Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD – Five West Point cadets traveled to the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center’s (DEVCOM CBC) Aberdeen Proving Ground research campus in Maryland to learn about pyrotechnics and explosives chemistry from 50-year pyrotechnics and explosives research and development veteran Joseph Domanico on a June 4 field trip. Instruction included a lecture by Domanico followed by a tour for the cadets and other guests of DEVCOM CBC’s explosives test chamber and an explosives and smoke obscurants demonstration on an Army test range.
The United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point and DEVCOM CBC have enjoyed a collaborative relationship for more than 30 years. It started with summer internships and has expanded to cadets performing collaborative research with DEVCOM CBC scientists during the academic year using laboratories at the USMA Department of Chemistry and Life Sciences while receiving guidance from DEVCOM CBC mentors. These collaborations have included chemical warfare agent degradation strategies, battery development, agent and explosives detection, energetics additive manufacturing capabilities, and propellant development.
The explosives chemistry collaboration began when, during one of his regular visits to West Point, DEVCOM CBC’s deputy director for research, Matthew Shue, saw that a couple of USMA professors were working with students on constructing a medieval canon and replicating an authentic medieval gunpowder recipe.
He immediately realized that there was a potential role for Domanico in pyrotechnics and explosives chemistry instruction for these cadets. Then, on one of the USMA’s Department of Chemistry and Life Sciences chair, Col. John Burpo’s regular visits to DEVCOM CBC, Shue took him on a tour of the Obscuration and Nonlethal Engineering Branch where Center pyrotechnics and explosives experts perform research, development, prototyping and testing of novel energetic payload materials and the devices that employ them. Burpo was impressed and agreed that a field trip to DEVCOM CBC would enrich the Academy’s new explosives chemistry course which he started up just this year.
Shue saw real value for both parties, “The USMA is the Army’s university, its cadets are its future leaders. So, any opportunity we have to work with the cadets and faculty is an opportunity to show the next generation of Army leaders how we perform our mission and its value to the warfighter and the nation.”
On June 4, the cadets drove four hours to DEVCOM CBC, received four hours of instruction plus lunch, and drove four hours back up. It was well worth the trip according to Cadet Blaine Dolin, a rising senior and chemical engineering major who has been working on the USMA medieval gunpowder project for the last two years. “I really enjoyed the experience, not only getting watch the explosives go off, but to learn how they are made and tested. I also got to learn about the history and mission of DEVCOM CBC, and how they make the best devices possible for us, both in applicability and usability.” His future plans include going to graduate school to take his pyrotechnics and explosives chemistry education further.
During his four hours of instruction, Domanico’s enthusiasm for the subject and his humor shone through. There was no PowerPoint. Instead, he simply displayed a wide variety of smoke/obscurant, incendiary and nonlethal munition models and spoke from his experience, which included many colorful stories dating back to when he first arrived at APG to do pyrotechnics and explosives research as a lieutenant in 1974. “I wanted to show the cadets how the Army’s civilian workforce supports the warfighter with the best science and engineering possible, including explosives and propellants,” he said. “The world they are going into will require that they be protected by ever-improving obscurants, ones that can block infrared. So, they need to know that we are devoted to our job, researching how to best protect them.”
