Rhino
03-09-2001, 04:54 AM
tacitus c
Forum Host
posts: 821
(2/7/01 4:49:56 pm)
| Del All Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I remember Clinton and Gore bragging how they reduced waste in the government. This must be the waste they were talking about.
Full Story >www.washtimes.com/nationa...224141.htm
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.S. Army is running out of bullets.
A memo sent this week by Fort Hood, Texas, the Army installation with the largest population, says soldiers are suffering a worldwide shortage of 9 mm ammunition.
Army sources said the bullet shortages are another bad sign for a branch that was stretched thin this decade on global peacekeeping missions.
"This is indicative of a lot of other problems," said an Army source who asked not to be named. "We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years. What does this tell you? We don't have enough ammo to shoot. They keep demanding we do more with less. The situation is not healthy."
Maj. Tom Artis, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the shortage stems from budget shortfalls as opposed to production problems.
He said decisions on whether to cancel Beretta firings are up to each base. He said the Army is fixing the shortage by reprogramming budget dollars into ammunition accounts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No man can establish himself by wickedness,but good men have roots that cannot be dislodged" Proverbs 11:3
The Sonarman
Forum Host
posts: 170
(2/7/01 5:48:42 pm)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luckily (for now).... worse comes to worse, the military can purchase ammo on the open market (ie. Walmart, etc.).
Unless the liberal do-gooders ban that, too.
Aut vincere aut mori
EagleTed
Forum Host
posts: 76
(2/7/01 7:10:15 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Marines are practicing assaults on
beaches while yelling "Bang, Bang"
because there isn't enough money in
the budget for blanks.
Someone had better correct this crap
and fast.
Life, Liberty, Property
Rhino
Forum Host
posts: 248
(2/7/01 7:13:27 pm)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They better not say "bang, bang" with a chicken finger, or they'll be in big trouble!!!!
-----------------------------------------------------------
"We have every right to dream heroic dreams." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.siscom.net/~simdad
Jack Rail
Gold Star Member
posts: 33
(2/7/01 8:04:00 pm)
| Del Army bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey, who needs bullets? Do like the guy in Aliens and use harsh language.
Until the enemy counters by suing the US Army for sexism, hate speech and a hostile work environment.
Politically correct, bulletless war.
BEST45CAL
Forum Host
posts: 135
(2/8/01 12:06:40 am)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, Wal-Mart sells 9mm bullets for about 11 cents a piece. It would probably be a hell of a lot cheaper for the Marines to buy them off-base.
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."
absinthe
Gold Star Member
posts: 81
(2/10/01 2:15:09 am)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
walmart sells cheap rounds for less...but they're just that...cheap. The corosive quality of those 'American Eagle' and other crap ammo is worse than using sh!tty berdan primed norinco. Incedently, just look in a shotgun news to find ammo for a lot cheaper than walmart can afford.
The ammo defecit was taken out of context. The lack of ammo is a refrence to the depots' inventory. Clinton had a hand in stopping the stockpiling. Its not that we're lacking in accessable rounds...it's more like we're missing the large reserves we once enjoyed.
RKfalken
Gold Star Member
posts: 77
(2/10/01 1:05:33 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
this story also ran on www.fark.com (http://www.fark.com) and it recieved at least one interesting comment.
""Congressional sources said yesterday the Army shortages of such a basic combat tool as bullets is evidence that Congress needs to pass a defense bill this spring to supplement the current Pentagon budget."
This is a bunch of scare tactic bullshit by the "Army of One". I'm in the Army and I can tell you that we waste a shitload of ammunition and training materials. Besides, the 9mm ammo isn't necessary to keep the fighting force moving. And you can tell the article was stretching to say that it may affect our military's ability to fight because there "might" be a shortage of M16 5.56MM "somewhere" in the world. How ****ing vague can you get? The Army wants more money to waste more money and now that they've got a Republican in the White House who's daddy started the Persion Gulf conflict to test bombs, they think they can scare tactic Bush into more defense spending. And eventually they'll get it. This article shouldn't be "scary" it should be "asinine"."
MikeNite
Forum Host
posts: 116
(2/10/01 1:33:49 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EagleTed......your source???
Edited by: MikeNite at: 2/10/01 1:35:01 pm
Jack Rail
Gold Star Member
posts: 76
(2/10/01 5:54:16 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gee, Falken, one just hopes, for your sake, that that 5.56 ammo never runs out on YOU when you're in a foxhole somewhere.
So Bush pere had no legitimate reason for going into the Persian Gulf? You must be too young to remember the gas lines of 1973. I remember them. America runs on oil. You might think about that next time you fill up. http://freeconservatives.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif
Yeah, the military wastes a lot. But any large organization does, and in my 21 years in the Army the waste I saw most of related to changes in ways of operating. Such changes are hugely expensive. Here's what I mean: The Army, like every large organization, started going to computers in the early Eighties. In those days the best stuff was made by Wang. Soon the whole Army was learning how to use Wangs. But by the late Eighties Wang had fallen hopelessly behind and we shifted to Apple. Large numbers of Apple computers appeared. It costs big bucks to shift the entire Army from Wang to Apple and then, later, to Microsoft. Wasteful? Yes, but no one knew at the time which computer system would be best. Today we can't imagine doing Army business without computers (they save tons on postage and errors), but getting there was costly and continues to be costly.
Similarly, the armed forces have always been major users of training videos, and for good reason. But the technology in that field has also changed several times in the last 30 years, and keeping up with changes was expensive. Wasteful? Sure. But hardly in the sense of bad management or theft.
Much waste in the armed forces owes to political decisions, not choices made by the services. You may not remember the Sergeant York anti-air gun. The Army didn't want it, the Marines didn't want it, nobody who knew anything about war fighting wanted it -- because it didn't work. But politicos insisted and kept funding it anyway. It took a near mutiny at very high levels to finally kill the project after billions of wasted bucks. Same thing with aircraft carriers and Marine choppers and tanks and other major systems. The Navy wanted an aircraft carrier built at an established shipyard, but Walter Mondale forced it built, at much greater expense, at a shipyard in his district because of the pork it brought his constituents.
Then there's the way the services compute per-item cost. This method of reckoning supposedly saves large bucks in the long haul but churns out such anomalies as $700 toilet seats. Here's how it works: the cost of ordering each item in a given requisition of, say, 1,500 items, is computed by dividing the total cost of the total requisition by the number of items. Say your requisition is for 41 tanks, 16 helicopters, two mainframe computers, 112 claw hammers, etc. Divide all that out and you get a tank that costs $4000 as well as a hammer that costs $4000. Yet we know that any tank costs at least a couple mil and no claw hammer costs more than $30-40. It's a spurious figure on individual items but supposedly has utility at some level where statisticians make use of it.
Finally, waste is inevitable when people don't actually own the items they use. They don't take care of them as they would were the items their personal property.
I can't prove it -- no one can prove otherwise, either -- but I suspect the armed forces do a much better job in their circumstances than any civilian enterprise could. I've been around long enough to see railroads and airlines go broke, sometimes because of poor management but more often because of union corruption, sabotage on the line by personnel, and nest-feathering at high levels. In the Army we called that Fraud, Waste and Abuse, and IMO there's less of it in the services than the civil sector.
Cheers.
guncontrol
New Member
posts: 21
(2/10/01 7:11:20 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess the Army could consider buying bullets fron Hong Kong at a much lower price than those made domestically?
The Sonarman
Forum Host
posts: 192
(2/10/01 8:07:21 pm)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No need to buy cheap ammo.
The solution to the problem is for the military stationed in Bosnia and Europe to come back to the USA. The savings alone will cover all ammunition costs. US troops need to train to defend US soil.... nothing else. To hell with the rest of the world.
Europe needs to look to their own affairs. The US needs to stop "making socialism work" for the Europeans (by stop covering their self defense costs). The most recent American Legion magazine has a pretty good story on just this subject.
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum (Epitoma rei militaris, Prologue, 3)
Jack Rail
Gold Star Member
posts: 77
(2/11/01 1:39:33 am)
| Del Even with no military overseas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
we still need to do something about servicemen's comp. They're underpaid. We also need to do a lot about equipment in all branches.
I don't agree that there is no role at all for gunboat diplomacy, but do agree that Bosnia's a waste of time and money and lives and whatever else.
Keith J
Forum Host
posts: 257
(2/11/01 3:14:18 am)
| Del The ammo problem is easy to solve
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The government-owned, contractor operated plants can have ammo replenished in a heartbeat. What we do not have a shortage of is the components necessary to make the ammo in short order. Last time I checked, the powder for 5.56 (WCC 844 ) was running $77 for 8lbs, FOB. In 1994 it was $104. Ditto for the 9mm stuff. One end of the plant goes in 70/30 brass stock, 95/5 copper stock, lead, steel, powder and priming compound and the other end pops out loaded ammo at staggering rates. It takes about 2000 rounds just to get the machines running good and then 10,000 rounds an hour from each machine! Mind you, the plant might have as many as 50 machine lines operating at once.
The fact is, training is been reduced and the yearly consumption has been low for 6 years. Now that we have troops all over the world, each drawing ammo for security reasons, we have a shortage of 9mm. The government runs a year behind and what you asked for last year becomes what you are allowed the next. Now that there is a shortage, troops have to beg for ammo.
I can remember in the good old days in BCT where I fired over 1000 rounds from the M16A1 alone. Now a troop fires 40 rounds if he's good. I can remember having to run magazines through the spare M16's on qualification day just so we would get our allotment next time out. I once fired 4 magazines of M196 tracer and 8 mags full of ball, full auto, under the commander's direction, so that he could see the fire and know we would have it the next year. at the end of FTX's, I've seen M2HB's spitting enough blanks to fill a truck. I've also seen companies that couldn't do MOPP Level III training (firing w/ gas mask)with the M16 because they had run out of ammo.
I have an idea. Run a MWR concession rifle range. Soliders can check out ANY small arm and under supervision, practice their skills with ammo they buy at cost. Damn, I'd done that. I was buying my own at commercial prices AND firing my civilian rifle on civilian ranges when I was a grunt.
BEST45CAL
Forum Host Beastie
posts: 183
(2/19/01 2:53:09 am)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget, there's always Wal-Mart!
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."
Forum Host
posts: 821
(2/7/01 4:49:56 pm)
| Del All Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I remember Clinton and Gore bragging how they reduced waste in the government. This must be the waste they were talking about.
Full Story >www.washtimes.com/nationa...224141.htm
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.S. Army is running out of bullets.
A memo sent this week by Fort Hood, Texas, the Army installation with the largest population, says soldiers are suffering a worldwide shortage of 9 mm ammunition.
Army sources said the bullet shortages are another bad sign for a branch that was stretched thin this decade on global peacekeeping missions.
"This is indicative of a lot of other problems," said an Army source who asked not to be named. "We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years. What does this tell you? We don't have enough ammo to shoot. They keep demanding we do more with less. The situation is not healthy."
Maj. Tom Artis, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the shortage stems from budget shortfalls as opposed to production problems.
He said decisions on whether to cancel Beretta firings are up to each base. He said the Army is fixing the shortage by reprogramming budget dollars into ammunition accounts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No man can establish himself by wickedness,but good men have roots that cannot be dislodged" Proverbs 11:3
The Sonarman
Forum Host
posts: 170
(2/7/01 5:48:42 pm)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luckily (for now).... worse comes to worse, the military can purchase ammo on the open market (ie. Walmart, etc.).
Unless the liberal do-gooders ban that, too.
Aut vincere aut mori
EagleTed
Forum Host
posts: 76
(2/7/01 7:10:15 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Marines are practicing assaults on
beaches while yelling "Bang, Bang"
because there isn't enough money in
the budget for blanks.
Someone had better correct this crap
and fast.
Life, Liberty, Property
Rhino
Forum Host
posts: 248
(2/7/01 7:13:27 pm)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They better not say "bang, bang" with a chicken finger, or they'll be in big trouble!!!!
-----------------------------------------------------------
"We have every right to dream heroic dreams." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.siscom.net/~simdad
Jack Rail
Gold Star Member
posts: 33
(2/7/01 8:04:00 pm)
| Del Army bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey, who needs bullets? Do like the guy in Aliens and use harsh language.
Until the enemy counters by suing the US Army for sexism, hate speech and a hostile work environment.
Politically correct, bulletless war.
BEST45CAL
Forum Host
posts: 135
(2/8/01 12:06:40 am)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, Wal-Mart sells 9mm bullets for about 11 cents a piece. It would probably be a hell of a lot cheaper for the Marines to buy them off-base.
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."
absinthe
Gold Star Member
posts: 81
(2/10/01 2:15:09 am)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
walmart sells cheap rounds for less...but they're just that...cheap. The corosive quality of those 'American Eagle' and other crap ammo is worse than using sh!tty berdan primed norinco. Incedently, just look in a shotgun news to find ammo for a lot cheaper than walmart can afford.
The ammo defecit was taken out of context. The lack of ammo is a refrence to the depots' inventory. Clinton had a hand in stopping the stockpiling. Its not that we're lacking in accessable rounds...it's more like we're missing the large reserves we once enjoyed.
RKfalken
Gold Star Member
posts: 77
(2/10/01 1:05:33 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
this story also ran on www.fark.com (http://www.fark.com) and it recieved at least one interesting comment.
""Congressional sources said yesterday the Army shortages of such a basic combat tool as bullets is evidence that Congress needs to pass a defense bill this spring to supplement the current Pentagon budget."
This is a bunch of scare tactic bullshit by the "Army of One". I'm in the Army and I can tell you that we waste a shitload of ammunition and training materials. Besides, the 9mm ammo isn't necessary to keep the fighting force moving. And you can tell the article was stretching to say that it may affect our military's ability to fight because there "might" be a shortage of M16 5.56MM "somewhere" in the world. How ****ing vague can you get? The Army wants more money to waste more money and now that they've got a Republican in the White House who's daddy started the Persion Gulf conflict to test bombs, they think they can scare tactic Bush into more defense spending. And eventually they'll get it. This article shouldn't be "scary" it should be "asinine"."
MikeNite
Forum Host
posts: 116
(2/10/01 1:33:49 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EagleTed......your source???
Edited by: MikeNite at: 2/10/01 1:35:01 pm
Jack Rail
Gold Star Member
posts: 76
(2/10/01 5:54:16 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gee, Falken, one just hopes, for your sake, that that 5.56 ammo never runs out on YOU when you're in a foxhole somewhere.
So Bush pere had no legitimate reason for going into the Persian Gulf? You must be too young to remember the gas lines of 1973. I remember them. America runs on oil. You might think about that next time you fill up. http://freeconservatives.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif
Yeah, the military wastes a lot. But any large organization does, and in my 21 years in the Army the waste I saw most of related to changes in ways of operating. Such changes are hugely expensive. Here's what I mean: The Army, like every large organization, started going to computers in the early Eighties. In those days the best stuff was made by Wang. Soon the whole Army was learning how to use Wangs. But by the late Eighties Wang had fallen hopelessly behind and we shifted to Apple. Large numbers of Apple computers appeared. It costs big bucks to shift the entire Army from Wang to Apple and then, later, to Microsoft. Wasteful? Yes, but no one knew at the time which computer system would be best. Today we can't imagine doing Army business without computers (they save tons on postage and errors), but getting there was costly and continues to be costly.
Similarly, the armed forces have always been major users of training videos, and for good reason. But the technology in that field has also changed several times in the last 30 years, and keeping up with changes was expensive. Wasteful? Sure. But hardly in the sense of bad management or theft.
Much waste in the armed forces owes to political decisions, not choices made by the services. You may not remember the Sergeant York anti-air gun. The Army didn't want it, the Marines didn't want it, nobody who knew anything about war fighting wanted it -- because it didn't work. But politicos insisted and kept funding it anyway. It took a near mutiny at very high levels to finally kill the project after billions of wasted bucks. Same thing with aircraft carriers and Marine choppers and tanks and other major systems. The Navy wanted an aircraft carrier built at an established shipyard, but Walter Mondale forced it built, at much greater expense, at a shipyard in his district because of the pork it brought his constituents.
Then there's the way the services compute per-item cost. This method of reckoning supposedly saves large bucks in the long haul but churns out such anomalies as $700 toilet seats. Here's how it works: the cost of ordering each item in a given requisition of, say, 1,500 items, is computed by dividing the total cost of the total requisition by the number of items. Say your requisition is for 41 tanks, 16 helicopters, two mainframe computers, 112 claw hammers, etc. Divide all that out and you get a tank that costs $4000 as well as a hammer that costs $4000. Yet we know that any tank costs at least a couple mil and no claw hammer costs more than $30-40. It's a spurious figure on individual items but supposedly has utility at some level where statisticians make use of it.
Finally, waste is inevitable when people don't actually own the items they use. They don't take care of them as they would were the items their personal property.
I can't prove it -- no one can prove otherwise, either -- but I suspect the armed forces do a much better job in their circumstances than any civilian enterprise could. I've been around long enough to see railroads and airlines go broke, sometimes because of poor management but more often because of union corruption, sabotage on the line by personnel, and nest-feathering at high levels. In the Army we called that Fraud, Waste and Abuse, and IMO there's less of it in the services than the civil sector.
Cheers.
guncontrol
New Member
posts: 21
(2/10/01 7:11:20 pm)
| Del Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess the Army could consider buying bullets fron Hong Kong at a much lower price than those made domestically?
The Sonarman
Forum Host
posts: 192
(2/10/01 8:07:21 pm)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No need to buy cheap ammo.
The solution to the problem is for the military stationed in Bosnia and Europe to come back to the USA. The savings alone will cover all ammunition costs. US troops need to train to defend US soil.... nothing else. To hell with the rest of the world.
Europe needs to look to their own affairs. The US needs to stop "making socialism work" for the Europeans (by stop covering their self defense costs). The most recent American Legion magazine has a pretty good story on just this subject.
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum (Epitoma rei militaris, Prologue, 3)
Jack Rail
Gold Star Member
posts: 77
(2/11/01 1:39:33 am)
| Del Even with no military overseas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
we still need to do something about servicemen's comp. They're underpaid. We also need to do a lot about equipment in all branches.
I don't agree that there is no role at all for gunboat diplomacy, but do agree that Bosnia's a waste of time and money and lives and whatever else.
Keith J
Forum Host
posts: 257
(2/11/01 3:14:18 am)
| Del The ammo problem is easy to solve
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The government-owned, contractor operated plants can have ammo replenished in a heartbeat. What we do not have a shortage of is the components necessary to make the ammo in short order. Last time I checked, the powder for 5.56 (WCC 844 ) was running $77 for 8lbs, FOB. In 1994 it was $104. Ditto for the 9mm stuff. One end of the plant goes in 70/30 brass stock, 95/5 copper stock, lead, steel, powder and priming compound and the other end pops out loaded ammo at staggering rates. It takes about 2000 rounds just to get the machines running good and then 10,000 rounds an hour from each machine! Mind you, the plant might have as many as 50 machine lines operating at once.
The fact is, training is been reduced and the yearly consumption has been low for 6 years. Now that we have troops all over the world, each drawing ammo for security reasons, we have a shortage of 9mm. The government runs a year behind and what you asked for last year becomes what you are allowed the next. Now that there is a shortage, troops have to beg for ammo.
I can remember in the good old days in BCT where I fired over 1000 rounds from the M16A1 alone. Now a troop fires 40 rounds if he's good. I can remember having to run magazines through the spare M16's on qualification day just so we would get our allotment next time out. I once fired 4 magazines of M196 tracer and 8 mags full of ball, full auto, under the commander's direction, so that he could see the fire and know we would have it the next year. at the end of FTX's, I've seen M2HB's spitting enough blanks to fill a truck. I've also seen companies that couldn't do MOPP Level III training (firing w/ gas mask)with the M16 because they had run out of ammo.
I have an idea. Run a MWR concession rifle range. Soliders can check out ANY small arm and under supervision, practice their skills with ammo they buy at cost. Damn, I'd done that. I was buying my own at commercial prices AND firing my civilian rifle on civilian ranges when I was a grunt.
BEST45CAL
Forum Host Beastie
posts: 183
(2/19/01 2:53:09 am)
| Del
Re: Army running out of bullets
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget, there's always Wal-Mart!
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."