A billion here, a billion there, eventually you're talking real money

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Ouze**

Report: Pentagon to destroy $1B in ammunition
By Tom Vanden Brook

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 impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction — valued at $1.2 billion by the Pentagon — remains viable because the Defense Department's inventory systems can't share data effectively, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by USA TODAY.

The result: potential waste of unknown value.

"There is a huge opportunity to save millions, if not billions of dollars if the (Pentagon) can make some common-sense improvements to how it manages ammunition," said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "Despite years of effort, the Army, Navy and Air Force still don't have an efficient process for doing something as basic as sharing excess bullets. This Government Accountability Office (GAO) report clearly shows that our military's antiquated systems lead to millions of dollars in wasteful ammunition purchases."

The Army and Pentagon, in a statement, acknowledged "the need to automate the process" and will make it a priority in future budgets. In all, the Pentagon manages a stockpile of conventional ammunition worth $70 billion.

The effect of inaccurate accounting of ammunition for troops at war was outside the scope of the study. However, there were limited supplies at times of .50-caliber machine gun and 9mm handgun ammunition at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a senior military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the issue.

"We simply cannot afford this type of waste and ineffectiveness," Carper said. "The (Pentagon) has a responsibility to efficiently manage its ammunition stocks, not only because it is important to be fiscally responsible, but also because our antiquated ammunition inventory systems can shortchange our war fighters and compromise their ability to complete their mission."

Other key findings from the report:

• The services have inventory systems for ammunition that cannot share data directly despite working for decades to develop a single database. Only the Army uses the standard Pentagon format; "the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps operate with formats that are obsolete."

• The services hold an annual conference to share information about surplus ammunition and swap bullets and other munitions as needed. Data about ammunition left over after the meeting disappears from the books, resulting in an unknown amount of good bullets headed to the scrap heap.

• The Army, although required by regulation, had not reported annually on its missile stockpile until last month, shortly before the GAO study was to be released.

The report illustrates the obsolete nature of the Pentagon's inventory systems for ammunition. A request for ammunition from the Marine Corps, for example, is e-mailed to the Army. The e-mail is printed out and manually retyped into the Army system because the services cannot share data directly. Not only is this time consuming, but it can introduce errors — by an incorrect keystroke, for example.

Waste, buying new ammunition while usable stockpiles exist, can occur "because the Army does not report information on all available and usable items," the report states. The annual conference among the services — although it saves about $70 million per year, according to the Pentagon — is inadequate. The services, in fiscal year 2012, exchanged 44 million items, including 32 million bullets for machine guns and pistols.

"Specifically, the Army's report does not include information from prior years about usable ammunition that was unclaimed by another service and stored for potential foreign military sales or slated for potential disposal," the report says.

Missiles are another source for concern, the report notes. The Army has an inventory of missiles, including Stingers, Javelins and Hellfires, that has totaled more than $14 billion in recent years. Hellfire missiles have been a weapon of choice for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the CIA-run Predator and Reaper drone missions to kill terrorists in places like Yemen.

The GAO found that the Army and its missile command "do not contribute to required annual report." The reason, Army officials told investigators, is that it "rarely has items to offer for redistribution."

Without its cooperation, the Army "risks others services spending additional funds to procure missiles that are already unused and usable in the Army's stockpile."

The Army, in a statement, said that it began offering that information to the other services last month.

In its recommendations, the GAO urged Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to require the Army to make known information on all available for use by all services.

source

**d-usa**

But if they share bullets then they get less money in their budgets for buying their own!

**timetowaste85**

If only the bullets had guns to protect themselves!!

**easysauce**

I will buy them all for 50$, there you go, net surplus, im sure someone would even get a medal for turning a profit.

timetowaste85 wrote:
If only the bullets had guns to protect themselves!!

so, useless forum spamming tropes? stay classy.

**Jihadin**

Range time....lots and lots of range time..

**Seaward**

d-usa wrote:
But if they share bullets then they get less money in their budgets for buying their own!

That's more likely than not what it comes down to.

Also, this sounds like it's the Army's fault, as most things are.

**daedalus**

easysauce wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
If only the bullets had guns to protect themselves!!

so, useless forum spamming tropes? stay classy.

I thought it was actually pretty decent, compared with what normally passes for humor around here.

**Mr. Burning**

daedalus wrote:
easysauce wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
If only the bullets had guns to protect themselves!!

so, useless forum spamming tropes? stay classy.

I thought it was actually pretty decent, compared with what normally passes for humor around here.

Sigh,

If only the trope had a gun.....

Can the pentagon not strap all the excess stingers together and make a super stinger? or a multi stage stinger?

Or give the excess to the ATF so they can arm south american criminals?

**LordofHats**

Also, this sounds like it's the Army's fault, as most things are.

It sounds like the Army is taking heat for a military wide database problem to me

**daedalus**

Honestly, I think recouping the money by selling it back to the public would be good for government image. It would help reduce the "they're taking all the bullets" image that some people have. Also, I want a stinger missile for the 4th of July. It'd be pretty patriotic to shoot one of those off.

**kronk**

Celebrate the birth of your country by blowing up a small part of it!

**streamdragon**

LordofHats wrote:
Also, this sounds like it's the Army's fault, as most things are.

It sounds like the Army is taking heat for a military wide database problem to me

Especially when you note that only the Army is using the Pentagon standard; Air Force/Navy/Marine Corp are using obsolete systems.

I will say that this is something that bugs me about the federal government in general. Because each Department is allowed to operate independantly (and even Offices within a Department), you end up with ridiculous duplication of efforts, software, hardware and an almost complete lack of standards.

Take litigation. The FTC, SEC and various offices of DoJ all tend to work on the same cases. I have worked in 2 of those 3 agencies, and worked on the same case in each. Yet despite this, each department has its own database software, litigation CID (subpoenas, basically), and essentially triplicates some work. Now, I understand that each agency comes at the same case from different angles, but you would think that since each is doing the same basic thing (litigation) that the software supporting these efforts would be at least the same. And yet, each agnecy uses completely different software, with completely different requirements, and requests completely different formats.

I get that trying to unite all the Departments of the Federal Government would be completely unwieldly and unworkable; there are simply too many different agency foci to really have a single solution. But you would think the Agencies doing similar work would at least talk to each other better.

**Co'tor Shas**

daedalus wrote:
Honestly, I think recouping the money by selling it back to the public would be good for government image. It would help reduce the "they're taking all the bullets" image that some people have. Also, I want a stinger missile for the 4th of July. It'd be pretty patriotic to shoot one of those off.

That sounds like fun

.

Didn't someone try to sell a surface-to-air missile on e-bay a few years ago?

**Ratius**

Ship a few to the Ukranians, they might well need them soon.....

**ironicsilence**

Allow me to put on my gun crazed right wing tin foil hat on for a second and point out this this is just "obama" trying to enforce more gun control...the pentagon destroys all the bullets which means they need more...so they order more, which takes them out of the market, which means that me as a red blooded 2nd amendment loving american can own all the guns I want, I just cant find any bullets to buy

*Please note this was intended as humor, dont bother pointing out that Obama doesnt have the power to tell the DoD to destroy all its ammo

**d-usa**

How long have they had these bullets?

If they sold them at today's prices they would probably get a better return than my retirement fund...

**Easy E**

We have excess bullets because we have to pay Politicians home districts to make more bullets for us.

**LordofHats**

Easy E wrote:
We have excess bullets because we have to pay Politicians home districts to make more bullets for us.

The same politicians who are now complaining about the military wasting tax dollars destroying bullets they didn't want in the first place but were forced on them by politicians wasting tax dollars on bullets the military didn't want?

Ahhhhh. Murica.

**daedalus**

LordofHats wrote:
Easy E wrote:
We have excess bullets because we have to pay Politicians home districts to make more bullets for us.

The same politicians who are now complaining about the military wasting tax dollars destroying bullets they didn't want in the first place but were forced on them by politicians wasting tax dollars on bullets the military didn't want?

Ahhhhh. Murica.

Poor politicians, never getting what they really want.

**Seaward**

Easy E wrote:
We have excess bullets because we have to pay Politicians home districts to make more bullets for us.

Sort of like how a lot of people who should know better are drafting legislation making it illegal to retire the A-10, simply because their states stand to lose economically despite the fact that it would have huge savings.

**Co'tor Shas**

Remember those guys who kept making the DoD by tanks they didn't need of want because they were made in their district? And those were some of the guys going on about fiscal responsibility.

**CptJake**

Just a couple notes, some of this, as mentioned, is missiles and rockets. They have a shelf life, require maintenance, and basically cost money to store. I read about this earlier (don't have the source handy) but some of the ones being destroyed are for weapon systems no longer in the inventory. Paying to store them forever spreads the cost over multiple years where as destroying them looks bad because of the big one time cost, so the incentive has been to store them even though the total cost is higher than a single time destruction.

Even for small arms ammo. We've updated 5.56 several times in the past couple of decades. Older bullets don't have the same ballistic characteristics of the newer rounds, which affects how good your battlefield zero is. Those old rounds won't be fired, paying to store them makes no sense. Transport and admin costs to sell them may actually be more that destruction costs. As sad as it is, it may very well be the fiscally responsible thing to destroy them.

For fun, look up some of the 'destroy in place' going on as we us-ass Afghanistan. Again, some things are just too expensive to transport and refit, and don't have a place in the shrinking military so would sit in excess yards incurring some level of storage and maintenance costs.

War is inherently a wasteful and costly thing...

**streamdragon**

Seaward wrote:
Easy E wrote:
We have excess bullets because we have to pay Politicians home districts to make more bullets for us.

Sort of like how a lot of people who should know better are drafting legislation making it illegal to retire the A-10, simply because their states stand to lose economically despite the fact that it would have huge savings.

We would save more by tanking the F-35 project, which is untested and unwanted by pretty much every military brance except the Air Force.

Unlike the A-10, which branches are fighting over to prevent its retirement.

**whembly**

streamdragon wrote:
Seaward wrote:
Easy E wrote:
We have excess bullets because we have to pay Politicians home districts to make more bullets for us.

Sort of like how a lot of people who should know better are drafting legislation making it illegal to retire the A-10, simply because their states stand to lose economically despite the fact that it would have huge savings.

We would save more by tanking the F-35 project, which is untested and unwanted by pretty much every military brance except the Air Force.

Unlike the A-10, which branches are fighting over to prevent its retirement.

The new bleeding edge tech going to the F-35 is the point... not necessarily the plane itself.

It's one of the avenues we use to push these technological advances.

**streamdragon**

whembly wrote:
streamdragon wrote:
Seaward wrote:
Easy E wrote:
We have excess bullets because we have to pay Politicians home districts to make more bullets for us.

Sort of like how a lot of people who should know better are drafting legislation making it illegal to retire the A-10, simply because their states stand to lose economically despite the fact that it would have huge savings.

We would save more by tanking the F-35 project, which is untested and unwanted by pretty much every military brance except the Air Force.

Unlike the A-10, which branches are fighting over to prevent its retirement.

The new bleeding edge tech going to the F-35 is the point... not necessarily the plane itself.

It's one of the avenues we use to push these technological advances.

Bleeding edge tech that doesn't work, on a project that is both over budget and past due. Scrap it.

The A-10 is old tech, sure, but as recent actions throughout the middle east have shown, it's reliable and does what actually needs to be done. IIRC (someone in the service can correct me here), it's also the only current close support platform we have going. The F-35 can't do that job, even with it's fancy tech. Have we even been using fighter jets in either of those conflicts? Honest question, I don't know.

**CptJake**

The A-10 is not the only current close support platform. F-16 fly CAS, F-18s fly CAS, AC-130 flies CAS, apaches and kiowas fly CAS, and we've seen drones used for CAS as well. Hell, with the advent of GPS guided munitions we used B1s and B52s for CAS.

**KingCracker**

I can't find .22lr bullets to save myself, but they can throw millions of dollars worth in the trash....... life is not fair

**Jihadin**

Little Yellow Bird....

There's a Government own Munition plant in GA for 5.56mm and 7.64mm

The "influx" of small arms are from Iraq. Stored in Kuwait and sent back by the "Bullet Boat" to port in SC. Now as we un-ass Afghanistan room has to be made in Kuwait to receive that ammo.

Wait.....that's all in my dream.....I've no idea

**Platuan4th**

KingCracker wrote:
I can't find .22lr bullets to save myself

Seriously? May explain why my father shipped me 1200 of the things last year.

**Smacks**

daedalus wrote:
Honestly, I think recouping the money by selling it back to the public would be good for government image.

Didn't the public already buy the ammunition in the first place with their tax money? Now they're supposed to buy it again? That doesn't sound like a pyramid scheme...

What is most disgusting about this is that they'll sell some poor woman's house over $6, and then waste $1.2 billion and just be like: "Oops!". And that's money that they know about... I was reading an article recently that the pentagon has something like 2.3 trillion dollars that's just unaccounted for. That's like $8000 for every man woman and child in the country. Imagine how much of that money belonged to people posting in this topic alone? It's staggering.