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Military ammo shortage

4K views 10 replies 5 participants last post by  Garand 
#1 ·
If you shoot military calibers, and don't have as much on hand as you'd like, you may want to quit waiting and correct your shortage now. Looks like we may be facing the same milspec ammo shortage as the last gulf war.

FWIW, I've noticed less actual 5.56 in stores over the last few weeks, although .223 is still around. But if mfrs start switching from .223 commercial production to 5.56 milspec production, it could easily domino into a .223 shortage as well.

The article doesn't mention calibers; but since they specifically mention Lake City, I'm assuming it's primarily 5.56, followed by 7.62

(Maybe putting some of my "eggs" into the ".30 carbine" basket wasn't such a bad idea.)


FWIW, there's what appears to be a typo in the story. Where it says "...the service will need 300m to 500m more bullets a year for at least five years, or more than 1.5m a year for combat and training", the only way the numbers make sense to me is if the "1.5m a year" were "1.5b over the next five years".



From "Financial Times":

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...p=1012571727085


US asks private sector to ease bullet shortage
By Christopher Bowe in New York
Published: May 26 2004 22:00 | Last Updated: May 26 2004 22:00


Even in the age of unmanned aerial vehicles, satellite-guided bombs and night-vision goggles, the US army cannot fight a war without its most basic necessity: bullets.


And with more troops in Iraq, more intense combat than expected and the need for almost every soldier from frontline infantryman to rearguard logistician to be prepared for an ambush, the army suddenly finds itself in a bullet crunch.

According to a requisition last week by the Army Field Support Command, the service will need 300m to 500m more bullets a year for at least five years, or more than 1.5m a year for combat and training. And because the single army-owned, small-calibre ammunition factory in Lake City, Missouri, can produce only 1.2m bullets annually, the army is suddenly scrambling to get private defence contractors to help fill the gap.

The bullet problem has its roots in a Pentagon effort to restock its depleted war materiel reserve. But it has been exacerbated by the ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where rearguard and supply units have been thinly-stretched throughout the countryside, occasionally without active duty combat soldiers to protect them.

The army's formal solicitation acknowledges that its current m anufacturing abilities have been all but exhausted. "Increasing military contingencies have created a situation where the capability to produce small calibre ammunition through conventional methods has been fully exercised," it said.

Specifically, the army is looking for 300m more bullets annually, potentially rising to 500m a year.

Alliant Techsystems, which runs the army-owned factory in Lake City, is in talks with the military about remedying the bullet production shortage, insisting it could expand output by 200m to 300m a year.

General Dynamics, the US defence contractor which submitted its proposed solution on Tuesday, said it had pulled together several small bullet suppliers - including Winchester, a unit of Olin Corporation; Israel Military Industries; and Canada's SNC Technologies - to meet the army's gap.

"We're using so much ammunition in Iraq there isn't enough capacity around," said Eric Hugel, a defence industry analyst at Sephens Inc. "They have to go internationally."
 
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#2 ·
Good idea, but guys should have taken

care of this long ago. This is one of the great beauties of the .22 unit for the AR, and the can on same. Very little 223 ammo has to be expended in order to maintain skill levels, altho a fair amount is needed to BUILD adequate skill in the first place. Not many have such skill.
 
#3 ·
If you want to shoot current service rifle caliber ammo then you can always look for case lots of foreign manufacture.What concers me(a little)is if a domestic manufacturer picks up the slack what will happen to production of non-military calibers?A had read already that there was a brass shortage.Sooo,will this event push up the cost of ammo?On 22lr this may not matter a lot but in odd/obsolete calibers it might just become darned frustrating.
Now I'm not deriding the decision to make more ammo for the troops available,I'm just curious how this might affect us thats all.
 
#4 ·
> According to a requisition last week by the Army Field Support Command, the service will need 300m to 500m more bullets a year for at least five years, or more than 1.5m a year for combat and training.

It says that they will need 300m to 500m MORE per year which comes to a total of 1.5 billion (?That must the a typo? - it can't be just 1.5 million per year!). If that is the typo, then is just means they currently use 1.0b to 1.2b per year.

I assume they mean more rounds and not just bullets :)
 
#5 ·
just another reason to avoid weirdo

calibers, especially in rifles. What do they do that NEEDS doing, and can't be done adquately by 223, .30 AK, or 308, hmm? Nothing. Weirdo pistol calibers might have a bit of performance advantage, because they better use a certain size of gun, and if you go larger, heavier, the gun no longer fulfills that niche. As in being no longer pocketable, or controlable. Not true of rifles. Pistol brass, however, can be made out of rifle brass, and it's fairly simple to swap barrels, andpractice with a standard pistol rd,like .45 or 9x19, then carry the 460 Rowland or 356 TSW. The additional 100 -150 ft lbs provided by the weirdo pistol rds is truly useful for pistol defense. It means nothing in a rifle
 
#6 ·
223fan?You just can't seem to get a handle on the fact that there are more uses for a firearm than TEOTWAWKI prep.If all you choose to use yours for is shooting at people targets or steel plates then,well,fine.Just try for a while to keep in mind that others not only have a use for odd stuff but some of us would rather use that.Its called being Different.& We can do that here.(USA dontcha know)
BTW, the largest land animals on earth have been sucessfully harvested with a single round of .22lr.Why on earth would anyone need a larger caliber?Hmmmmmmmm?;~)
 
#8 ·
i'm well aware of all the wastes of time

and money that people have. The question is, are YOU aware that 22, 9mm, 30 AK, 308, 223, 7.62x54R can do it ALL, and do it VERY cheaply, without bothering to reload, and do it all pretty damned well? So why bother with the more expensive, less versatile, less useful rds or guns? In nearly every case, doing so is done at the cost of not being as capable with the real deal, cause noone has the TIME for all that, on top of staying competent with the real deal. That's assuming that they ever GOT really competent, which ain't true of more than a very few thousand men on the face of the earth.
 
#9 ·
> The question is, are YOU aware that 22, 9mm, 30 AK, 308, 223, 7.62x54R can do it ALL,

I know that these CAN'T doit "all." I'm aware that there is VERY little difference between the .308 and 7.62x54R, so I don't know why you claim that you need both to do it "all." I am also aware that the 9mm can't even do what it was designed to do (and certainly can't come close to what something like a .454 Casull can and needs to do). The .223 is ven marginal for coyotes pass a couple of hundred yards, so I don't consider it necessary to do ANYTHING.

Finally, I'm aware enough to realize these can't do it all, they are good general-purpose rounds, the other rounds out there have special uses (some good some bad), AND that even the above rounds you mentioned were "wildcats" at one time and usually replaced something that was already considered "good enough." In other words, they weren't created in a vacuum and most of your list are very similar to even earlier designs, so why are even these needed (by YOUR logic)?
KJ
 
#10 ·
u dont know your ass from a hole in the

ground. The 223 STOMPS 308 butt, EVERY WEEKEND at the 600 yd line of the Sevice Rifle matches. Use the 75 gr Hornady v max in a 24" 223, and it will still dump a coyote just FINE at 500 yds, where it still has 1800 fps and 500 ft lbs, still expands the softpoint.

No, the 308 DOESN'T do what the Nagant rd does. It isn't available in a $50 cache rifle. there's ZERO need of the 454, cause nobody HAS to hunt with a pistol. In fact, any hunting that HAS to be done, can be handled just fine with the .22lr and 223. 30 AK is mostly useful in its steel cored version, for suppressed,low cost holing of pipelines, water towers, and transformers.

If one actually NEEDS meat, he doen't give a crap about bag limits, seasons, regs against the use of bait, suppressors, jacklighting, etc. With those aids, any decent hand can easily take 1-2 elk,moose, or bear per year, along with a dozen deer, using the 223, and taking only head shots on the big stuff, and only using the .22 lr conversion unit on deer (also head shots).
 
#11 ·
If the balloon ever goes up, I don't believe that I'll be needing 50,000 rds of ammo and the forklift to transport it either. I also don't believe in getting caught short handed either. If ball ammo gets in short supply, there is always commercial loadings, if that goes in short supply there is always reloading. When you practice , its not the quantity of the rds that you put down range but the quality of the shooting that you do. Your choice on firearm should depend on a number of things, your experience, your requirements, you geographical location, annual temperature fluctuations over a 12 month period, etc.
 
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