Iraq: 14,000 US-supplied weapons missing

[DouglasW]

Good grief. Sounds like a few items fell off the back of the truck:

source

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thousands of weapons the United States has provided Iraqi security forces cannot be accounted for, and spare parts and repair manuals are unavailable for many others, a new report to Congress says.

The report, prepared at the request of the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, also found that major challenges remain that put at risk the Defense Department's goal of strengthening Iraqi security forces by transferring all logistics operations to the defense ministry by the end of 2007.

A spokesman for Warner said the senator read the report over the weekend in preparation for a meeting Tuesday with Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Warner, who requested the report in May, "believes it is essential that Congress and the American people continue to be kept informed by the inspector general on the equipping and logistical capabilities of the Iraqi army and security forces, since these represent an important component of overall readiness," said Warner spokesman John Ullyot.

The inspector general's office released its report Sunday in a series of three audits finding that:

# Nearly one of every 25 weapons the military bought for Iraqi security forces is missing. Many others cannot be repaired because parts or technical manuals are lacking.

# "Significant challenges remain that put at risk" the U.S. military's goal of strengthening Iraqi security forces by transferring all logistics operations to the defense ministry by the end of 2007.

# "The unstable security environment in Iraq touches every aspect" of the Provincial Reconstruction Team program, in which U.S. government experts help Iraqis develop regional governmental institutions.

The Pentagon cannot account for 14,030 weapons -- almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it has been supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003.

The missing weapons will not be tracked easily: The Defense Department registered the serial numbers of only about 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided -- less than 3 percent.

Missing from the Defense Department's inventory books were 13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns.

 

[Cromlech]

Well, at least most of what is missing is handguns, rather than super-duper hi-tech gear.

 

[TexasRifleman]

Good grief. Sounds like a few items fell off the back of the truck:

Well, understand that they may all be sitting in crates in some warehouse in Jersey. For a large number of one item to be gone would seem to indicate they are all sitting together somewhere waiting for a supply corporal to find them.

Military supply has been the butt of jokes since armies first marched.

Just because they are not accounted for in software doesn't mean that anything bad is necessarily going on.

And keep in mind that's only 4 percent of the total shipment.

The report shows 370,000 weapons shipped, and about 4% missing.

4 percent missing in an area as hostile and corruption prone as Iraq is pretty good I'd say, even if there is monkey business here.

You can spin any statistic any way you want.

 

[Fly320s]

Only 4%? That means that 96% are accounted for... that's an A+.

 

[MD_Willington]

Weren't they doling out Glock 17's to these guys for sidearms?

 

[phoglund]

<---phoglund looking innocent

 

[DouglasW]

The report shows 370,000 weapons shipped, and about 4% missing.

4 percent missing in an area as hostile and corruption prone as Iraq is pretty good I'd say, even if there is monkey business here.

I agree that delivering 96% is quite admirable, considering the chaos/graft common in Iraq. But think about the outcry in the media if BATFE announced that 14,000 firearms had gone missing somewhere between a distributor's warehouse and some gunshops here in the US...regardless of how many overall firearms are delivered annually.

 

[Manedwolf]

I have to wonder how many of the "missing" are just the result of accidents. I.E. someone's M-16 falls out of a guard tower, and they disassemble what's left and get a friend to get them another.

I'm sure people accidentally break things and might not want their commanding officer to know?

And by RPGs, do they mean LAWs? I thought people just generally disposed of the empty tubes after using them?

 

[Big Calhoun]

The missing weapons will not be tracked easily: The Defense Department registered the serial numbers of only about 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided -- less than 3 percent.

What was the point in even bothering to register the 10,000!?!?!?

 

[nomadboi]

Getting the numbers makes sense to me- if a cache of US weapons is siezed in some terrorist training camp, for example, it'd be nice to be able to tell who was supposed to be in charge of them, and when/where/how they got 'diverted'.

 

[Cowboybootnut]

Seems like the media always has an article like this a few weeks before an election. I would not be suprised that this is old news, perhaps accurate, that was brought up again now to make our military and the administration to look incompetent.

I wonder what percentage of captured German guns went missing during WW II?

 

[69Chevy]

Didn't the border guards manage to lose something like 400 something weapons, including select fire assualt weapons? Like someone else said, it's pretty likely they are just sitting somewhere waiting to be discovered. I remember when my step dad was a supply officer in the navy that a package got sent to his department, but instead of what was ordered, it was a crate of handguns. Logistics of a large fight force has got to be pretty challenging.

 

[romma]

Apparently the Iraqi People believe in the 2nd ammendment also..

 

[MatthewVanitas]

With that many pistols missing, it's got to be some Supply issue. Not that many pistols are confiscated and reissued in Iraq (unlike AKs).

Like another poster said, there are probably crates of Glock 19s ("Haris Wotani" Iraqi Nat'l Guard) and Beretta 92s ("Haris Hadud" Iraqi Border Guards) sitting around somewhere in a warehouse, unless a whole truckload of them were hijacked out of a convoy.

IRT serial numbers of issued AKs: my team distributed tons of confiscated AKs, and the serial collecting procedures were a joke. First off, not all of them have serials, secondly the serialized ones come from a dozen different sources, so writing "AK47: serial 123456" into an Excel spreadsheet accomplishes nothing. Is it a "123456 Maadi"? A "123456 ChiCom" ? A Russian AKM with "123456" somewhere on it?

Further, some were serialized with Cyrillic letters in the serial "Umm, 1-3-5-backwards "N" - 3 - 2 - "kinda squarish triangle thingy" 7 - 3". And then some were serialized in Arabic numerals, which most Intel E-3s haven't bothered to learn to read, though it's only 10 different symbols that behave exactly like ours.

Unless they're all new AKs from a single source (Bulgarian Arsenal or whatever), copying down serials and trying to trace them is a pretty pointless exercise.

-MV

 

[BobTheTomato]

I wonder if Bloomberg will look into it. Maybe the Iraq goverment was straw purchasing them for the bad guys in NY.....

 

[dracphelan]

I agree with the other people who say that this stuff is probably sitting in a warehouse somewhere. (Prepare for army story)A friend of mine who was marking time until he got discharged was sent to clean a supposedly empty warehouse. Among other items that were still inside was an entire pallet of MREs, a pallet of 223 ammo and a WWII Harley Davidson still in its crate. My friend was allowed to keep the ammo and MREs. His commander passed the Harley on up the chain of command. I believe it is now used in parades.

 

[ArmedBear]

...entire pallet of MREs, a pallet of 223 ammo and a WWII Harley Davidson still in its crate. My friend was allowed to keep the ammo and MREs.

Hmmm...

Guess the warehouse wasn't somewhere that was easily accessible by pickup truck?

 

[KC&97TA]

We haven't been supplying it... I hope we didn't pay for a dime of those weapons... We've been controlling the vast inventorys... There's more AK's in Iraq than you could immagine. Huge Ware Houses... FULL of Guns and Ammo. I can't even think of a way to describe, floor to ceiling and wall to wall of huge ware houses, full. I was once told that Saddam had enough AK's to give one to every single person in his country... Millions of AK's.

I'd bet that those 751 assult rifles are AK's that American Troops are useing or are hanging in some CO or Sgt Majors office.

Pistols, if they're Glock 17's or Browning HP 9mm are being used by our own troops, because the Army & Marine Corps think it's better to give Officers, Sr SNCO's and POG's M9's that never leave the base, "so they can walk around base w/o haveing to carry a big bulky rifle" ... and not give them to the Sgt's & below for back up weapons while they're outside the wire or to use in close quarters situations.

Sgt's have a way of procureing items they deem neccessary.

 

[DRZinn]

Guess the warehouse wasn't somewhere that was easily accessible by pickup truck?

My sentiments exactly.

 

[griz]

Missing from the Defense Department's inventory books were 13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns.

The vast majority are pistols? There has to be a reason for that.

 

[Ala Dan]

Heard this on the evening news this afternoon; with some knit-wit saying
that we weren't worried where these handguns went~!

 

[SnWnMe]

96% validity in Supply is something to brag about.

 

[quatin]

Leno just did a joke about it. "Forget about WMDs, we can't even find our own weapons!"

 

[LeonCarr]

Did folks really think that we could trust the Iraqis (even the alleged good guys in the Iraqi Police/Armed Forces) to keep up with weapons that we issued them?

A good buddy of mine that just got back from the sandbox (and bragged about taking a dump in a gold plated toliet in one of Saddam's palaces) said that Saddam's personal gun collection is estimated at 10,000 weapons, including many original Winchester lever action rifles and original Colt SAAs. The Iraqis like guns .

I think the Iraqis, either alleged good guys or insurgents, have them.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

 

[El Tejon]

Considering the Mongolian Cluster Love going over in Iraq, those numbers have to be low.

As to domestic politics, I do find it hilarious that complete military control over firearms creates a horde of "illegal guns". Oh, the irony (as the media loves to say).

Matt V, the "backwards N" is an "I"; the squarish triangle thingy is a "D".