PINE BLUFF -- Col. Kelso C. Horne III -- a career Army man who has been stationed in South Korea -- will take command of the Pine Bluff Arsenal.
Col. Chadwick T. Bauld will relinquish command to Horne at 9 a.m. Thursday at the Armed Forces Reserve Center, according to an arsenal public information official.
The Pine Bluff Arsenal, which will celebrate its 75th year in November, is the only active Army installation in Arkansas. Cheryl Avery of the arsenal said Horne will become the facility's 37th commander.
Until last month, Horne was director of operational protection for the 8th Army stationed in the Republic of Korea. He had been in that position since July 2015.
Horne is from an Army family and graduated from the University of Georgia with a bachelor of business arts degree. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army's Chemical Corps in August 1993. He has a master of business arts degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and a master's in strategic studies from the Air War College.
Bauld, a native of South Dakota, has been in command of the Pine Bluff Arsenal since July 2, 2014. He took over at a time of uncertainty regarding the Defense Department's budget, and after a government shutdown occurred in 2013. In a brief speech in 2014, Bauld said he planned to use some of the contacts he had made throughout his military career to cultivate work for the arsenal and ensure that it continued operation.
"We always have to remain flexible and be adaptable to any changes in the ammunition we're doing or any of the chemical defense quotas," Bauld said at the time. "There are always going to be challenges with the budget, but I don't think we're in jeopardy."
His next assignment will be as chief weapons of mass destruction planner with the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.
Avery said Bauld's two-year assignment at the Pine Bluff Arsenal is typical for commanders at arsenals nationwide.
The mission at the arsenal is the same as it has always been -- pyrotechnics, Avery said. Items made there include smoke grenades. The arsenal no longer stores chemical weapons on-site, she said.
During World War II, the arsenal's mission included the manufacture and storage of chemical weapons and the production of smoke and white phosphorous munitions. A biological weapons mission was added in 1953 and continued until 1969.
In 1978, the arsenal was selected as the national site for production of a new generation of binary chemical weapons, a program that was active until 1990, when an international treaty mandated its end. Unique projects for disposal of all obsolete chemical weapons at Pine Bluff Arsenal got underway in 1979 and were successfully concluded in 2010.
Today, the arsenal -- under the Army Materiel Command and the Army Joint Munitions Command -- produces illuminating, infrared, phosphorous and smoke munitions.
State Desk on 07/01/2016