14,000 rounds of ammunition missing from Fort Bragg

[highplainsdem]

Source: CNN

CNN) -- Authorities are trying to find 14,000 rounds of ammunition missing from Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

The ammunition went missing from the 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Bragg, said Staff Sgt. Joshua Ford.

The missing ammunition can be used in the M-4 and M-16 assault rifles.

Someone alerted Fort Bragg leadership about the missing items on Wednesday, Ford said.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/north.carolina.ammunition/

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. You do not misplace that many rounds in the

Annal retentive army...

Let me reach for some tinfoil...ah better.

[boppers]

6. A pallet has 43,200-65,520 rounds.

From:
http://www.fivetribe.ca/files/smallarms.pdf

"Standard carton pack:
10 rounds/plastic clip, 3 clips/cardboard box, 30 cardboard
boxes/M2A1 metal box, 2 M2A1 metal boxes/wirebound crate,
36 wirebound crates/pallet, for a total of 65,520 cartridges

Standard operational pack:
10 rounds/plastic clip, 3 clips/opened cardboard box, 3 cardboard boxes
+ one 10-round clip/cloth bandoleer, 6 bandoleers/M2A1 metal box,
2 metal boxes/wirebound crate, 36 wirebound crates/pallet, for a total
of 43,200 cartridges"

So, depending on how it was packed, they basically.... lost some crates, or less than half a single pallet.

14,000 rounds sounds much more impressive than "The army lost track of some crates", I think.

[DissedByBush]

32. Either it's an accounting error

Or some good ol' boys will be having some fun in the woods this weekend.

[left on green only]

40. Woods?? Where Have You Been?

The currently accepted 2nd amendment way of letting on to everyone just how little you have been endowed, is to open carry in the shopping malls on the weekends. And I'm sure that shooting off a little live ammo at Starbucks, inside of Macy's will impress them even more. Only in America! :toast:

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. My point is the army is very anal retentive

You do not displace a round, let alone a palet.

[boppers]

37. The US military has displaced nuclear warheads.

Being anal does not eliminate the ultimate source of most errors, which is having humans in the loop.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Ok...that was the air force

And Minot has other reasons in my mind...again tin foil.

[DissedByBush]

46. I've seen many things get "lost" in the Army

Especially when it comes to sensitive items, they were still in the Army's possession, they were just somewhere other than what the paperwork said.

A good example is a missing rifle at the end of a field exercise, with a battalion searching frantically for days to find it.

I've seen that a few times, and each time the rifle was just left in the wrong truck.

[Posteritatis]

49. To be honest I'm surprised the military doesn't occasionally misplace carriers. (nt)

[hedgehog]

53. They did misplace at lest one ship.....

"Confusion on the part of Navy communications and a faulty directive caused the failure of the Indianapolis to arrive on schedule to go unnoticed, leaving as many as 900 men at the mercy of a shark-infested sea."


http://www.ussindianapolis.org/story.htm

[Posteritatis]

52. Interesting info there; thanks for the perspective. (nt)

[Booster]

2. Everybody in that area be careful.

[slackmaster]

22. Yes, an ammunition thief on the loose is a serious danger to everyone

SERIOUS!!!

[Blandocyte]

47. Good tmes

That many rounds is just an extended range day's worth for some, especially with the selector set to Happy.

[krispos42]

3. That's like a half-ton of ammo.

I mean, it's not a huge deal... you can buy this stuff in Wal-Mart. It's not like it's artillery rounds.


But still... that's pretty heavy.

[boppers]

9. I haven't done the weight numbers on the rounds/containers...

But going by your "half ton" number, assuming 1000 lbs (though, I can think about other tons), if you packed it out in 5 trips, that's only 200 lbs a trip, and most generic consumer sedans *easily* could haul that in 5 trips. Heck, a car that could haul 5 people (with a light 125lb. driver, and 4 light 125lb. passengers) could do it in only 2 trips.

More fun math: at 950 rounds/sec cyclic (max speed of the M-4/M-16), that's only 14.73 minutes of sustained fire from one single weapon (nobody would do this, of course, your weapon would overheat). For 15 weapons, that's less than a single minute of sustained fire.

....But the number 14,000 looks big!

edit: typo

[Big_Mike]

28. You're only talking about 12 - 14 crates of ammo

Since each box has either 1800 or 1200 rounds in it. One crate is a pain in the ass to unload, but only weighs 45 pounds or so. You could easily put it in a pickup with a camper shell, or even in a station wagon.

When I went through Infantry School at Ft. Benning in 1977, on the company automatic fire range we had 2 companies (176 soldiers per company for 362 total, each to fire between 630 and 840 rounds during daylight and 210 that night, so over 360,000 rounds delivered just for us that day), the ammo was brought out by a tractor-trailer rig. Once the ammo was counted and the receipts signed, we began a human chain to unload it and move it to the ammo point. The E-4 from the range was at the top of the trailer, and a few times he did "one for the Army, one for me" by tossing the ammo over the other side of the trailer into some fairly heavy brush. In just a minute or so, he had about 5000 rounds. He said he had a .223, and that he could plink or hunt for months on this.

If you know any system, you can abuse it. That's why over the years the Army changed it's policies, and you have to return the brass and empty cans to ensure everything was done correctly.

[DeSwiss]

4. Well now they've got ammo.....

...for those "http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/01/missing.guns.report">16,000 missing weapons."

- How convenient......

K&R

[boppers]

15. Less than a bullet per weapon?

That does not seem efficient.

[Thor_MN]

19. Worked for Barney Fife...

[boppers]

21. Way to age check.

Hilarious too!

[MicaelS]

31. Who is "they"??? n/t

[pmorlan1]

35. LOL

Good catch. lol

[fascisthunter]

41. arming the right wing, maybe?

[kestrel91316]

5. Ask the local teabagger/militia nuts who has it.

[GreenStormCloud]

7. That is a trivial amount of ammo.

It sounds like a lot, but for a combat brigade it isn't much. I don't remember how many rounds to a can anymore but we are only talking about 25 to 35 cans, or 56 belts of 250rds each. That amount could have been fired in one day's training and only lost on paper. Or it could have been stolen. Still isn't a lot of ammo. You can buy it in 1,000 round cases on the internet.

[slackmaster]

24. Yes, I have at least twice that much sitting on the shelves next to me

Most of it .22 Long Rifle, but I do have tens of thousands of rounds of various rifle and pistol ammunition in my office.

[Wind Dancer]

51. Why?

[Sirveri]

8. Someone's gonna have a fun time at the range later...

Wish I had that much range time booked and a bunch of rounds.

[bluerum]

10. What does this stuff go for at waLlymart? About $2 a round?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

23. About 25 cents per round... 14000 rounds really isn't a big deal.

I'll bet our local gungeon residents can scrape together about two times that amount between ourselves.

[slackmaster]

25. That's not enough for even the first night of a Zombie Apocalypse

With the power outage on Thursday I was afraid I'd have to open a few cases, but the Moon was bright enough to discourage them.

[plumbob]

11. I'm happy it's all nothing.

After all, it takes at least 14,000 rounds to kill someone, right?

Or in Vietnam, like 250,000 rounds.

So this stuff should be handed out at schoolhouse doors, it's so nothing.

[DallasNE]

12. It Has Been A Long Time Since I Served In The Military

Including a short stint at Fort Bragg. Back then controls were very lax. In fact, blowing the whistle on theft would land someone in trouble. At Fort Gordon, GA I was once ordered to unload a few hundred pounds of meat out of the mess hall kitchen and into the back end of a station wagon. At Fort Bragg it was the same thing with the Supply Sargeant and field gear -- where I tried to blow the whistle and got labeled as a trouble maker. It was small in scale but right out in plain sight. Once the vehicle pulls away the stuff is never seen again because vehicles leaving a military post are never stopped, let alone inspected, unless breaking traffic laws. Ammunition is locked up and one would think that a security camera was in place but blinding the camera and using a bolt cutter would get the job done nicely.

[Supply Side Jesus]

13. hmmm....

and I heard there are some M-4's missing from a base also....

but, I'll bet those rounds are already sold on the illegal markets.

[cstanleytech]

14. I would be far more worried if it was 14,000 pounds of C-4

[boppers]

16. Or 140 pounds of U-235

It's all about numerical literacy, and keeping things in perspective.

[zippytheplatypus]

17. if i find it

I'll trade it to a teabagger for weed & oxy. Win win..

[gordianot]

18. I hope they get caught but Government pilfered ammo and weapons is not uncommon.

[PuffedMica]

20. The CIA needed some ammunition for a clandestine operation

Nothing to see here folks, just move along.

[bluedigger]

26. Theft of a commonly procurable item.

As noted upthread, it is easy to buy this on the net in quantity. It went missing and they shook the brigade down and didn't find it. Already out the gate likely, before they knew it was missing. They should have a pretty good paper trail to follow.

I saw an engineer battalion stay out in the field looking for a missing M-16 for six weeks once at Ft. Campbell. They spent Thanksgiving searching the woods for it and somebody finally confessed they had stolen it as Christmas was approaching. They take missing weapons very seriously.

[rasputin1952]

27. It never seems like much...

but remember, you don't give a damn about 13,999...you worry about the one that strikes you...:(

[James48]

29. i was a Company Commander

and we typically would go through 14,000 rounds in a single afternoon at the range. It's about the amount of ammo used to qualify 140 people (100 rounds X 140 people).

Is was also not unusual to qualify everyone, and then have a few thousand rounds left over. It was easier to simply shoot them all, rather than try and turn in partial open cans back to the ammo point. So we would have a couple guys load up and "dispose of" perhaps 2 or 4 thousand rounds.

Fun.

[Yon_Yonson]

30. Must be a pretty big black market around Fort Bragg

... or the teabaggers are getting well armed! Back in 68 while at Cherry Point I saw a fork lift operator intentional pick up a large pallet containing a jet engine and he dumped in off the pier. I saw it sink into the Atlantic and the reason; the Marine was pissed off at his NCOIC. A little bullet here and a little bullet there and all of a sudden things add up to a problem.

[TheCowsCameHome]

33. No big deal.

They can buy more.

[boppers]

Ooh, it's stimulus!

A new jobs plan: lose things!

[boppers]

39. Dupe

[goforit]

34. With new terrorist threats in NY and DC, another MIHOP.

[fascisthunter]

42. THAT's exactly what I was thinking.

... and maybe that is why the right wing would like to loosen guns laws to make it easier for the right wing to get their hands on weapons and ammo... tin foil hat time.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

43. If planning something major (like an attack), why not just BUY the ammo and not risk getting caught?

It's can be bought by the thousands ont he internet.

[goforit]

54. LOL, the CIA never gets caught

[MicaelS]

44. Two soldiers detained over missing Ft. Bragg ammunition

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/10/two-soldiers-detained-over-missing-ft-bragg-ammunition/

WILMINGTON, N.C (Reuters) - Two male soldiers have been taken into custody at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in connection with the disappearance of roughly 14,000 rounds of ammunition reported missing at the Army base on Wednesday morning, officials said on Saturday.

The missing 5.56 millimeter ammunition is valued at about $3,600 and "can be purchased at any Wal-Mart," according to an official familiar with the investigation who spoke to Reuters only on condition of anonymity.

The combat team uses the ammunition in the M4 carbine and M16 assault rifle, Ford said.

The investigation into the missing ammunition is ongoing, Ford said on Saturday, declining to elaborate.

[razorman]

45. 14,000 rounds isn't really all that much ammo. It would probably fit in two or three footlockers.

Who knows? It might have been mislaid in a corner somewhere. A concern, certainly. But no reason for panic. Or national headlines.

[BiggJawn]

48. Check the local flea markets.

Bet it shows up there, or maybe at some gun show in Indiana or Michigan...

14,000 rounds, isn't that about the minimum you need hidden under the bed to qualify as a "Rugged Individualist"?

[Blue_Tires]

50. I'd have thought much more serious shit was floating around the Bragg black markets...

Weren't they selling the heavy stuff after the first Gulf War?