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The United States has not banned or placed a moratorium on the production of antipersonnel mines. The stockpile cap announced on January 17, 1997 does not preclude the production of new antipersonnel mines to replace those used in future combat operations.57 Yet, there has been no antipersonnel mine production in the U.S. since 1996,58 and the services have no known plans for future production.
In April 2000, Human Rights Watch wrote to twenty-seven companies identified in its 1997 report "Exposing the Source" as past producers of antipersonnel landmines and their components. These companies had refused to join nineteen other U.S. companies in 1996 and 1997 in renouncing future involvement in mine production.59 One of these twenty-seven companies, Quantic Industries Inc. (Hollister, California), has since changed its position and declared that it has adopted "a policy of not knowingly selling any product that is intended for use in an antipersonnel mine."60
The companies that to our knowledge have not yet renounced antipersonnel mine production include such well-known names as General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Alliant Techsystems. The full list follows: AAI Corp (Hunt Valley, Maryland), Action Manufacturing, Co. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Aerospace Design, Inc. (Cerritos, California), Allen-Bradley (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), Alliant Precision Fuzes (formerly Accudyne Corp.) (Janesville, Wisconsin), Alliant Techsystems, Inc. (Hopkins, Minnesota), Amron Corporation (Waukesha, Wisconsin), BI Technologies (Fullerton, California), CAPCO, Inc. (Grand Junction, Colorado), Dale Electronics, Inc. (Columbus, Nebraska), Day & Zimmerman, Inc. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Stamped Products Inc. (formerly EMCO, Inc.) (Gadsden, Alabama), Ensign-Bickford Industries, Inc. (Simsbury, Connecticut), Ferrulmatic, Inc. (Totowa, New Jersey), Formworks Plastics, Inc. (Orange, California), General Electric Company (Fairfield, Connecticut), Intellitec (DeLand, Florida), Lockheed Martin Corporation (Bethesda, Maryland), Mason, Hangar, Silas Mason Co., Inc. (Lexington, Kentucky), Nomura Enterprise, Inc. (Milan, Illinois), Parlex Corp. (Methuen, Massachusetts), Raytheon (Lexington, Massachusetts), and Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (Sanford, Maine).
Three other past producers appear to have gone out of business. Letters to Consolidated Industries, Inc. (Huntsville, Alabama), Primetec, Inc. (Naples, Florida), and Fort Belknap Industries (Harlem, Montana) were returned to Human Rights Watch with no mail forwarding service available. None of these companies are currently registered on the Department of Defense Central Contractor Registry, a prerequisite for bidding on defense contracts. Attempts to contact these companies by telephone also failed.
The U.S. Army recently completed the procurement of 13,000 Volcano antitank mines for approximately $46 million.61 Previously, Volcano was produced only as a "mixed" system with both antipersonnel and antitank mines packaged together. This antitank-only procurement was part of the Pentagon's response to the one-year antipersonnel landmine use moratorium scheduled to take effect in February 1999, which was subsequently nullified. Thus, the Army seemed, at one time, prepared to accept systems that contained only antitank mines. This program also involved other upgrades for the system including modifications to the safe and arm mechanism and the dispenser control unit.62
57 DoD Interviews, May 10, 2000.
58 Information obtained from search of database at http://www4.ioc.army.mil/ac/enter.htm
59 Human Rights Watch Arms Project, "Exposing the Source: U.S. Companies and the Production of Antipersonnel Mines," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 9, no. 2 (G), April 1997. Among the companies renouncing are Motorola, Hughes Aircraft, Olin Ordnance, and Dyno Nobel.
60 Letter to Human Rights Watch from Robert Valenti, President, Quantic Industries, Inc., May 1, 2000.
61 Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller, "Appropriation: 2034 Procurement of Ammunition, Army, FYDP Procurement Annex," February 14, 2000, p. 31.
62 Department of the Army, "RDDS, PE 0604808A: Landmine Warfare," February 1999, p. 1133.