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Germany's military missing over 60k rounds of ammunition
- johnkoetsier 6y ago!!!
- Tuna-Fish 6y agoThis is not nearly as scandalous as it sounds. It's over a period of 10 years, which means it's ~0.03 rounds per active duty soldier per year. No-one's bookkeeping is that good.
- steve19 6y ago60,000 artillery shells would be surprising, but 60k rounds of rifle or pistol ammunition is not much. That is one pallet, at a cost of maybe $20,000 at bulk retail in the USA.
- bpodgursky 6y agoYeah I mean, missing material sucks and shouldn't be routine, but this is pretty trivial bullet count compared to what any military runs through in marksmanship training on a daily basis. Seems far more likely that one pallet is moulding in a corner of a warehouse somewhere (or accidentally got thrown away) than that a right-wing paramilitary group is stealing bullets from the German military, that they simply can't find anywhere else.
- charlchi 6y ago> 60,000 rounds of rifle or pistol ammunition is not much. Military equiment being lost is a regular occurrence?
- adventured 6y agoGermany spends half a trillion dollars per decade on its military. It would not be surprising if $20k of ammo vanishes for any number of reasons (theft, misplaced, miscounted).
- steve19 6y agoLost could just mean expended in training but with slightly poor recording keeping that added up over time.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoAnyone who has served in the Armed Forces knows how strict range security is. This couldn't be the case.
- grensley 6y agoMakes you wonder how much ammo the US is currently missing...
- giancarlostoro 6y agoProbably less relevant since most citizens can buy plenty of ammo for themselves.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoCrates of grenades "lost" during training would be more of a concern.
- agensaequivocum 6y agoYou can legally buy grenades as a civilian, not as easily as ammo but still possible.
- angrais 6y agoSorry if this is a dumb question, but given you can literally buy grenades ... Can they be posted and delivered to someone else? I ask as both sound ridiculous on my mind
- giancarlostoro 6y agoI imagine its similar to buying a firearm. You need an FFL to receive it and they background you same as they would a gun. However the FFL needs a special license for grenades as well. Edit for those who dont know: You can order guns online but they must be shipped to a qualified FFL. They must keep records of having done a background check and all that (same as buying in person). As an FFL you could be audited at any moment so you dont wanna screw around or the ATF might come down on you hard. Honestly the last agency I want coming to arrest me is ATF looking at their history of shooting peoples dogs. Its like they think they are above all other agencies and do whatever to arrest people.
- hdjrkrmfkt 6y agoUS army fired on average 250k rounds to kill one enemy combatant in Iraq. https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-forced-to-import-bullets-from-israel-as-troops-use-250000-for-every-rebel-killed-28580666.html https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-forced-t...
- kapnobatairza 6y agoAnother way the movie Starship Troopers would predict the Iraq War.
- tandr 6y agoSorry, I miss the reference. Would you be kind and expand on it a bit?
- tmh79 6y agoI mean, this is specifically accurate but a useless metrics. Its literally bullets/kill. Modern urban warfare tactics include a whole lot of shooting where the intent is not to kill the enemy, but to make the enemy hide and reduce their ability to shoot at you. The army also uses lot of ammo to train and stay competent. Its similar to how most military pilots clock hundreds of hours flying for every hour of combat they experience. Bullets/kill is like an extreme version of "game winning scores"/"all shots ever taken in a game or training" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressive_fire#:~:text=In%20military%20science%2C%20suppressive%20fire,the%20duration%20of%20the%20fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressive_fire#:~:text=In%20...]
- droopyEyelids 6y agohttps://www.ft.com/content/d5cd9758-80a6-4d30-93d5-2add8709ed0f https://www.ft.com/content/d5cd9758-80a6-4d30-93d5-2add8709e... Here they mention how much of the 'lost' german materiel is diverted by far right cells within their armed forces. "48,000 rounds of ammunition and 62kg of explosives had disappeared from the KSK" in this case. Their most recent political assassination was in 2018, too. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/world/europe/germany-murder-far-right-neo-nazi-luebcke.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/world/europe/germany-murd...
- dreamcompiler 6y agoExactly. I know people who shoot 2000 rounds in a weekend of target practice. This might be a large amount in a country where guns are rare, but it's nothing in the US.
- inetknght 6y agoThat can sound like a lot of ammunition. In many respects it is. But 60k rounds of small arms munitions can be expended in a few afternoons of practice by a single unit.
- gao8a 6y agoOne of my fondest memories during my time in the Canadian army was on the C6 gpmg range where I did my first live fire on that gun. We were expected to be at the mess line for dinner very soon, so the word of command by the time I got on it was “...in 200 round bursts”. It was quite the display of talking guns (more like constant scream lol) with tracers at sunset
- trhway 6y agoUSSR/Russia back then, probably today too - at the end of the quarter, all unexpended ammo which had been budgeted for the quarter had to be expended, otherwise the ammo budget for the next quarter may be cut. So, load up the guns and the ammo and off to the range...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- emptystacks 6y agoThe sequel to the $2B missing wirecard cash. What's next to complete the trilogy of missing things in germany?
- xenonite 6y agon quarantined persons missing?
- 40acres 6y agoHold up. I could've sworn that I heard the other day that the German government was concerned about a militia like group that may have former military members involved. This headlines definitely made my ears jump.
- gweinberg 6y agoIn modern warfare that's enough to kill approximately 1 person.
- HomeDeLaPot 6y agoI wanted to know if 60k was a lot. Assuming we're talking 5.56/.223 rounds, I found a listing for 500 rounds for $220 USD. (Out of stock, though, lots of people buying guns and ammo right now.) That works out to $26.4k total. Also, 60k rounds would fill 2,000 30-round magazines. That amount doesn't strike me as large if spread across the entirety of the Bundeswehr, which has some 200k personnel and a budget of $50 billion according to Wikipedia. However, the article mentions 48k more rounds missing from the KSK, a unit of only 1,100 men that's apparently had issues with some members holding extremist attitudes. 48k rounds missing seems somewhat significant at that scale. https://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/dept/ammunition/rifle/5-point-56-nato https://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/dept/ammunition/rifle...
- chrismcb 6y agoThe article says more than 68k missing since 2010. But that is profanity a rounding error. Quick Google search says a person should consider shooting from 50 to 600 rounds in a session. At 500 rounds, 60k is only 120 sessions. Maybe 500 is to many, so maybe it is 240 sessions... For an entire army.
- dasm 6y agoAs you said, we have a little bubble on guns & ammo in the US right now. Basic NATO 5.56 - ie, cheap enough for practice or poorly equipped grunts - is probably ~$0.30/round. However, it doesn't specify the caliber or load. Loads designed for combat and not practice - like armor piercing, barrier penetration, soft target performance, precision, short barrel optimized, etc. - could be ~2-7x more expensive, and more indicative of a serious organizational problem. Small arms calibers could include .50BMG, which is also a much larger cost & problem.
- cal5k 6y agoThis is a silly article. I'm a sport shooter and hunter in Canada, and I can personally expend 500-1000 rounds in one trip to the range. 60,000 rounds would only be newsworthy in a country with some very puritanical notions about guns.
- rdxm 6y agothis is a non-issue. the way, way bigger issue is the Bundeswher's obesity problem. last time I looked, with the exception of the KSK, most units wouldn't last a week in a combat scenario, they can barely run around the block.
- dmurray 6y agoAs four other top level comments say, that's not a lot. In the US it would be unthinkable to track inventory to that level of detail, and one person could plausibly own the whole lot. Anyone ask how many pencils the US Department of Education is missing over that period? I'd add that with a group of 100 people, you could buy this much ammunition in a week without raising eyebrows. Much more if you can travel across the border to Switzerland. Or you could have pocketed one round per person per week over the ten year period the report refers to.
- gentleman11 6y agoThis is considered newsworthy because, prior to world war 2, (elected) far right extremists were stockpiling massive amounts of munitions via various coverup schemes. It was part of a secret government plan to prepare for world war 2 in spite of treaties forbidding these actions. It makes for some interesting historical reading, and is probably why the government will be so eager to show it’s investigating and preventing it in the future. That said, 60k bullets is not a lot. It would be only really be newsworthy if they actually found evidence of theft. In 1 year there will be some report about sloppy accounting during training exercises for that particular unit
- linuxhansl 6y agoLittle bit of extra info... I served mandatory military service in the Bundeswehr back in the day. Every single bullet was accounted for: All bullets were numbered, and when we would go to the shooting range we'd get bullets from a batch. We made sure that all bullets handed out were actually used, and all of our names were recorded with that batch of bullets - if any bullet of that batch ever turned up anywhere else, they would know who to check. With that in mind 60k bullets is large number of bullets to be lost. Edit: Grammar and spelling. Edit: Back then these were 7.62mm rounds for the G3, and (I think) 5mm rounds for the uzi (or uzi-like).