USA today

[dampoo]

The military is ready to scrap 1 billion [strike]rounds[/strike] dollars worth of ammo. They should try to sell it us for a profit rather than a loss.

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


Any comments from the forum?

 

[Comrade Mike]

Give it to me, I'll destroy it all for free!

 

[1911 guy]

Services would be punished for saving money. Federal budgets work on a "use it or lose it" system. The first time a service (or individual activity within a service) comes in under budget, whether by fiscal responsibility or sharing assets, their budget is automatically cut by that amount the following fiscal year. No exceptions. Reporting a surplus has the same effect. No exceptions.

Let's assume the Army gave the Marine Corps a half-million dollars in ammunition this year.
1) The following year, the Marine Corps would find their budget cut by that same half-million because they didn't spend the money, they took excess asset from the Army.
2) The Army would also lose that same half million because they had reported an excess.

Our budgeting process is so inefficient that saving tax payers a half million would cause a million dollar hit to military budgets. Now think of all the government agencies out there, all budgeted the same way and that half-million is small potatoes. This is precisely why we are spending ourselves into oblivion. Fiscal responsibility is punished by Washington.

 

[gunnutery]

1911 guy, I fully understand what you're saying and know all too well about "use it or lose it" budgeting, but you would think that having excess ammo on hand would be great, considering how many issues arise that the admin keeps setting "red lines" on.

Considering that we could be thrown into more war(s) whether the public wants it or not, ammunition is kind of a "gotta have it" thing. More than likely it's been stored properly so it's not just going to expire. It's not like they bought a million gallons of milk that they won't use (they'd probably still pour it down the drain before expiration instead of donating to the Salvation Army or schools).

 

[Carl N. Brown]

IT should go to the civilian marksmanship program. What is the matter with these feds? Is part of the job application process a prefrontal lobotomy? Naw, let the CMP get its ammo from our NATO Allies' surpplus.

 

[Tobias1900]

I would think the ammunition manufacturers would lobby pretty hard to have it destroyed; otherwise the market would be so saturated they would have to shut down plants until the excess ran out.

 

[HexHead]

I would think the ammunition manufacturers would lobby pretty hard to have it destroyed; otherwise the market would be so saturated they would have to shut down plants until the excess ran out.

They wouldn't have to shut down plants. Just change the dies and load other calibers. Hornady could end the suspension of some of the rounds they make.

Or here's an idea, make more .22 LR.

 

[ugaarguy]

From 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 not 1 billion rounds, it's $1 billion worth of munitions. $78K Javelins, $68K Hellfires, $38K Stingers, and even the relatively cheap $1,500 AT4s add up quickly.

That said, I'd still like to see any conventional rifle and pistol ammo sold as surplus rather than wasted.

 

[alsaqr]

Folks, this is nothing new. The US military has been destroying useable ammunition for decades. i'm a long retired US Army EOD/civilian UXO guy who has done this stuff for nearly 50 years.

i destroyed the unserviceable US Army ammunition after Desert Storm, about 18-20 thousand tons of the stuff, including a few hundred million rounds of small arms ammo. Much of that small arms ammo was pristine in it's original pack.

At the request of the US Army we destroyed about one million rounds of 40mm Cobra gunship ammo. The Army was getting rid of the aircraft. That ammo was supposed to go to the USMC who still had Cobras.

There was a big stink and the Army bought replacement ammo that proved to be defective; the stuff had a habit of blowing up soon after leaving the gun tube.

This burn pit contains 7-10 million rounds of .50 caliber and smaller ammo. That SAW ammo cost 37 cents per round at the time:

 

[Cee Zee]

Don't think that Obama would ever let any ammo leave the services to be sold by CMP. Liberals have a track record of attempting to control guns by controlling ammo. Before the AWB Senator Patrick Moynihan from New York (big surprise there) tried to get a huge tax put on ammo. There are efforts by some gun grabbers to make ammo have shelf life that expires in a couple of years. Like most left thinkers they don't have an actual plan to make this work. They would no doubt want to spend billions of tax dollars to figure out a way to cost us an outrageous amount of money.

Here's a story from a left leaning site that gives you some background on the idea of controlling guns by controlling ammo.

 

[wojownik]

Some of this is small arms caliber, other is heavier weaponry, or AP ("not suitable" for civilian use). Some may be of uncertain condition, and deemed better to be destroyed. Some may be cheaper to destroy than to ship back (simply cheaper to destroy gear overseas than incur the costs of return shipment. As the report notes, the military has some abysmal inventory and control systems over ammo (no surprise there, been known for years/decades). Sloppy controls leading to many, many millions of wasted taxpayer dollars.

Still, it would be nice to think that they could farm some of this back to CMP. But, even if the political winds from the "18 acre"s didn't knock that idea down, they'd claim it would be too expensive to actually properly inventory these munitions.

p.s. - perhaps the OP could change the title of this thread to be more specific like "Pentagon Planning to Destroy $1Bn in Ammo."

 

[BullfrogKen]

Done.



I've been reading through the GAO's actual report today, not just what USA Today's reporter wrote about it.


Let's just say that the munitions described in the newspaper - really hinted around at more than anything else - aren't the kinds of munitions the GAO spoke a whole lot of in the report. And they're not the kind of munitions of much use to the CMP or the civilian sector, either.


Still reading through the report, but so far it seems USA Today:

• Spoke with a Democrat Senator (Tom Carper, DE);
• who isn't on the Senate Armed Services Committee;
• who DOES serve as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and has the authority to investigate gov't waste, fraud & abuse - but again doesn't serve on the Armed Services Committee. In any capacity.
• USA Today spun it a bit.

And sprinkle some sugar on it . . . Voilà! You have all you need to make the masses angry.


I'll get through the report and see what GAO really found.

 

[Hillbillyz]

Remember this is the government, much of that ammo could be left over from the world wars and Korea.

 

[Ky Larry]

Most people have no idea of the amount of waste and corruption that goes on daily in the military. If we have extra ammo, why not give the troops some extra range time?

 

[BullfrogKen]

Here's the GOA report, for anyone interested in actually reading it.


DEFENSE LOGISTICS - Actions Needed to Improve Department-Wide Management of Conventional Ammunition Inventory

False statement:

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.

Here's where that $1 billion dollar figure came from:

The purpose of the conference is to identify ammunition that is excess to one service’s needs (i.e., stock identified for potential reutilization or disposal) and can be transferred to another service that has identified a requirement for that same item. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency screens any inventory that is not redistributed at this annual meeting for suitability for foreign military sales. According to a 2010 Army Audit Agency report, the Army had significantly underestimated the funding requirements needed to perform its conventional ammunition demilitarization mission and, as a result, the stockpile has grown to over 557,000 tons, representing a $1 billion liability.​

Translation -

The Army, Air Force, Navy & Marines (i.e. "the Services") have an annual meeting to see who has extra munitions. Extra meaning, once my:

• training and reserves requirement;
• my war time/contingency requirement;
• my "economical needs requirement" (i.e. I don't need it now, but the cost of properly disposing of it added to the cost of contracting to get it when I know I'll need some again 7 years from now costs more than just finding/building a safe place to store it);

are all met, you sailor boys can have my army dog-owned stuff.

If no one else needs it, its gets considered for sale to foreign, friendly govt's (why DSCA attends).

The stuff not suitable for foreign govt's - usually because its obsolete - gets de-milled and sold as scrap.

Due to a wide variety of factors (described in the report), the Army didn't fund its de-mil program adequately and has a 557,000 ton backlog of stuff to destroy. And the cost they now estimate it'll take to destroy it all is $1 billion. It's not $1 billion worth of useable stuff.

And it's not a big pile small arms ammo DoD just bought 4 years ago. Some of it could be land mines (which for political reasons we not only refuse to use, we won't even offer for sale); missiles for old weapons systems; components for navy guns that no one uses anymore; etc.


Here's what DoD did manage to "recycle among itself" in FY12:

DOD guidance indicates that this redistribution process should serve to offset individual procurements by the services and enable disposal of only those assets that are excess to all DOD requirements. For example, the Executive Director for Conventional Ammunition reported that DOD avoids an average of $70 million annually in procurement costs by using the redistribution process regarding each service’s excess inventory. During the fiscal year 2012 redistribution process, DOD transferred approximately 44 million items, of which approximately 32 million were small-caliber items such as ammunition for machine guns or pistols, 11 million were demolition materials such as detonation cords, fuses and pyrotechnic initiators, 1 million were ground defense items such as grenades used for riot control, and the remaining 2 million were a mixture of other various types of ammunition.​

One problem the GAO identified was the Army not showing its hand at these joint Services meetings when it comes to missiles. The Air Force, Navy & Marines were reporting their missile inventories to each other, while the Army wasn't reporting its inventory at all. When the Army had excess it held onto it and wouldn't share, so the other services had to go procure some.

So unless you have a use for Stinger, Javelin, and Hellfire missiles, beyond the standard taxpayer outrage, none of this waste of taxpayer dollars is affecting your ammo stockpile.


An additional area of waste centered around the eight Army Depots that have the ability (and designated mission) to stockpile joint munitions. The Army bought a new computer-based enterprise resource planning system to better manage munitions.

Unfortunately it suffered from bad data in-bad data out syndrome. Additionally, the storage space at the eight depots is not being calculated properly, so munitions will arrive for storage and there's no room for it. So it either gets shipped to another depot that has enough of the proper storage space, or the local depot spends time trying to make room.

Again, it's a waste of taxpayer money, but it's not the reason why you can't find ammo on the shelf at Wal-Mart. It's your "garden-variety Pentagon kind of waste," if you will.



Anyway, all that stuff was in the GAO report. Unclassified. All a reporter has to do is read it. Hard work, I know.

I've got nothing kind to say about Senator Carper, so I'll bite my tongue there.

 

[Hardtarget]

I started to speak my mind on this...but...you guys have already said everything I've been thinking (and more!).

It could only be a million rounds of 5.56. Doesn't matter. I hate to see it wasted.

Mark

! don't get me wrong...a million rounds is a lot of ammo! "only' was a poor word choice.

 

[ohioshooter]

Anything the military stockpiles has a "due date" on it regardless if one knows better or not. Everything that gets shipped/ordered for military purposes is that way. Even stuff like band-aids, gauze packs etc. Ammo falls in that same category. You either use it or lose it.

 

[Paul7]

I've heard the military is still using .50 cal. ammo from WWII, is this not correct?

 

[bullzeye8]

Why not use the ammo for extra training for troops?

 

[deadasslast2004]

Just an OBAMAnation ain't it?

 

[BullfrogKen]

The stuff being disposed of is largely not suitable for use.

Not sure how many times I have to say this before some people stop placing faith in infowars-type handwringing.


The stuff being disposed of by demil & destruction is largely not suitable for use.


If it were happening, the GAO would have said so in it's audit report to Congress.


And it didn't. No matter, it probably makes people feel better to believe in the lies and mistruths of a Vietnam-era peacenick Democrat and the USA Today than to hear the truth. Oh well.



Paul, I have trained with .50 cal that dated back to the 70's when I was in the Fleet. And when we got to Okinawa, the 50 cals we pulled from the armory at Schwab to assign out had one serial that dated to the late 40's. But my unit never saw nor used 50 BMG ammo dating that far back.

We had a huge amount of old & obsolete weaponry in the armory at my first duty station in Cuba. M16A1's, Vietnam-era M-60s, M79s, 1911s, a Thompson, even a trenchgun from WWI. And we had lots of old ammo in the magazines from earlier buildups that just wasn't economical to ship off of Gitmo to put back into circulation.

So we shot it.

We shot a LOT.

And we blew up a LOT of stuff.

I never had more opportunities put before me to go hog-wild with ammo, and munitions, and explosives, and artillery than when I was in Cuba. It was an infantryman's dream. I set off live claymores. We built dozens of shaped charges and tested it out on old cars. We spent a whole day making barbed wire fences reinforced with concertina, then used bangalores to blow it up after dinner and witnessed how well that stuff works. I spent a weekend learning how to sight, load, and fire the old, obsolete 155s. Both indirect and direct fire.

As an 18 year old grunt, we did things as an entire unit few grunts ever got to do.


So bullzeye, this stuff does get used. No one in the federal government is de-milling and scrapping perfectly good ammunition.

 

[Bill_Shelton]

And it didn't. No matter, it probably makes people feel better to believe in the lies and mistruths of a Vietnam-era peacenick Democrat and the USA Today than to hear the truth. Oh well.

You mean like Senator Tom carper who actually fought in Vietnam?

 

[BullfrogKen]

Bill, lots of anti-war politicians fought in Vietnam. Ever hear of this guy named John Kerry?


Yes, I mean that Senator Tom Carper. Before he entered Naval Service through the ROTC program, he worked on the presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy. It's no secret Gene McCarthy ran against Lyndon Johnson on the anti-Vietnam war Dump Johnson movement. And that movement was very much full of peacenicks hippies who "got clean for Gene" to help him in his primary challenge to a sitting President.


Anyway, separate topic for a thread really not suitable for THR. If you don't think the Senator is a peacenick, ok. I look at the totality of what he has done with his life and the powerful position he holds now, and I do. We can hold different opinions on the man, it's ok.


But there's no disputing he totally mis-represented to the public the report the GAO gave him, at his request.

 

[MarkDido]

Since the government already bought it once, how about issuing it to the "alphabet agencies" for training purposes instead of buying 10 billion more rounds.

 

[MarkDido]

Not sure how many times I have to say this before some people stop placing faith in infowars-type handwringing.

See post #9, line 2.