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Alliant Techsystems NYSE: ATK is a major US aerospace and defense contractor with sales of approximately USD $2.8 billion (fiscal year 2005) and strong positions in propulsion, composite structures, munitions, precision capabilities, and civil and sporting ammunition.
Background
Alliant Techsystems was spun off from Honeywell in 1990. Their headquarters are in Edina, Minnesota. The company is known to produce a number of controversial weapons, including depleted uranium rounds and cluster bombs. They did manufacture anti-personnel landmines for the U.S. Military in the past, but they do not currently have a contract to produce more at this time, according to their spokes-people. For these reasons, the company has been a target of peace movement protests because these weapons are considered by many around the world to be a violation of international law and treaties since they are by definition indiscriminate weapons. There are weekly vigils held at Alliant Techsystems headquarters, as well as occasional organized acts of civil disobedience to protest the manufacture and sale of indiscriminate weapons.
Unlike some defense contractors who have been very aggressive with protesters, ATK has generally taken a low-key approach. While some arrests for trespassing have taken place, ATK employees have also provided cookies and coffee, since the weather in Minnesota is not conducive to year round picketing.
The firm makes a number of less controversial products, such as propulsion systems for NASA. Nearly every NASA planetary probe has used some form of propulsion from the one of the company's divisions, and ATK also participated in the X-43A project.
ATK owns a number of famous brands, including Thiokol, Federal (ammunition), and others. It provides most of the small caliber ammunition for US police and military units. ATK has a large share of the sporting ammunition market as well. The company is also a leader in providing "green" ammunition to hunters and to military organizations, greatly reducing the use of heavy metals (e.g., lead) in wetlands, training ranges and combat settings.
Since 2000, ATK has moved to compete for larger, more complex systems, and has won a number of contracts for guided weapons. The company has also acquired several smaller firms, including Mission Research Corporation, an established contractor providing specialized, and often highly classified electronics to the USAF and other customers. Mission Research is said to be providing a number of innovative systems, including small low cost sensors for homeland security (monitoring for hazardous materials) and non-lethal beam weapons to disable people, cars, and explosives.
Trident II (D5) ballistic nuclear missile
Alliant Techsystems is responsible for the propulsion system for the Trident II (D5) submarine-launched ballistic missile, a multiple warhead, nuclear armed missile. Each missile can carry 8 independently targetable nuclear warheads. The D5 is a major long-range nuclear delivery vehicles being produced for U.S. and British forces. There are about 400 D5 missiles in the U.S. arsenal. The D5, whose main contractor is Lockheed Martin, has a range of more than 7000 kilometers and costs $40 million a piece.
Depleted Uranium Weapons
Alliant Techsystems makes depleted uranium shells for use in U.S. tanks, armored personnel carriers, and howitzers. As Damacio Lopez, Executive Director of the International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST), notes in an October 2000 report, "DU is a highly toxic heavy metal with a radioactive half-life of four and one-half billion years. It is very appealing in military weapons because of its heavy weight and pyrophoric qualities which cause it to burn like a cutting torch through steel when a DU penetrator strikes a hard target".
Alliant Techsystems’s DU shells are the subject of great controversy because of their impact on the environment and human health. Soldiers and civilians in the warzones of Iraq and Kosovo and on testing ranges like the one in Socorro, New Mexico where open air testing of DU was conducted for more than 20 years, have suffered the short and long term health effects of ingesting radioactive dust, such as kidney problems, birth defects, cancers and death.
Weapons analyst William Arkin estimates that 300 tons of depleted uranium was dispersed during the Second Persian Gulf War (1991), mostly from the 30mm and 120mm DU shells. In Kosovo, DU rounds were used with the A-10 Thunderbolt II warthog, which ran about 100 missions.
Alliant has produced over 15 million 30 mm PGU-14 shells (used in the A-10's Gattling gun) for the U.S. Air Force and over a million 120mm M829 rounds (described by the Army as the world's most lethal kinetic energy shell) for the U.S. Army. While the United States Department of Defense (DoD) denies any link between DU and the Persian Gulf War Syndrome, which has affected more than 100,000 U.S. and Allied service people who "saw action" during the Second Persian Gulf War (1991), veterans groups and scientists both challenge this claim.
In February 2006, U.S. Army quietly placed an order for $38 million in depleted uranium rounds, bringing the total order from the Alliant Techsystems to $77 million for fiscal year 2006.
Corporate governance
Current members of the board of directors of Alliant Techsystems are: Frances Cook, Gilbert Decker, Ronald Fogleman, David Jeremiah, Roman Martinez, Robert RisCassi, Michael T. Smith, and William Van Dyke.
See also
External links
- Alliant Techsystems Inc.
- AlliantAction Protest Site
- RightWeb pfofile of Alliant Techsystems (ATK)
- SourceWatch pfofile of Alliant Techsystems (ATK)
- ATK - war is hell...unless you're making money
- Dirty Dozen: Alliant Techsystems
- Director of ATK is David Jeremiah of Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, JINSA
- John K. Byrne. U.S. signs $38 million deal for depleted uranium tank shells with ATK, The Raw Story, March 2, 2006.