DOD to Spend $1 Billion Destroying $16 Billion Worth of Ammo

FamousAJ said:

so, who's clicked on the link?

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CHenry said:

B.s...

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Pentagon to Spend $1
Billion to Destroy $16
Billion in Unneeded
Ammunition
$ 1 billion
The Pentagon is spending a billion dollars to destroy $16 billion in over purchases of
military-grade ammunition. The amount of
surplus ammunition is now so large that the
cost of destroying it will equal the full years’
salary for over 54,000 Army privates.439
How the military came to purchase so
much ammunition it didn’t need was uncovered
in a 2014 Government Accountability Office
(GAO) investigation.440 Certain kinds of
ammunition became “obsolete, unusable
or their use is banned by international
treaty,” according to Pentagon officials.441
However, GAO found that record-keeping for
ammunition was also poor, and that accurate
records were hard to come by for the nation’s
$70 billion ammunition arsenal.442
Over time, the amount of ammunition
deemed no longer necessary has grown
to nearly 40 percent of the Army’s total
inventory: “According to an Army financial
statement in June 2013, the Army had about
39 percent of its total inventory (valued at
about $16 billion) in a storage category for
ammunition items that were excess to all the
services’ requirements.”443
However, the Pentagon may be throwing
away ammunition that could still be used.
According to GAO, some of the material
set for destruction has at times been found
usable.444

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Sanford said:

I suspect the majority of the obsolete ammunition is not small arms. Thinking of 8" artillery that was obsoleted a few years ago, possibly 175mm that was obseleted a few years before that. When the military has $X that they can spend on either destroying old ammunition or else leaving it stored where it is and buying new ammunition - well, guess what? Much of the blame for that is, of course, the way military budgets are funded by Congress - so Mr. Coburn should probably be a little careful where he points that finger.

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Sanford said:

I suspect the majority of the obsolete ammunition is not small arms. Thinking of 8" artillery that was obsoleted a few years ago, possibly 175mm that was obseleted a few years before that. When the military has $X that they can spend on either destroying old ammunition or else leaving it stored where it is and buying new ammunition - well, guess what? Much of the blame for that is, of course, the way military budgets are funded by Congress - so Mr. Coburn should probably be a little careful where he points that finger.

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Jon3830 said:

but that doesn't make as good of a story now does it, I know when we started dropping bombs in Afghanistan the govt. was using surplus from past wars.

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dennishoddy said:

Surplus bombs and artillery shells from WWII and Korea were used in Vietnam.

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