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.
I’m sure some of this stuff is NFA type military ordinance, but when it comes to small-arms ammo I imagine the Pentagon could make far more money selling it by weight to ammo dealers for the civilian market.
In the current ammo drought we’re having right now, I’d be perfectly willing to buy buy a sack of 5, 10, or 20lbs of 7.62×51 NATO ammo without knowing what ball weight was used or even an exact round count. Also given that scrappers will be just after the various metals, they’d still need to dispose of the primers and powder, and separate the lead, steel, copper and brass individually, which can’t be an inexpensive process.
Something about this just doesn’t smell right.
“American Mercenary” has a post about this. It sounds like a reasonable explanation, having much more to do with missiles, artillery rounds, and the like than with small-arms cartridges.
Makes a lot more sense, given that a lot of those ordinance have a fairly short shelf-life and if they don’t know how old they are, better to scrap them.
Let’s see…DHS buys up all the ammo in the world, and the military is destroying all they have.
Methinks the balance of power may be shifting…in a bad way.
Realize that since 68 we haven’t been able to import NFA-type (DD) ammo – or brass or projectiles. There is plenty of pent up demand for it.