Ammo

Remember last year when there was talk about the government buying large quantities of ammunition. Now they are talking about destroying a billion dollars worth of ammo because they have too much. I guess the plan is to make room for more ammo purchases.

Really courious where that info came from.

It was one of the headlines listed on the internet. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/27/pentagon-ammunition-sen-tom-carper-gao-waste/8145729/

What they probably don't tell you in that news story is that it's old ammunition that has reached whatever government mandated "best if used by" date.

You don't want our law enforcement and military going into action with "may fire" ammunition, do you?

If they sold all this ammo as surplus, the "shortage" would suddenly disappear and the ammo manufacturers don't want that. They are making too much money with this fabricated shortage, and they don't want the party to end.

Yeah, I think the AMMO MANUFACTURERS that have a hand in this.

I wish I could get my hand on some of it. They should at lest pull the bullets, empty the powder and re use the brass. But wont happen.

Gene

our tax dollars at work.

You would hope they would give the "expired" ammo to the CMP so we could buy it

heres the article:


WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to destroy more than $1 billion worth of ammunition although some of those bullets and missiles could still be used by troops, according to the Pentagon and congressional sources.

It"s impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction — valued at $1.2 billion by the Pentagon — remains viable because the Defense Department"s inventory systems can"t share data effectively, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by USA TODAY.

The result: potential waste of unknown value.

"There is a huge opportunity to save millions, if not billions of dollars if the (Pentagon) can make some common-sense improvements to how it manages ammunition," said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "Despite years of effort, the Army, Navy and Air Force still don"t have an efficient process for doing something as basic as sharing excess bullets. This Government Accountability Office (GAO) report clearly shows that our military"s antiquated systems lead to millions of dollars in wasteful ammunition purchases."

The Army and Pentagon, in a statement, acknowledged "the need to automate the process" and will make it a priority in future budgets. In all, the Pentagon manages a stockpile of conventional ammunition worth $70 billion.

The effect of inaccurate accounting of ammunition for troops at war was outside the scope of the study. However, there were limited supplies at times of .50-caliber machine gun and 9mm handgun ammunition at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a senior military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the issue.

"We simply cannot afford this type of waste and ineffectiveness," Carper said. "The (Pentagon) has a responsibility to efficiently manage its ammunition stocks, not only because it is important to be fiscally responsible, but also because our antiquated ammunition inventory systems can shortchange our war fighters and compromise their ability to complete their mission."

Other key findings from the report:

• The services have inventory systems for ammunition that cannot share data directly despite working for decades to develop a single database. Only the Army uses the standard Pentagon format; "the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps operate with formats that are obsolete."

• The services hold an annual conference to share information about surplus ammunition and swap bullets and other munitions as needed. Data about ammunition left over after the meeting disappears from the books, resulting in an unknown amount of good bullets headed to the scrap heap.

• The Army, although required by regulation, had not reported annually on its missile stockpile until last month, shortly before the GAO study was to be released.

The report illustrates the obsolete nature of the Pentagon"s inventory systems for ammunition. A request for ammunition from the Marine Corps, for example, is e-mailed to the Army. The e-mail is printed out and manually retyped into the Army system because the services cannot share data directly. Not only is this time consuming, but it can introduce errors — by an incorrect keystroke, for example.

Waste, buying new ammunition while usable stockpiles exist, can occur "because the Army does not report information on all available and usable items," the report states. The annual conference among the services — although it saves about $70 million per year, according to the Pentagon — is inadequate. The services, in fiscal year 2012, exchanged 44 million items, including 32 million bullets for machine guns and pistols.

"Specifically, the Army"s report does not include information from prior years about usable ammunition that was unclaimed by another service and stored for potential foreign military sales or slated for potential disposal," the report says.

Missiles are another source for concern, the report notes. The Army has an inventory of missiles, including Stingers, Javelins and Hellfires, that has totaled more than $14 billion in recent years. Hellfire missiles have been a weapon of choice for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the CIA-run Predator and Reaper drone missions to kill terrorists in places like Yemen.

The GAO found that the Army and its missile command "do not contribute to required annual report." The reason, Army officials told investigators, is that it "rarely has items to offer for redistribution."

Without its cooperation, the Army "risks others services spending additional funds to procure missiles that are already unused and usable in the Army"s stockpile."

The Army, in a statement, said that it began offering that information to the other services last month.

In its recommendations, the GAO urged Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to require the Army to make known information on all available for use by all services.
link

I would agree, tax dollars at work, and would bet it has been going on for ages, no conspiracy here.

You would think they would have been using some of that ammo last year instead of buying more.

'may fire' ammo.

HA.. LOL. spoken by someone who does not relaod nor shoots old milsurps.

I shoot ww1, and ww2 milsurps every weekend!

If ammo is stored semi-correctly, it can have a 100 year lifespan!!!

Ammo is a supply / demand situation. Demand far outstrips current supply. Gun sales are up substantially in last year or two. CCP are up drastically. Think homeland security which hasn't been around to long is or has ordered lots of ammo. Combine this with military orders. And lots of civilian hoarders are scarfing up ammo like there is no tomorrow.

the military use of ammo is slowing way down. They must buy more to keep the MIC money up there.

The waste is endless.
A friends brother worked for a division of General Dynamics, 25 years ago. He told me that the supervisor would go around and ask people how much overtime they would need to get their job done, the guy I know would say, "none" I have nothing to do now.......Does not matter, you get 10 hours per week of OT. (since uncle sam is paying, might as well milk it for all you can) This was a desk job too.

Hired man we had when I was in high school was in the Reserves. (1960's) Told me they took tractor trailer loads of fuel out into the dumps on base, dumped it and burned it so they would not get their allotment cut for the next year. So this kind of stuff in one form or anther has been going on for 50 years anyway.

It's been going on for years, I was the munitions supply officer on an Air Base in the 1980's I had over a million rounds of .22 in stock that was slated to be destroyed. Seems we got it for training the plan was to fire it in our GAU-5's with an adapter. Someone figured out we'd be better training with the stuff we are actually going to use if we go to war. Later in my career I became EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) qualified, we'd burn thousands of rounds a month in our pit because it was declared un-serviceable mostly .223 with some .308. At the samme time we had to carry GAU 5's when transporting explosives because we didn't have .38 rounds for our pistols and they wouldn't give us the money to buy holsters for the 9mm Berettas we were supposed to carry.

(quoted from post at 23:29:07 04/28/14) Hired man we had when I was in high school was in the Reserves. (1960's) Told me they took tractor trailer loads of fuel out into the dumps on base, dumped it and burned it so they would not get their allotment cut for the next year. So this kind of stuff in one form or anther has been going on for 50 years anyway.

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We used to do rehab work on two military bases. The waste was incredible. One building we worked on was the rec hall. At one time it had an Olympic size swimming pool. They installed a new boiler to heat the pool. They tested the new boiler before paying the contractor. Then they drained the pool and filled it in with Jeep engines, huge spools of copper wire, and pretty much anything you'd find on a military base. They finished filling in the pool with gravel then installed a running track over it.
The work we and other contractors did on that building cost about $400K (not counting the indoor track).....and the building was scheduled for demo before any of that work was put up for bid. That was nearly 30 years ago when 400K was a lot of money.
There was plenty of money for rehabbing buildings but the military couldn't get money for new buildings.

IMO, I think our government is very wastefull. And yes, I think this goes on no matter if we have repub or demo administration. And no, I am not anti-government. I just think it is rediculous to destroy ammo because it is "outdated" or wasn't used by the "best if used by this date". So what if 1 round out of 100 does not fire. Common since is - - Do Not take this ammo to combat. Why not use it for target practice? They supposedly use large qauntities of ammo for this. What difference does it make if 1 round out of 100 does not fire when at the shooting range, unless the participant is trying to qualify with the weapon. Again, only good ammo should be used in this situation. If I ran my business the way the government runs, I would of been out of business before I ever got started. All BS and politics aside, I would just like to see my tax dollars spent wisely no matter what people are in charge.

It is unclear if the $1 billion figure is for small arms ammunition alone or if it includes missiles and other ordnance. The article uses the terms "ammunition", "bullets" and "missiles" almost interchangeably. This sort of ambiguity is inexcusable, given that small arms ammo costs a few cents per round while missiles cost thousands of dollars each. I doubt the original report is so ambiguous.

It's also unclear what is meant by "destroy". In my experience, for example, expired missiles are used for training. That surely destroys them but it's difficult to say they are wasted. Likewise, small arms ammo can be dismantled and the components sold or reused.

I'd like to read the original report before passing judgment, but it seems that report has not been publicly released.