HALO has destroyed more than 23,000 tonnes of ammunition in Afghanistan
Initially the WAD teams concentrated on the disposal of the significant quantities of degraded and unstable ammunition that were amassed across the country after the formation of the present government.
Over the course of its first five years, the HALO WAD Afghanistan project destroyed more than 5 millions explosive items and forty millions bullets. It also deactivated 2,800 heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery pieces and chopped up more than 50,000 thousand light weapons. After this phase of the disarmament process had been completed, HALO’s focus became the location and destruction of ammunition stocks that lie outside of direct government control.
HALO now deploys survey teams, to scout out hidden caches of ammunition, and destruction teams, who excavate the caches and then destroy the ammunition. Currently the HALO WAD teams are locating and destroying an average of around 20,000 explosive items (with a gross weight of 100 tonnes) every month. That figure does not include the smaller items such as bullets that the teams destroy.