banned by 156 countries, including Canada — though not the United States — under the terms of the 1999 anti-land-mine treaty known as the Ottawa Convention. In response, manufacturers have sought to preserve the market for such devices by equipping them with de-activation capabilities. The latest version of the M85, which was developed by an Israeli firm and licensed to ATK, is equipped with a Self-Destruct Fuse (SDF) that combines a highly sensitive trigger with a safety mechanism preventing it from being manually armed. The SDF-equipped M85 was used by British forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and by the Israeli military during the 2006 war against the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

Hezbollah itself has been accused of war crimes by Human Rights Watch for firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel during the Lebanon War. But while the Katyusha was developed in post-World War II Soviet Russia, the SDF-equipped M85 was designed to be a more humanitarian munition.

ATK states the SDF-equipped M85 has a proven failure rate of less than 1 percent, which would preclude it from being considered an “indiscriminate weapon.” But opponents argue that those figures come from controlled testing and that the intricacies of actual ground warfare dramatically increase the failure rate.

Chris Clark, UN program manager for the Mine Action Program in southern Lebanon, reported to the International Committee of the Red Cross that in a survey of the 144,049 individual submunitions identified as of April 2007 in Lebanon, 6 percent were M85s — both with the self-destruct mechanism and without.

“Whilst several military users maintain that the M85 with self-destruct mechanism has a failure rate of less than 1 percent, the evidence on the ground in South Lebanon clearly shows that this weapon has a reality failure rate of between 5 and 10 percent,” Clark reported. “It is common to find at least 3 unexploded submunition grenades from individual carrier shells equating to a 6 percent failure rate, whilst the M85 without self-destruct mechanism is common to be found with a 15 percent failure rate on the ground. Regardless of the actual failure rate figure for this weapon it is most definitely higher than the less than 1 percent figure doggedly quoted by military users and manufacturer/designers.”

A second study conducted in 2007 by a British bomb disposal expert and Norwegian defense analysts found that while the M-85 was “designed with care,” the report concluded, “it still has a substantial failure rate in actual combat.”

In a report released just this past Sunday, Human Rights Watch charged that a wide variety of submunitions left by Israeli Defense Forces in Lebanon, the majority of them not equipped with SDF mechanisms,  “have killed and maimed almost 200 people since the war ended.”

Despite the evidence that SDF-equipped M85 munitions have a failure rate much higher than the purported fraction of a percent, they are currently used by coalition forces in Iraq.

ATK has not responded to Minnesota Monitor inquiries at the time of publication.

Read part 1 here

MDA developed Canadarm, the pride of the Canadian space agency and Canada’s biggest contribution to the international space station. In December, MDA launched RADARSAT, a satellite array intended for collecting Earth-observation data at a cost of $500 million to Canadian taxpayers. Both operations will be included in the sale.

When the CEO of MDA announced that an agreement of acquisition had been made, one MDA engineer immediately resigned over objections to ATK’s production of land mines and cluster bombs. In an interview with the Charleston Gazette, optical engineer Paul Cottle explained that ATK’s controversial weapons prompted his resignation.

I knew [ATK] was nothing I wanted to be involved with. Leaving my job … was an absolute certainty that I knew right away. I’m not anti-war. I’m not against engineers in my position working for the military or working for an arms company. What I am against is working for a company that makes weapons that have been shown to be as to harmful to civilians as to soldiers.

One week later, a second MDA engineer quit his job over the sale. Trevor Williams worked on RADARSAT under the assumption that it was for civilian purposes and arctic observation. The sale to ATK has raised his suspicions that the satellite would be used for American military purposes.The Canadian Auto Workers union and a former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister called for the sale to be blocked on grounds that it violates the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines. Canada is a signatory of the agreement, while the United States is not.

“It is unacceptable that the company that developed the Canadarm, with the support of Canadian taxpayers, be sold to an American firm responsible for the production and proliferation of land mines,” said union president Buzz Hargrove. “Canadian taxpayers’ dollars shouldn’t be sent south to a company that has built its successes by producing arms used to maim and kill.”

For its part, ATK says its land mines and cluster bombs now comply with the Ottawa Convention and are built with self-destruct mechanisms with a failure rate that is less than 1 percent. Human Rights Watch suggests that failure rates may still be up to 25 percent and points to the billions of older ordnance still in military stockpiles around the world without safety features.

ATK is a Fortune 1000 company doing $3 billion a year in business in 33 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Malaysia, Greece and Turkey. More than two-thirds of ATK’s business comes from the U.S. Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, with $1.27 billion in contracts in 2005. The company’s Edina headquarters has been the site of weekly protests since 1996. This spring ATK will relocate its headquarters to Eden Prairie, and protesters vow to follow.

Tomorrow: ATK’s controversial weapons, the use of M85 bomblets in the 2006 Lebanon War, and the efforts of human rights organizations to halt their use.

Read part II here