The United States Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) is a major sub-command of the United States Army Materiel Command (AMC) and a reporting element of the United States Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. Its role is to enhance national security by securely storing and ultimately eliminating U.S. chemical warfare materiel, while protecting the work force, the public and the environment to the maximum extent.
CMA leads the world in chemical weapons destruction with a demonstrated history of safely storing, recovering, assessing and destroying materials that remain as a legacy of the former U.S. chemical weapons program. CMA manages destruction of all U.S. chemical weapons stockpiles except for the two that fall under the Department of Defense Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives neutralization program. Through its Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP), CMA works with local, state and federal emergency preparedness and response agencies at chemical weapon stockpile locations.
The Army operates its disposal activities under congressional direction. Federal agencies and the independent National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council, together with equivalent agencies at the state and local level, also are involved in regulation and oversight of aspects of the destruction program with the exception of fiscal management.
The Army combined elements from the former United States Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command and the former Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization to consolidate the Army's chemical agent and munitions storage and demilitarization functions under a single organization. CMA managed the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile at nine installations across the U.S. and had responsibility for chemical weapons disposal at seven of them. They were closed in the following order: