14,000 rounds of ammunition missing from Fort Bragg

[Bob Hubbard]

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.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/north.carolina.ammunition/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Why am I having visions of Radar from MASH on the PA making an announcement about if anyone sees any missing bullets to call the office?

How do you lose 14,000 rounds? I can comprehend a couple clips, but how many cases does 14,000 fill? Someone with military experience clue me in here please.

 

[Twin Fist]

that isnt much, less than a pallet.

 

[MA-Caver]

that isnt much, less than a pallet.

Enough to start some serious **** somewhere.

 

[granfire]

or have 5 minutes of fun on the range.....

 

[Razor]

Things go "missing" from military facilities quite a lot I hear. Here is some interesting reading about such losses from MoD bases:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/10/stolen-military-equipment-list

"Thieves also somehow made off with an aircraft fuselage, a Bedford truck, an industrial washing machine, an inflatable boat, an outboard motor and a £50,000 helicopter rotor tuner."

Really makes you wonder how they get away with such things disappearing...

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Someday we'll read "Air Craft Carrier Missing, last seen in port." "I knew giving the whole crew shore leave at the same time was a mistake", said the Captain. "We usually leave a couple guys behind to keep an eye on it, but it was a holiday weekend and we'd put the Club on the main wheel so we thought it would be safe.". "Also missing is the carriers entire compliment of jet fighters, and the 1st officers Hustler collection. A reward is being offered by the Norfolk FBI."

 

[Big Don]

or have 5 minutes of fun on the range.....

When I was at Fort Lewis in 92, we were running a grenade qualification range for ROTC cadet's summer camp assisted by NG/USAR troops on their summer active duty. We were supposed to have a certain amount of live frags, we ended up with ten times as many due to an extra zero. Grenade qualification was something most people outside of combat arms only did in basic. Our whole Brigade (MI) qualified as did a few other units. It was a blast.

 

[Archangel M]

1,000 rounds fit in a box you could sit on your lap. 14K is about what you would pull for 1 company to range qual.

Not a piddling amount, but not a huge quantity. My PD has way more ammo than that sitting in our armory.

 

[Archangel M]

My money is on a small group of knucklehead soldiers who own their own personal weapons and wanted some ammo. Someone working in the ammo shed will be found responsible.

 

[Big Don]

Someday we'll read "Air Craft Carrier Missing, last seen in port." "I knew giving the whole crew shore leave at the same time was a mistake", said the Captain. "We usually leave a couple guys behind to keep an eye on it, but it was a holiday weekend and we'd put the Club on the main wheel so we thought it would be safe.". "Also missing is the carriers entire compliment of jet fighters, and the 1st officers Hustler collection. A reward is being offered by the Norfolk FBI."

It is a shame we don't use PT Boats anymore... I'm picturing a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedy about a couple of sailors taking old PT111 out for a weekend cruise...

 

[Big Don]

My money is on a small group of knucklehead soldiers who own their own personal weapons who wanted some ammo. Someone working in the ammo shed will be found responsible.

Or a supply clerk or two selling things to local gun shops, or pawn shops...

 

[MA-Caver]

I'm surprised (not a lot) at the seemingly light banter that the tone of this thread is taking. Maybe 14K rounds of ammo gone missing isn't a lot. But this is just one reported incident that got out in the media. How many more "missing" items have gone from the military's inventory? How many weapons, many of which, particularly small arms can be broken down to base components and smuggled off the base several pieces at a time have gone "missing" ?
Hollywood makes light of this crime in war comedies of a wheeling dealing supply Sargent like from Kelly's Heroes or often times in M*A*S*H and others.
It is a serious crime no matter how small.
This is our military that we're talking about and the inventory is supposed to be used to part of the arsenal that protects this country.
How many more pallets of ammo, weapons, tech-gear have gone missing?
We've got a number of groups who would gladly use such inventory for base and nefarious means.
Hopefully they'll figure it out and plug up the leak.

 

[Archangel M]

It's not that it's not "serious"..it's that its not new. No newer than the fact that shoplifting goes on at your local mall. The Army is HUGE. The military is a society within a society with many of the exact same issues...including crime and criminal investigation. You will no more be able to stop this than you can shoplifting. Army CID will investigate...some people will be caught...some will get away with it. Exactly like we do in the civilian world. Day in-day out.

It's the way things work. Always has always will.

 

[elder999]

As others have said, it's not that new a thing, and not that big an amount.

A story: back in New York, I worked at Indian Pt.#3, which belonged the state. It once belonged to Consolidated Edison. When it was under construction and almost finished, and Con Ed was running Unit 2, with Unit 1 having been shutdown years before, an accountant at Con Ed saw that the company was in the red, by close to half a billion dollars. It was close to the end of the fiscal year, and the company board determined that they had to generate some revenue, so they sold Unit #3 to the state at a fire sale price-problem solved.

Except there was no problem: the accountant had moved a decimal point a few places in his calculations, and, in their panic, no one had checked his math. Con Ed wasn't insolvent, but quite healthy financially-and out a nuclear power plant.

State got the plant, accoutant probably got promoted. :lfao:

Just as Big Don wound up with extra grenades, it's entirely possible that Ft. Bragg deficiency in ammo only exists on paper, and those bullets are exactly where they're supposed to be......at some other military facility.

Or, yeah, in some soldier's garage.

 

[jks9199]

1,000 rounds fit in a box you could sit on your lap. 14K is about what you would pull for 1 company to range qual.

Not a piddling amount, but not a huge quantity. My PD has way more ammo than that sitting in our armory.

I agree; it's a decent, but not unreasonable amount, to be missing as a simple accounting error. Someone didn't sign it out properly when they took the ammo to the range (I've done training courses where each of the students was expected to bring a couple of thousand rounds; if you fire a fifty or hundred round courses of fire several times over the course of a day, it adds up fast...), or there was an error on delivery and it wasn't really received.

Does it merit investigation? Absolutely. Does it merit panic that there's a secret army out there with stolen ammo? Not really.

 

[MA-Caver]

I agree; it's a decent, but not unreasonable amount, to be missing as a simple accounting error. Someone didn't sign it out properly when they took the ammo to the range (I've done training courses where each of the students was expected to bring a couple of thousand rounds; if you fire a fifty or hundred round courses of fire several times over the course of a day, it adds up fast...), or there was an error on delivery and it wasn't really received.

Does it merit investigation? Absolutely. Does it merit panic that there's a secret army out there with stolen ammo? Not really.

Yeah well, lets hope that it is some inventory error and not some white supremacist group or some other faction have it and puts one of those missing rounds into some kid or a crowd someday. The incident at Norway comes to mind.

 

[hongkongfooey]

Yeah well, lets hope that it is some inventory error and not some white supremacist group or some other faction have it and puts one of those missing rounds into some kid or a crowd someday. The incident at Norway comes to mind.

You sound paranoid. 5.56 ammo can be bought just about anywhere that sells firearms. My local Walmart even carries it. So white supremacist groups or other boogeymen would have no need to steal it from a military installation.