Switzerland offering more than £40k for recovery of munitions from its lakes
The Swiss government is offering more than £40,000 to whoever can come up with the best solution to recover ammunition from several of the country's lakes.
The Federal Office for Defence Procurement armasuisse launched the competition to find an "environmentally friendly and safe" way to get the ammunition out of the water.
Fifty thousand Swiss francs is up for grabs for the three best entries, which may not be used immediately but "could serve as the basis for further clarifications or for launching research project".
The Swiss armasuisse said the idea of the competition is to "involve academia and industry" in how to get the deep lake ammunition out in a safe way, should it "ever become an issue".
They outlined this could be the case "if, against all expectations, the release of pollutants from submerged ammunition were to be established during ongoing lake water monitoring".
Kim Hughes, a bomb disposal expert and George Cross holder, told BFBS Forces News that without knowing what the ammunition is, it's hard to say how dangerous the mission could be.
"We don't know what the ammunition natures are, whether they are inert, whether they are explosive, whether they could be illuminating, smoke-producing, even chemical," he said.
"One would assume that the items that have been dumped are essentially shelf-life expired.
"So they had no means to dispose of those items by demolition at the time, so the easiest way would be just to water-dump them."
He said this assumption would make you think the ammunition "won't be armed".
"They haven't gone through the necessary arming processes, firing processes, to arm those fusing systems but, again, until you physically know what those items are, everything has to be treated with caution," he said
Problem, surplus or outdated ammunition was submerged in various Swiss lakes between 1918 and 1964.
Most of it lies in Lake Thun, Lake Brienz and Lake Lucerne at a water depth between 150 and 220 metres (490-720ft.
Carried out in an open and anonymous way, entry to the competition runs from 7 August until 6 February 2025.
The work will then be assessed by a panel of experts, with the results announced in April next year.
The competition comes after an assessment was carried out to look at possible ammunition recovery techniques in 2005.
However, these showed that "all proposed solutions for ammunition recovery available at the time would lead to massive sludge turbulence and high risks for the sensitive ecosystem of the lake".
This is because the ammunition is covered with "a fine sediment layer up to two metres thick" which, if disturbed, could reduce the already sparse oxygen found at that depth – damaging the lakes' ecosystem.
Poor visibility also runs the risk of explosion, with the condition of the submerged ammunition also presenting further challenges.
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