Toxic artillery: Paradigm Shift Technologies on chrome plating

At the Future Artillery conference in Paris running from 21-23 May, Dr Gennady Yumshtyk gave a presentation that was precise and clear, but left members of the audience with an astonishing question: After 100 years of using chrome plating on artillery barrels, wherein we have found the material to be a highly carcinogenic environmental hazard, why do we not adopt an alternative that is safer, more effective, and has a lower operational cost? Why do we not use EPVD?

“It seems like a no-brainer,” remarked a senior industry representative, queuing for lunch, commenting on the simplicity of a decision to move to the new technology.

Electromagnetically enhanced Physical Vapour Deposition (EPVD) is an alternative to chrome plating in the production of artillery barrels that found its origins in coating petrochemical tubes for use in high pressure, high temperature conditions.

Global Defence Technology interviewed Yumshtyk, founder of Paradigm Shift, to discuss his company’s progress in replacing chrome plating with EPVD, and the challenge to the environment that complacency represents. 

Chrome plating, which has been used on artillery since 1922, extends the lifetime of the barrel by 50-100%, potentially doubling the number of shells fired before replacement. Still, thermal impact leads to erosion, fatigue, and failure.

Following two years of intense fighting in Ukraine, it is understood that every piece of artillery that has been in service since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion has had its barrel replaced ten-to-fifteen times. Galvanic chrome is a significant element in the production of military equipment, but extensive field testing of EPVD has found the new technology to extend the barrel life by 200%, trebling the expected number of fires.

The EPVD lining also increases accuracy. In a firing test executed by Canadian Defence, a chrome plated barrel was used side-by-side with an EPVD barrel to deliver direct fires against a set of targets.

After 4,500 rounds of ammunition the chrome plated barrel was disqualified as it had lost accuracy under erosion. Without failing, the EPVD barrel fired 7,000 rounds, and then the test was stopped, by Yumshtyk’s account, because the examiners spent all the available ammunition.

Without giving details of the cost of EPVD, Yumshtyk said that the technology was competitively priced. He attributes the lack of a wider adoption of alternatives to chrome plating to an inertia in the defence industry.

An immigrant to Canada from Ukraine, escaping during its period as a soviet satellite, Yumshtyk describes defence attitudes to chromium plating alternatives as analogous to his experience first buying mayonnaise for his family from a local grocery store. He had no conception that there could be such a range of possible varieties available and stood dumbfounded in the aisles.

It is this experience that gives his company its name, Paradigm Shift, representing a revolutionary change in perspective necessary to understand the right course of action after more than 100 years of using the same material.

Inaction on chrome plating comes at a high environmental and human cost. Yumshtyk points to statistics that indicate 50 people a year die in the European Union every year solely from cancers attributed to poisoning from Chromium - either from pollution from the foundries into the waterways and food chain, or from direct exposure overcoming at the production sites overcoming personal protective equipment.

Chrome poisoning, Yumshtyk adds, is the subject of the Oscar-winning true-life story, Erin Brockovich, accounting for a lawyer’s class-action lawsuit in the US to gain compensation for lives devastated by the hazardous waste material. Released in 2001, he is concerned that even with a prominent position in the public dialogue, not enough has been done to eliminate the poison in the intervening years.

“When it comes to environmental sustainability we are actually in great danger, extremely great danger. Not just this country, the entire world. One of the reasons I can say that is because I have been involved in elimination of hazardous materials and waste for the past 25 years.”

After Yumshtyk founded his company to apply coatings inside petrochemical tubes, he was approached by a programme manager from the United States Air Force (USAF) tasked with eliminating hazardous materials and waste, who introduced Yumshtyk to the USAF efforts on hazardous chemical control in lakes, specifically reducing pollution of the waterways with chromium and cadmium.

"Chromic acid is a very, very active substance, it has a tendency to actually eat materials, corrode them,” says Yumshtyk. He goes on to explain the chain of poisonous exposures between corroded chromium coating plants, the groundwater and local waterways, the wildlife and livestock drawing from the following streams and lakes, end eventually the people who eat and consume poisoned produce.

From the introduction to the USAF, Yumshtyk then found himself working with the US Navy and US Army, and eventually the Canadian Forces and other European allies.

The Clinton administration laid the groundwork toward the elimination of chromium plating for US military equipment with the signing of Executive Order 12856, which aimed to enhance federal compliance with pollution prevention requirements, including reducing the use of hazardous substances like hexavalent chromium (Cr6+) across federal agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the DoD continued its efforts to push for the reduction and eventual elimination of Cr6+. 

However, the description of the defence industry response that Yumshtyk is a cycle of hurried attempts to find alternatives to Cr6+, followed by bureaucracy, delay, and inaction.

“The unfortunate part in dealing with this environmental system is the reluctance of some people to change,” says Yumshtyk. “Yes, they understand If it's bad, they understand it's dangerous, they understand that lives get caught by this. Unfortunately, the majority of people are very mercurial.” 

In June 2023 a US Army multi-disciplinary team led a successful effort to minimise the use of hazardous heavy metals and set a timetable for the elimination of all heavy metals in coming years, according to a release from the US Army Environmental Command.

“While complete removal of Cr6+ from our Army weapon systems will still take many years, these efforts and achievements have been instrumental in taking the first step to a greener, safer, and more resilient Army,” said Timothy Goddette, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Sustainability for the Office for ASA Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. 

The team created six charter tasks and examined a 'myriad issues, procedures, processes, and performance standards that are part of the weapons system acquisition and repair processes', according to the release.

“I guess my only advice,” says Yumshtyk “if I am in position to give advice to such noble and highly positioned individuals, servants of all governments, would be to actually execute more diligent processes when OEMs come back to them. And I would encourage them to actually do some background checks and do some additional research.

“If we are looking at how to clean it up, and we continue spilling and polluting, then we’re just putting on a band aid. What we wanted to do, and I believe we have successfully done is to actually eliminate them the problem that caused all this spilling and polluting and hazardous impact on human life.  

“Sometimes it's painful, but in the majority of times a surgical procedure is required to actually remove the source of illness completely in order for the rest of your body to heal.”

When asked if this approach was analogous to seeing a leaky roof and fixing the roof, rather than putting down buckets to catch the rainfall, Yumshtyk agreed. “That is exactly right. Instead of putting on the fifty-year-old technology of shingles, we will put on another technology that actually lasts longer, and never leaks because it does not produce cracks during stormy weather, ice, or hot sun . . . I’ve replaced a few roofs in my time.”