Might this be where all the 7.62x39 has gone?

[Don't Tread On Me]

Chavez turns to Iran on military, uranium

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 10, 2006

.....
Hamas also is talking to Caracas about sending representatives to Venezuela to raise money for the militant group's newly elected Palestinian government.
But relations with another ally, Russia, have soured over a deal in which Moscow is selling 100,000 AK-47s to Venezuela. The South American country was counting on receiving new rifles, but Russia has shipped a number of refurbished models, prompting Caracas to halt the deal, the U.S. sources said.
Mr. Chavez's continuing efforts to cozy up to Iran are of increasing concern inside the Pentagon and State Department......

Taken from another thread about Iran/uranium...

Figure, 100,000 AK's must have been ordered with ammo. A battle back is at least 180 rounds per AK. I'm sure they factor in training ammo, and the ability to replenish the battle load 2-3 times over at least. Also, factor in stockpiling in preperation of long term war..we're talking around a quarter-billion rounds of ammo. If the US and Venezuela ever butt heads, there will be a naval blockade. Hugo is stocking up.


ATK (Lake City) who makes ammo for the US military and cannot keep up, churns out something like 2 billion rounds per year. It is in short supply and our military has sourced ammo from Israel and other countries. They are in the middle of a war and are using it like crazy, and our production is larger than Russia's.


I'm guessing a big order from Venezuela could be a big enough burden in Russian production to cause Wolf to become scarce...

 

[chopinbloc]

uh, sorry buddy but it said "sour" as in lemons and bad milk, not "soar" as in eagles and rockets.

 

[Don't Tread On Me]

Still, they were prepared to sell 100,000 AK's. They must be holding an inventory for sale. 100,000 isn't peanuts.


Where else is all the ammo going? Word has it that Russia isn't sending any more till Summer.


Why?


Others speculate its going to the Iraqi military.

 

[chopinbloc]

that's true but 100,000 rifles IS peanuts compared to the stock that russia most likely has. crazy ivan's fire sale has been going on for about a decade now and a 100,000 rifle contract really isn't that huge a deal in the big picture.

my opinion is that our shortage is temporary and there are several causes:

the asf (afghan security forces), ana (afghan national army) and many private security contractors carry akms loaded with what appears to be wolf ammo. i couldn't say for sure but it looked exactly like the steel case, polymer coated stuff i was buying about a year ago. if this is indeed produced by the same factory as the stuff that wolf was importing to the us, it would be reasonable to assume that the same is the case in iraq - a much larger market.

in the last couple years both romanian ak type rifles and yugoslavian sks rifles have been flooding the market and have been purchased in very large numbers. owners of these types of rifles tend to be high volume shooters.

the situation in new orleans likely encouraged many people to buy large quantities of ammunition.

what likely would have been a ripple in the market turned into a cascade effect encouraged by rumors of a drought and panic buying.

if you want the situation to stop, DON'T BUY THE AMMO. at least not at the extortionist prices they are charging. unfortunately, no one is acting on the age old advice of "buy it cheap and stack it deep." if they were the supply and prices would likely be back to normal already but now the price will probably never be as low as it was again because stupid people will keep paying ridiculous prices. so let me say it again: if you have ammo, sit on it, if you don't, don't buy any unless you find a reasonable price. hint: reasonable price means < $100/1,000rds. if you don't have any ammo for your rifle, buy a .223 and shoot that until the price gets back to normal, it'll be cheaper to buy a new rifle than to keep inflating the pockets of these extortionists.

 

[Mizzle187]

Hell 6 months ago you werent finding any Russian 7.62X39 at all. Im not even going to mention what I saw a case going for 6 months ago at a gun show. You could tell this case was pulled from a corner for a rainy day. It was OLD! Cases are very very very hard to find now. When people are getting them they are gone becuase of backorders. Ive been able to find 20 packs though of Tiger. I know where a couple hundred boxs are right now.

I blame our being in the middle-east and our good friend Chavez.

 

[pinstripe]

possibly Iran?

 

[Don't Tread On Me]

A local gunshop here has no less than 8 cases of 7.62x39. Don't know what kind, they are in wooden crates. I think it is pricy though, like $180 per 1,000..maybe a little more. Every crate has a different quanity in it.

 

[KC&97TA]

Walmart has 7.62x39, like $7 for 100 rounds I think ?

When I was in Iraq the first time, our Battalion had possesion of 3.9 million rounds of Bulgarian 7.62x39 we shot a few of those round just for training, of course, it was aquired from out in town ... this was just the Bulgarian ammo for the AK's - we had found that to be the best quality, we had a ware house full of 7.62x39 and 7.62x5? was a bit bigger than .308. The crappiest stuff was the Iraqi made ammo, we had problems with the back of the shell caseings brakeing off, it was so bad you'd never find insergents shooting at us with it, mostly we destroyed the crap when we got board or sent it away to be destroyed.

We also had iso containers full of every AK imaginable, alot of them junk, but we also had brand new ones, the best we found were the Bulgarian, black synthetic stocked AK's, which were plucked brand new from thier originial boxes and paper wrappers... I spent many nights thinking of a way to smugle one back home, but I didn't, I tried to get the 75 round drums back with the appropriate paper work, but didn't succeed.

(and I'm back to telling Iraq stories again)

 

[Silent-Snail]

I would love to have that Wal-Mart. Here that stuff goes at $10.00+ for a 20 pack.

 

[Erik Jensen]

just a side note, but the AK-74s mentioned in the story use 5.45X39, not 7.62X39. so it really shouldn't affect us, unless russia was really planning on screwing venezuala over by giving them the wrong ammo.

 

[Creeping Incrementalism]

a side note, but the AK-74s mentioned in the story use 5.45X39, not 7.62X39

The story quoted in this thread says AK-47.

Does anybody use the -74, other than Russia?