Pentagon to Destroy $1.2 Billion in Surplus Ammo

[maverick5582]

http://wnwpressrelease.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/2458/

[maverick5582]

"The result of this destruction of ammunition not only signifies the presence of an absurd, redundant bureaucracy, but might also signify a concerted effort by the government to drive up the price of ammunition by making it scarcer.

Just days ago, the U.S. Postal Service announced that they are looking for distributors to sell them assorted small arms ammunition. Last year, the Social Security Administration purchased 174,000 rounds of .357 jacketed hollow-point bullets. The Department of Agriculture requested 320,000 rounds and recently, the Department of Homeland Security requested 450 million rounds and the FBI requested 100 million rounds.

Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration got in on the action and requested 46,000 rounds. Why a weather service needs ammunition remains unclear.

Whether intentional or not, the byproduct of these ammo purchases means less ammunition on the shelves of stores, less ammunition in the hands of civilians and higher costs for those lucky enough to find ammunition.

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz , recently noted that the DHS is purchasing enough ammunition to allow for each person to use roughly 1,000 more rounds of ammo per person than the U.S. Army. “It is entirely … inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition,” said Chaffetz."By Greg Campbell

[Slappy]

I did not know the NOAA people (fish counters) needed ammo to ride on boats and counts fish!? The ones that do not ride on boats sit in offices, so I guess they need many many rounds to do that also? BANG BANG!!

[Slappy]

One of the last articles I read was the government stated they needed all these rounds (billions) because personnel need to have plenty to go to the range often to practice. It looks like they already had plenty and they did not need all these rounds to practice after all. Another fine example of the waste the government does with others money! What a joke! BANG BANG!!

[stanc]

Not all of the ammunition will simply be destroyed. Army officers say that a portion of the ammo slated for the scrap heap will end up on the range during “mad minute” exercises. These training sessions involve a short period of intense weapons fire, which officers say provide valuable experience for soldiers...

[Michael]

Yeah...we have another name for a 'mad minute ex'....it's called a 'Dump Ex'.

Waste. Fraud. Abuse.

[superfred]

I consider this hearsay, but I heard from somewhere that Clinton passed something back then that banned the government from selling surplus ammo on the civilian market.

Added with his edict to ban guns from military facilities, it's no surprise that gun culture among youth is nowhere the same as generations ago. There was a time when good marksmanship was considered a badge of pride.

[nincomp]

edited to add: After I had written this post, I happened to stumble across this Stars and Stripes article that provides a little more context:
http://www.stripes.com/news/us/audit-us-...t-1.282044

It will be interesting to see what actually will get destroyed. Lord knows that somewhere there is WWI ammo and large amounts of old landmines. I would like to see how they came up with the $1.2 billion number, since no one really knows. Although most of the news articles that I have seen say "ammunition," what they describe is ordnance, pretty much anything that goes BOOM! I wonder if the WWII tank ammo is priced at the current replacement value, which is a little bit silly, since we won't replace it. The same goes for old stingers and other obsolete missiles. I wonder how many bombs they will find. I, for one, would not like to be the guy to go into the depths of old warehouses to move some of this old stuff.

As for training, a lot of veterans have complained that they did not get sufficient range time because they were not allocated enough ammo. I think that mad-minute comments made by "Army officers" is largely BS. There is no way in hell that they would say "Thank goodness, now we can give our soldiers the amount of range time that they should have had in the first place. Too bad about those poor bastards who are already deployed."

Oh, and Stan, my Dad witnessed a mad-minute (at night) when he was in the Army. He said that actually seeing the overlapping zones of MG fire gave him more confidence about going into battle. On the other hand, this was during the Korean War, where massed attacks happened often. He said that the din from all of the weapons firing at once also helped prepare him for battle. Then again, he mostly enjoyed the spectacle of the thing, so he may just have been rationalizing.

Do any of you know if ammo like artillery shells degrade relatively quickly? Would the problems be due to the fuzing mechanism, the HE (does it age like TNT), or something else? What types of ordnance degrade most rapidly?

In addition, I have read that the long-term storage of small arms ammo needs to be in a dry, cool place. Just what storage conditions would it take to make it unreliable (hang fires, squibs, etc)?

[bwaites]

Well, small arms ammo has got to age a long time before it becomes unstable! I've shot surplus 30-06 headstamped 39, and surplus BMG50 stamped 1944, and never had a single misfire, hangfire, or dud.

[stanc]

...the mad minutes ensured that not a single bullet was left over. If too many units had surplus ammunition at the end of the year, the officers said, their brigade or division could be issued fewer bullets the following year.

One former officer remembers two cardinal rules of the range: Plan enough live-fire exercises to shoot every bullet provided for in a fiscal year. Two, when large sums of ammunition are delivered to the range, nothing should be turned back in lest you be accused of poor planning.

http://www.stripes.com/news/army/officer...e-1.281352

And there you have the real reason for mad minutes.

[nincomp]

And there you have the real reason for mad minutes.

Plus, it is really, really cool!

This begs the question, though. If the mad-minutes assured that all of the ammo was used up, where did all of the excess come from?

[nincomp]

I did not know the NOAA people (fish counters) needed ammo to ride on boats and counts fish!? The ones that do not ride on boats sit in offices, so I guess they need many many rounds to do that also? BANG BANG!!

Slappy, I get suspicious when I read something that sounds terrible but vague (especially from a politician). I get even more suspicious when that info seems calculated to get some important demographic all riled up. Chances are that the information is incomplete or flat wrong.

This is what I have recently learned about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
NOAA is not just a "weather service" and more complicated than I thought. It has special agents and enforcement officers who carry firearms. They are considered federal law enforcement officers. NOAA is also tasked to enforce the US fishing laws (among other things) from 3 to 200 miles off the US coast. This is for both domestic and foreign vessels. I suspect that they also run into the occasional drug smuggler who is generally not happy to see them. There are also roughly 300 NOAA Corps Officers who have been trained at the Coast Guard Training facility.

NOAA can be "militarized" by the President, Secretary of State, etc during war or national crisis. After 9/11, their responsibilities increased dramatically. In damn near any emergency (terrorist attacks as well as other man made or natural disaster), the Department of Homeland Security can use NOAA personnel as they wish. The weather and ocean monitoring facilities, satellite communication, air sampling and other equipment are now considered "assets of importance" to the country. NOAA personnel are supposed to defend these against attack. They are also supposed to protect their ships, boats and aircraft.

After Huricanne Katrina, NOAA was given more responsibilities including to "supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States."

I don't know how many of their people must stay proficient with firearms, but it is more than most think. Hell, I worked as an intern/computer programmer at one facility back in the late 70's and early 80's and had no idea about all of this stuff.

source: http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/am...ndbook.pdf

[Klem]

And there you have the real reason for mad minutes.

The 'Mad Minute' pre-dates WWI and is an old British term for practicing volume fire using the SMLE and Lee Metford bolt action .303 rifles. Whether it be hoards of Zulu warriors or Germans with bayonets fixed. The standard was 15 shots into a specified 300yd target in 60secs. The fastest was 38 shots in a minute.

The technique developed for speed was to use the middle finger for the trigger and the thumb and forefinger to operate the bolt. Left handers needed to change over to RH.

Germans in WW1 sometimes reported coming under attack from machine guns when there were only riflemen.

[stanc]

The 'Mad Minute' pre-dates WWI...

Yeah, but I think the mad minute reached its zenith in the Vietnam War. My buddy was a tank crewman in that conflict, and told me that ammo kept getting supplied to their firebase at regular intervals, whether or not they actually needed more ammo. In part to prevent the ammo dump from getting to full and becoming a lucrative target for enemy sappers, the unit had frequent mad minutes to shoot up 7.62mm and .50 caliber machine gun ammo, and 90mm main gun rounds. They burned up beau coup "fifty" barrels during these blasting sessions, because of the oversize ammo cans they installed atop the turret. But, his favorite activity was to see how many 90mm rounds his tank could put downrange in 60 seconds. IIRC, his personal best was 17.

[cory]

Slappy, I get suspicious when I read something that sounds terrible but vague (especially from a politician). I get even more suspicious when that info seems calculated to get some important demographic all riled up. Chances are that the information is incomplete or flat wrong.

This is what I have recently learned about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
NOAA is not just a "weather service" and more complicated than I thought. It has special agents and enforcement officers who carry firearms. They are considered federal law enforcement officers. NOAA is also tasked to enforce the US fishing laws (among other things) from 3 to 200 miles off the US coast. This is for both domestic and foreign vessels. I suspect that they also run into the occasional drug smuggler who is generally not happy to see them. There are also roughly 300 NOAA Corps Officers who have been trained at the Coast Guard Training facility.

NOAA can be "militarized" by the President, Secretary of State, etc during war or national crisis. After 9/11, their responsibilities increased dramatically. In damn near any emergency (terrorist attacks as well as other man made or natural disaster), the Department of Homeland Security can use NOAA personnel as they wish. The weather and ocean monitoring facilities, satellite communication, air sampling and other equipment are now considered "assets of importance" to the country. NOAA personnel are supposed to defend these against attack. They are also supposed to protect their ships, boats and aircraft.

After Huricanne Katrina, NOAA was given more responsibilities including to "supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States."

I don't know how many of their people must stay proficient with firearms, but it is more than most think. Hell, I worked as an intern/computer programmer at one facility back in the late 70's and early 80's and had no idea about all of this stuff.

source: http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/am...ndbook.pdf

Why does the NOAA need to be enforcing any laws!!! Let the coast guards enforce all laws off of our coast. Far to many bureaucracies have been given the power to enforce some law as they see fit.

[rebelsoul]

When I ran the range tower I always had a suppressive fire exercise. I was ordered to expend all ammo, so I at least my troops got some useful training out of it. The extra ammo was issued incase we had some bolos. We were a signal unit so we rarely had any trigger time. I would run the targets wide open and berate any firing position that didn't keep them pinned down. In our AAR, the lessons about controling your fire and not burning through a mag to quickly were always highlighted; its hard to keep the dummies down during a mag change. The veiw from the tower was "AWESOME".

[Klem]

Yeah, but I think the mad minute reached its zenith in the Vietnam War. My buddy was a tank crewman in that conflict, and told me that ammo kept getting supplied to their firebase at regular intervals, whether or not they actually needed more ammo. In part to prevent the ammo dump from getting to full and becoming a lucrative target for enemy sappers, the unit had frequent mad minutes to shoot up 7.62mm and .50 caliber machine gun ammo, and 90mm main gun rounds. They burned up beau coup "fifty" barrels during these blasting sessions, because of the oversize ammo cans they installed atop the turret. But, his favorite activity was to see how many 90mm rounds his tank could put downrange in 60 seconds. IIRC, his personal best was 17.

"Yeah, but..." If you say so. I guess it's not really relevant until it involves the USA, much later in history.

[Slappy]

I have 30+ years out in the Gulf and other waters and have yet to see a NOAA vessel do anything other than research and catch fish. Just got back from Venice fishing and there was a NOAA girl there getting samples and she did not have a gun nor need one for that fact. All patrols I have seen and any boardings of any vessels in the gulf or any others waters have been by the CG. I suppose I could be called into action being I used to be a Licensed Merchant Marine Officer, but I doubt that would ever happen, to old and would not be worth much. Calling NOAA out to do anything other than make laws for fishing and counting fish is all I ever see them doing or being used for and they can not even get that right.
The last report I read was the government had ordered billions of rounds using the excuse they get it cheaper and they have so many personnel that need range time. Why would the IRS need hundreds of thousands of rounds in 9MM and 357?? They do not have that many people anymore and state they have been cutting back on personnel!?? BANG BANG!!

It is a big BMW Big Money Waste!!

[Slappy]

PS: My mother in law use to work for NOAA, now get this?? Guess what her job was<<<<??? her job was cooking,,, coming up with different ways to cook shrimp I kid you not, she didn't even have a side arm nor a rifle doing that dangerous job, imagine that?? BAMG BAMG!!

[stanc]

"Yeah, but..." If you say so. I guess it's not really relevant until it involves the USA, much later in history.

A little touchy, are we?

I didn't say how the "mad minute" began was at all irrelevant or unimportant. I was merely noting that, while the British created it, the Americans took it to the extreme.

Surely you don't think that an infantry company shooting .303-caliber bolt-action rifles can put on a firepower display that even begins to compare to that of a tank company firing .50-caliber heavy machine guns and 90mm cannons. Especially when Vietnam mad minutes were usually conducted during hours of darkness, making for a spectacular fireworks show.

The video below isn't Vietnam, but it gives a rough idea of what I'm talking about:

[video=youtube;31vm3-BQRJU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31vm3-BQRJU[/video]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31vm3-BQRJU