Feds to destroy $1 billion in ammo?

[HiBC]

Here is a link:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...-ammunition-sen-tom-carper-gao-waste/8145729/

I do not know what all is there,but,we paid for it,and we have been suffering ammo shortages to provide it.Not only that,to destroy this ammo will likely result in buying more ammo!

IMO,first priority would be to provide more training ammo to our troops.

As a kid on post,I recall firepower demos and artillery mad minutes on Armed Forces Day,from 81 mm mortars through 8 in guns,and even a couple of Honest John missle launches,complete with the detonation of a nuclear bomb blast simulator on a far mountain.Better than just scrapping it.

Hogdon powder was started breaking down and selling surplus ammo.

5.56,7.62,9mm,and 45 ,maybe even 50 BMG,certainly could at least go to the CMP

Maybe enough letters and phone calls could intervene.

Waste is stupid.

 

[geetarman]

I saw that article. I know a lot of federal fiefdoms don't talk to each other very much but this really seems so over the top. If we are talking small arms ammo, turn it over to CMP. I have surplus .308 ammo from the '80s that shoots just fine. Still in the plastic battle paks and brass is shiny. This stuff will last for years. It should not just be destroyed. If it is larger than small arms ammo then someone experienced with that scenario should make a judgment on what to do with it. It just does not make much sense to destroy any ammo smaller than .30 caliber. It should be unloaded through the muzzle.

 

[madmo44mag]

Why should the gooberment care.
It's not like it's their money being wasted.
Soooooooooo, before I go on a tangent and get my face slapped I'll say no more.

 

[leadcounsel]

I worked in the DoD for many years, and saw so much waste it makes me furious. This is a prime example.

Every year each unit must use or loose ammo budget, and that often means wasting ammo at the end of the year to use it all up. I've even heard of stories of ammunition (illegally) being buried, burned or dumped in lakes/ocean/rivers to get rid of it.

When I was deployed, we destroyed huge piles of captured weapons and ammunition. Clearly that stuff could have been put to better use, even if just inventoried and stored or given to our foreign partner forces, rather than buying them guns and ammo.

I cannot wrap my brain around the underlying decayed policies that result in such waste, and the people that blindly waste resources like this.

A few phone calls and this ammo could go to one of hundreds of agencies, police forces, educational institutions, shooting ranges, gun clubs, CMP, various military units, etc etc etc...

 

[Mike1234]

It's more than people not caring because it's not their money... not straight from their pockets anyway. It's also because no one cares enough to take the effort to promote change... or maybe some have already tried but found the brick walls too much a hassle to knock down.

 

[Hal]

The whole thing is sort of misleading....

The article says:
" 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".

A Stinger costs what, $40,000.00? Plus another what, $150,000.00 for the launcher?

I remember back when we first invaded Iraq watching some of it on TV.
Some of our guys were pinned down by two Iraqi's firing at them from between two buildings off in the distance.

Rather than try to cross a couple hundred yards of open sand to get to them, one guy shoulders a Stinger and fires it at the buildings.

Nada. Nothing. Zip, zilch - dud.
The guy looks at it with disgust, then tosses it out in front of him onto the sand - and - grabs another.
That one worked fine and the two buildings (and the two Iraqi's ) disappeared from the face of the Earth.

I remember thinking - wow! If they would have shown those two Iraqi's a video of what was going to happen to them, then offered to give them $10K each and a souvenir shop on the Atlantic City board walk - if they laid down their guns and surrendered..... we taxpayers could have saved a bundle!

Anyhow - my whole point here is that - they don't specify exactly what it is being destroyed.
They hint at it being more than just small arms ammunition.

If it's "defective" $40,000.00 missiles, they add up quick.

 

[BarryLee]

One thing to consider is the fact that they’ve spent the funds to buy the ammo, so tossing it cost little additional money. Attempting to sell it could result in more cost than simply dumping it. They might be required to set up a bidding process, conduct due diligence on perspective buyers, etc.

So, as wasteful as it seems the most economical option might be to simply destroy the material. I agree it makes little sense and in the private sector it probably wouldn’t happen, but this is a different culture.

 

[Wreck-n-Crew]

A Stinger costs what, $40,000.00? Plus another what, $150,000.00 for the launcher?

Haven't read anything about rockets and launchers anywhere other than in USA Today article and I believe it is an error. Anyone have any real information on that yet? All the news reports I have watched/read say its just ammunition? Hate when this happens. Spin has no place in reality and it's hard to tell who is or is not spinning and even when right who's to know right away? Heck we shouldn't have a need fact checking media reports. Very frustrating but how else is will we know the truth? I'll keep searching.....

The ironic thing about all this is the controversy surrounding the "excessive ammunition buy" that supposedly led to the Ammo shortage. Will this shift to "would not have existed if" ? Should be interesting but I hope it doesn't go there, it has no place IMO.


What bothers me is that they would choose to destroy it rather than shooting it. Makes no sense. I mean it's not like the ammunition is bad right? Heck they (the military) have been complaining about not having enough for training. It is less frustrating to me that they miscounted than the fact that they wish to destroy it.

 

[tipoc]

It's useful to read the whole article carefully to begin to get an idea of the bureaucratic problems and methods of functioning within different branches of the military that contribute to the problems of waste. It's been this way for a good many decades.

At the same time the article is thin of specifics of what ammo they are speaking of.

tipoc

 

[kilimanjaro]

As far as economics of surplus sales go, a sale can be performed by only a few people who get paid if they are surplussing ammo or buying widgets. The expense is in bringing the goods to a sale site and advertising it.

At the agency I worked for, every clerk whined about working on a sale. The response was always "If only one dollar is returned to the Treasury it's a good sale."

 

[Mike1234]

Why don't they just rotate their stock? By that I mean keep the freshest ammo for fighting and rotate the old stock to be used as training ammo? A dud here and there during training is actually a GOOD thing to teach trainees how to clear a bad round. Not counting squibs, of course.

 

[FrankenMauser]

Why don't they just rotate their stock? By that I mean keep the freshest ammo for fighting and rotate the old stock to be used as training ammo? A dud here and there during training is actually a GOOD thing to teach trainees how to clear a bad round. Not counting squibs, of course.

In my experience, it isn't quite that simple.

A) Most military ranges that I've used have been booked solid. They don't have any "extra" time to be used for blasting away with 'excess' ammo. And, of course, they don't have any time available to provide additional training that would use the ammo. When you do come across a range that is empty 20 or 30 percent of the time, there's generally a manning issue, and not enough personnel to man the range for live fire (or there's an agreement with local municipalities, to maintain certain quiet hours).

B) Most small arms ammunition contracts are for X amount of XX ammunition per year, with the ability to increase the order, but rarely the ability to reduce the order. So, if you bite off more than you can chew and are receiving more ammunition than you are using, you eventually run into storage problems.


For a time, while I was in Florida, I was told that we were actually using 7.62x51mm and .50 BMG on our helicopters, that had come out of a "temporary storage facility" on Eglin AFB ... a plastic-lined pit where they had buried shipping containers full of excess ammo for about 15 months, while the storage facility was full and stateside demand was minimal. I'm sure it wasn't an approved storage method, but someone in charge was smart enough to try to save the ammo.

 

[lcpiper]

The Article does explicitly state that the Army was "late" with their report on available Missile Stockpiles.

Ammunition is not just bullets for small arms, it includes the whole gammut from 9mm to 120mm SABOT for the Tanks, 40mm Grenades, all the different types of hand grenades, Missiles for everything under the sun and the only thing that is left out are the Nuclear weapons and the rest of the unconventional munitions category.

As was brought up, all those special ammunition types get expensive fast. They also buy some munitions for Non-US issued weapons and weapons systems. For instance we sometimes have a need to test captured enemy equipment to measure their capabilities and so maybe we buy some Russian made 23mm Ammo for their Chain Guns. The US doesn't have 23mm guns so where does the excess go once they have shot all they needed to shoot?

As for that story about the Stinger Missile, Stingers use a small launch motor to boost them from the launcher into the air before the main motor kicks in. The minimum range of the weapon is 200 Meters and it can't detonate until it has discarded the booster motor. If the buildings were close to that 200 meter mark then it could explain why one failed to detonate.

 

[Wreck-n-Crew]

Missiles for everything under the sun and the only thing that is left out are the Nuclear weapons and the rest of the unconventional munitions category.

Ammunition is not just bullets for small arms, it includes the whole gammut from 9mm to 120mm SABOT for the Tanks, 40mm Grenades, all the different types of hand grenades, Missiles for everything under the sun and the only thing that is left out are the Nuclear weapons and the rest of the unconventional munitions category.

Missiles are a separate count to ammunition and are not considered ammunition by military standards Wikipedia be dammed. Proper terms for the lot of them all is munitions and they clearly stated ammunition, hence my concern with the report (and the only report I can find) that states missiles.
Had they said $1 billion in munitions (which they did not do from the pentagon report) it would have included missiles unless they changed what the military describes as ammunition . Also there are no other news reports or articles that I have found that stated missiles which leads me to believe that the report was not worded properly. Whether intentional or not, or true or not, there is a reason to question the details but not to be spun in any direction. In the end forget the brownie point scorecard and stick to the facts is what I would like to see them do so that we don't have a reason to question a report or pick it apart.

What does it all mean anyway? Well IT really doesn't matter what the Billion Dollar contained technically speaking as it still is a large waste. What does it mean from a news report? It can mean a whole lot more or nothing at all, yet here I am looking for the truth in details.

In the end my concern is that this doesn't become a political thing from any view whether it be the media or personal view but that it be precise in it's description or more informative as to the details at least. Also that we have more boring details and less cholesterol in our news diet so we don't spend time out of our day fact checking news reports. YMMV

 

[lcpiper]

Wreck-n-Crew, here is the actual GAO Report.

http://thefiringline.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=5830716

Here is an excerpt from the report.

The Department of Defense (DOD) manages a stockpile of conventional ammunition valued at nearly $70 billion. Conventional ammunition includes items ranging from small arms cartridges to rockets, mortars, and artillery to tactical missiles.1

As you can see there is a note appended to this statement, this is what the note says.

1
DOD defines conventional ammunition as an end item, complete round, or materiel component charged with explosives, propellants, pyrotechnics, or initiating composition for use in connection with defense or offense (including demolitions), as well as ammunition used for training, ceremonial, or nonoperational purposes. This includes inert devices that replicate live ammunition, commonly referred to as dummy ammunition, which contain no explosive materials. Department of Defense, Single Manager for Conventional Ammunition (SMCA),
Directive 5160.65 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 1, 2008). Conventional ammunition does not include nuclear and special weapons.

I hope this better helps clarify my statements.

 

[lcpiper]

As for fact checking the media. I don't trust any of them any more. In my mind they are all owned and bought mouth pieces for whoever has the money and desire to try and influence the gullible and uninformed.

We have already lost the battle over a free and impartial press.

 

[HiBC]

One night I was looking at the moons of Jupiter with my spotting scope.Jupiter is about 4.5 million miles away.Light travels 186,000 miles a second,so,making an estimate in my head,the light from Jupiter is 27 or so seconds old when I see it.The sun is 93 million miles...the earth is about 23,000 miles in circumference,8000 miles in diameter.

Lets see,about 6 seconds for light to travel a million miles,6000 seconds,100 minutes,over 1 1/2 light hours in a billion miles.

Yeah,thinking of it like that,a billion is not so much,is it?

 

[leadcounsel]

But there is ZERO reason for it to be destroyed. None. Nada.

Ammunition will last a century. And it has valuable components.

Ammo could be:

1) Given to any of hundreds of military or law enforcement agencies for practice or combat use.
2) Given/credited back to an ammunition manufacturer for credit. They can repurpose the components.
3) Given to any number of our allies. We currently supply dozens of foreign militaries with arms/ammunition. Any one of them would be thrilled to get a few cargo connexes full of ammunition.
4) Store it for some later use, instead of buying it next time it's needed.

 

[Hal]

If the buildings were close to that 200 meter mark then it could explain why one failed to detonate.

It didn't fail to detonate - - it just flat out failed to launch.
The guy pulling the trigger(? - if that's what it's called) looked awful disgusted too, like it wasn't the first time one failed to launch.

 

[Doyle]

It didn't fail to detonate - - it just flat out failed to launch.
The guy pulling the trigger(? - if that's what it's called) looked awful disgusted too, like it wasn't the first time one failed to launch.

I wonder what would happen if we required the prime contractor on all these failed munitions to go retrieve them. I bet quality would go up.