Barnes encouraged those with information about the gun’s disappearance to call the Fort Irwin CID Office at 760-380-5812, the military police at 760-386-4040 or to submit a note anonymously to the CID tip line.
It is not uncommon for Army weapons to get stolen or lost. A 2021 Associated Press investigation found that 1,303 Army rifles and handguns went missing between 2013 and 2019.
In 2011, three members of military police stole 26 machine guns and a sniper rifle from Fort Irwin. Police found several of these weapons in Fresno, California, eight years later.
It is illegal for California civilians to possess machine guns unless they hold a state-issued permit. The state Department of Justice gives permits only to those with a proven need — machine gun manufacturers, for instance.
— Irene Loewenson in Machine gun missing at California Army post
Dang.
Thought that weapon looked out of place ordering coffee at the McDonald’s drive through about a mile from the Irwin main gate.
Didn’t notice a large reward for return of the weapon, so…not interested.
“A 2021 Associated Press investigation found that 1,303 Army rifles and handguns went missing between 2013 and 2019.”
Population wise and firearms numbers wise, the U.S. government (and including the military branches and the national guard branches) is the largest source of stolen guns or ‘guns borrowed’. I’ve seen ATF agents out hunting with their government issued AR-15’s. Its not uncommon for a government firearm to be turned over to a government employee and they get ‘misplaced’ or reported stolen, and U.S. government possessed/issued firearms show up routinely at crime scenes or in the hands of criminals – 72 were recovered by the ATF from police evidence lock up in February 2022 from (collectively) three different police departments in and around Chicago, there were recovered from criminal gang members.
Although the numbers overall are reported to be relatively small for the Army, overall the government has obfuscated and covered up such thefts and ‘missing guns’ government wide and deliberately reported numbers that are lower. Its suspected that more than 18,000 government firearms went ‘missing’ in the month of April 2022, and every few months there are government firearms not accounted for.
Short version= Govt is corrupt and incompetent. Always.
I am a student and I do work part time on this website to meet my needs. One who is jobless or want to earn more money for himself, (buc-49) should must try this because this is really very easy and less time consuming and also advantageous
without investing any amount… https://shorturl.ae/NR7vP
sometimes incompetence….sometimes for money….sometimes because they’re just tired of lugging it around…used to hunt in an area the Army used for maneuvers…found a lot of buried stuff…
But they have registries, mandatory safe storage, fancy RFID and cage codes on their firearms as well as specialist and highly trained personnel checking in and out only those firearms specifically cleared for use.
If all that stuff is supposed to make us all safer how come they lose more than we do?
Because we pay for our own. Amazing how much less careful people are with things things purchased with other people’s money.
With the exception of military; The government doesn’t really know how many firearms they have. Government agencies with these firearms routinely ‘pencil whip’ inventories and give firearms to their personnel without accounting for them. Its not uncommon for a shipment of firearms delivered to government agencies of newer models to be ‘miscounted’ and the firearm later show up reported as ‘lost’ during some training or on an assignment but not be documented in inventory. When newer models of firearms are delivered and issued, its not uncommon for the firearm being replaced to remain with the person it was originally issued to and just dropped from inventory – for example, when the FBI switched back to 9mm many of the agents were given the option of keeping their previously issued firearm which were dropped from inventory but 40% of those were later reported as ‘stolen’ and half of those turned up later at crime scenes listed generally as ‘ghost guns’ types because the the serial numbers were obfuscated where it was tried to remove them. Its not uncommon for these agencies to show inventories of guns for many years that do not actually physically exist in their inventory any longer and no one knows where they are. Every year the ATF recovers hundreds of government guns from various sources (e.g. a person or police calls them and reports finding a gun) mostly from local police departments who have taken them in as evidence for some crime or having been found in a raid or on criminals when they were arrested, most have had the serial numbers obfuscated and determined to be ‘ghost guns’ because of that – now you know why the ATF gets involved in local investigations involving ‘ghost guns’, its because there is a good chance the gun is a government firearm.
We have some local ATF agents who use our ranges here locally, they tell us of the government ‘missing’ firearm problem dirty little secret. They use one of our ranges (contracted to them) to ‘test fire’ (so they say, really I think they just want to shoot to use their contracted range time up for an ‘official reason’ so they can get more funding for range contracting so they can continue to use the range for their own personal firearms at tax payer expense) the firearms they recover around here when they need to do it, they show up with them still sealed in general area police departments evidence bags or boxes and that’s where they recovered them from. Sometimes its actual ‘assault rifles’ with selective auto fire.
Excluding the military: More than 50% of firearms recovered in 2020-2021 by the ATF from police who recovered them at crime scenes, or on criminals when they are arrested, or found during execution of search warrants for some crime, were government firearms that had been missing 4 or more years and had been either dropped from government inventory or was still being accounted for on government inventory as though the agencies still had the firearm physically. Each one had the serial number ‘obfuscated’ and was accounted for in police reports as a ‘ghost gun’ type of firearm.
the government and their dirty little secrets.
.40 cal Booger said:
“With the exception of military; The government doesn’t really know how many firearms they have.”
The charming innocence of that statement leaves me, a 25-year veteran of the Army who worked with weapons accountability and physical security throughout his career, laughing heartily at that statement.
News flash for you: The Army’s accountability for weapons is only as good as the people it has running the systems, and most of them are fscking idiots. I had commanders who accepted maintenance turn-in documents as being “real weapons” for change of command inventories, and who were then bent over and ass-raped by the system when another incoming commander made the (correct) decision to drive over to the logistics center and actually (quelle horror!!) physically verify the existence of said weapons. Which, sadly, didn’t. Exist, that is. Took about six months worth of investigation to determine, but the reality was that those weapons had been coded out and sent off to Rock Island to meet Mr. Shredder, some three years and two commanders previous. Nobody had ever closed the loop on the paperwork, and so far as the unit was concerned (and, the post commander… A most particular sort, when it came to things like this…), the weapons still existed and were unaccounted for. Cue the truncation of multiple and sundry careers. Interestingly, when they went to check the central registry for where those weapons were assigned, the result was that both weapons were never marked “destroyed”, and were still supposedly assigned to that unit.
Had another case, wherein an “extra” weapon was discovered in one of our Arms Rooms after return from a deployment in Iraq. Cue mass fear and panic when it was discovered that said weapon’s serial number did not match anything in unit records. The matter was escalated to the central register, and that serial number was returned as belonging to a Reserve unit in the Midwest that had never, ever deployed. Queries to them then led to the revelation that a.) they had that weapon on hand, and that b.) the unit who’d “found” that weapon in their Arms Room had mis-recorded the serial number… Turned out, the actual weapon had been issued by the installation to one of the mid-deployment augmentees, and the paperwork to put that weapon on our books never went through, ‘cos nobody knew where that weapon with that (mis-recorded…) serial number was… When you looked at it, the serial number did look like it had a 5, rather than a six. Due to poor stamping and an insufficiently attentive armorer.
I could relate dozens of tales, but I’m here to tell you, the idea that the Army knows where all of its toys are at, at any given moment? LOL… That just ain’t the case. The Marines might, given that they bar-code everything, but the rest of the services? It is to laugh, and laugh heartily.
@Kirk
I didn’t mean the military did not have its issues too. Sure, in the military systems there are those who simply do not do their jobs or are malicious in some way or holes in their system when it comes to firearms.
But the military has verifiable standards and controls for such accountability the rest of the government doesn’t have and for the rest of the government its a free for all mostly for people who routinely exploit the lack of solid controls and verifiable standards.
For example, the government law enforcement agencies mostly let their personnel keep their firearms with them where the military requires military personnel firearms to be turned in at the end of a duty shift (in most cases).
Another example, the government law enforcement agencies routinely issues firearms to people who have no need of a firearm simply because they are in an office where firearms issue is the norm for the actual law enforcement people there.
Another example, federal law enforcement is have an issued firearm they are required to keep with them so they are, once issued, removed from federal inventory and then shown as ‘expendable duty equipment’ in a different system and no longer tracked as a firearm specifically. This activity by government agencies (not military) allows more firearms to go go ‘missing’ or in the same anti-gun claimed situation end up in the hands of, for example, family members who may be children or prone to suicide ideation.
Another example, its not uncommon for federal law enforcement agents to show up at work without their firearm because they don’t know where its at and after a brief ‘internal investigation’ that is not public they are issued another firearm and the cycle starts all over again because they have ‘rights’ to remain employed.
Another example, government law enforcement agencies routinely issue firearms to personnel who have been convicted of disqualifying low level felonies (e.g. domestic abuse) after they became employed and they are permitted to keep these firearms with them every where they go because they have ‘rights’ to be employed. Comparatively, Out here in the civilian world if you have been convicted of felony domestic abuse you are not permitted to have a firearm because you are considered dangerous but for federal law enforcement its treated as a right even though those domestic abusers are also under the civilian standards considered dangerous and the incidents of domestic abuse by federal law enforcement personnel are more than 180 times what it is in the civilian world.
Not only does the other government agencies allow their firearms accountability system to be exploited by the casualness of the system and lack of solid controls it also encourages it by allowing possession of firearms to be a ‘right’ of the ’employees’ to keep and use as they decide and lacks controls for full accountability.
@Kirk,
Also as another example of lack of suitable controls over firearms by government agencies (not including military); For all firearms under legal physical possession control of the civilian populace the incidents of firearms accidental firings are less than 0.0002%. For all firearms under physical possession control of federal law enforcement populace the incidents of firearms accidental firings are more than 2.3% which is ~10,000 times more likelihood than the civilian populace.
The civilian populace is ~10,000 times more likely to be accidentally shot by, and is in more danger of being shot accidentally shot by, federal law enforcement than they are by any ordinary citizen legally possessing a gun. Society is literally safer with ordinary citizens legally possessing guns than they are around federal law enforcement possessing guns.
When federal law enforcement accidentally shoots someone and they die its an ‘non-public records internal agency investigation’ and over 98% of the time they are ‘cleared’ of any wrong doing and have ‘qualified immunity’. But in the civilian gun community an accidental shooting where someone dies its basically a ‘criminal investigation’ and the gun owner can be held liable for manslaughter and can become a convicted felon and its plastered all over the news.
on the other hand…i’ve encountered brand new guns cut-up and tossed in the dumpster….Glocks, MP-5’s and Benelli shotguns….
and now Biden wants to give guns to thousands of new IRS agents…
had a deuce and a half pull up outside of our office one night…guys said they got back from the field problem too late and the arms room was closed…and wanted to know if they could leave their cargo with us…turned out to be about a hundred M-16’s and an M-60…sitting on that unsecured all night made for some sense of uneasiness…thought it might be a set-up…..
“Its suspected that more than 18,000 government firearms went ‘missing’ in the month of April 2022“
18K lost/stolen in one month?
That’s interesting, are we talking CONUS or worldwide?
whenever we were issued new weapons…they often just told us to keep our old ones…nobody wanted to do the paperwork…did they list them as lost or stolen…who knows?…lot of the guys worried about that…I told them to either shut up about it or throw the damn thing in the river…..
Government guns don’t get stolen or lost; they’re walked…
Hey, it’s only one gun every other day for six years. That’s not too bad a loss ratio. I mean it could have been 2200 guns over six years.I was going to post that I saw it hitchhiking at the Fort Irwin on ramp, but I see that somebody else saw it at MacDonald’s so I must have seen a different 240.
Have they checked Afghanistan?
Ha!
“Have they checked Afghanistan?”
Ya beat me to it.
*Snicker*… 😉
Under the terms of Trump’s surrender agreement with the Taliban, we left thousands with the Afghan army
@Miner49er
Trump didn’t surrender to the Taliban. He and the Afghan government reached an agreement with the Taliban to cease hostilities and withdraw U.S. troops and the ‘materials’ (except for that given to the Afghan government) in a staged withdrawal.
Biden on the other hand ignored the staged withdrawal plan and just basically went with a surrender stance of ‘leave now and run quickly and leave the stuff cause I say so cause i’m the president’ and didn’t give time for the original plan to work thus the people were concentrated on and there wasn’t enough time to move the ‘material’ in Bidens new very short time frame. So the stuff got left behind surrendered to the Taliban along with the rest of the country.
Biden literally, in actions, surrendered the stuff and the country to the Taliban.
“Biden on the other hand ignored the staged withdrawal plan and just basically went with a surrender stance of ‘leave now and run quickly and leave the stuff… “
Biden did not ‘leave now and run quickly’, as a matter of fact he extended trumps deadline 4 months to give American contractors and other allies more time to get out of the country.
“President Joe Biden plans to pull all military forces out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, ending U.S. presence in the Middle Eastern nation by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that spurred America’s longest war.
The move will extend military presence in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 withdrawal date previously negotiated by former President Donald Trump.“
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/13/biden-withdraw-us-troops-afghanistan-sept-11-not-may-1/7205023002/
@Miner49er
“extended trumps deadline 4 months to give American contractors and other allies more time to get out of the country.”
He extended the deadline but didn’t actually execute until the taliban started setting deadlines then it was “run away leave the stuff behind” at the end of his extension.
MINOR Miner49er Did someone rewrite history for you? USA Today’s article is OPINION not factual. The withdrawal was supposed to be in phases bae on security concerns. Sleep Joe, your “hero” (sic) decided to do it all at one time with no plan but put the troops on planes and leave. Wake up!
Yes, because Trump was at the helm and fumbled massively the extraction of personnel and material’s. Ass clowns, all three of you.
we’ll never know how Trump would have handled this…but it’s pretty clear Biden botched it….
How have the terms of Trump’s border control been going since day one of the Puppet Administration? Priorities…
Besides, the Puppet admin completely altered the planned Afghanistan withdrawal. They wanted to own it until they didn’t, just like the vaxxes.
MINOR Miner49er, IT was your Sleepy Joe who left all of those weapons with the Taliban. The dummy did not have the common sense to take our weapons with us. But then you are not the sharpest tack in the draw.
“The dummy did not have the common sense to take our weapons with us“
No, the terms of trumps surrender agreement with the Taliban required that the US leave the weapons and materials with the Afghan army.
The failure was the collapse of the Afghan army, because Trump had wasted his four years with inadequate and corrupt training and organization of our partnership with the Afghan army.
When Biden entered office Trump handed him a shit sandwich of four years of negligence and outright conflict with our own military leadership regarding Afghanistan.
Do you even remember when Trump said he was smarter than our generals?
“I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me,” he bragged in November 2015. “They don’t know much because they’re not winning,” he reiterated in June 2016.“
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/generals-want-nothing-to-do-with-trump-0a5ad80cb682/
Wow, when Trump is indicted under the Espionage Act, I bet you will howl like Georgia under Sherman.
Miner49er, ok so let’s play something out. Let’s say that Trump is still president and still followed through in his plan to leave Afganistan. Let’s say that US forces started getting attacked during the withdrawal. Do you think Trump would let that go? You and I can both agree that Trump has an ego, so I think we could both agree that Trump would have responded with extreme aggression. Unlike Biden who droned an innocent family.
Stop holding water for Biden and call out the failure when they happen.
Miner49er, I have another question, if the Afganistan withdrawal had gone as planned and was peaceful, would you have given a kudos to Trump?
MINOR Miner49er BULL SHIT! Sleepy Joe left behind hundreds of HUMVEES, tanks, artillery pieces which were US property ALONE. Not counting that arms that we gave the ANA. YOU do know what ANA is?
Miner says: “No, the terms of trumps surrender agreement with the Taliban required that the US leave the weapons and materials with the Afghan army.”
So basically when it could be seen that the taliban began to overrun cities and provinces in the south and the east Biden was too stupid to change course. I’m tired of your fucking lies Miner. Biden owns this unmitigated disaster wholly. Blood on his hands for the deaths of 13 of our nation’s finest.
And American equipment left in Afghanistan is now being discovered in Indian occupied Kashmir. Not only firearms but also radios and NVGs.
Need that for deer season.
In full song, it will definitely blow out a lung.
And everything else in the abdominal cavity…
Your Afghanistan references remind one of my Tee shirts that reads, “I refuse to be lectured on gun control by a government that armed the Taliban.” Available from Warrior12.com….plus many others great patriotic/2A Tees…..”This is the government our Founding Fathers warned about”…….”My gun is not a threat….unless you are”………”I’ll control my guns, you control your kids”…….”I’m 1776% sure you’re not taking my guns” Check them out.
Awesome! I’ve gotta get one of those t-shirts.
StLPro2A,
Excellent. Thanks for posting this. Going to have a look right now.
Walked into gun store couple of months ago and they had a Vietnam era M-60 on display. Asking price was $40,000.
last offer for mine was 29k…and it never even made it to Vietnam!….
Has anyone tried looking in Afghanistan?
I’m starting to wonder if The Associated Press is really the one running this country.
RE: “It is illegal for California civilians to possess machine guns unless they hold a state-issued permit. The state Department of Justice gives permits only to those with a proven need — machine gun manufacturers, for instance.”
The title should be the state “Department of Discrimination.”
Hide it well, keep yer mouth shut.
Where’s my machine gun?!?😎🤑🙄
Just attach a copy of Hunter’s laptop hard drive to it.
They’ll NEVER find it then.
Hehehe! 😂
I cannot imagine who would steal a single machine gun, now if it was a T-62 or a BMP, I would suggest my farmer friends from Bucha did it, Alex, Alec and Sasha have a tractor and they know how to use it.
Well above all else its,,,, illegal.
And that makes all the difference in the world.
Have I seen that missing machine gunm? Fck No , and I’ve not found any free gunms at the Gunm Free zones either.
Ask Prez Biden where the missing military weapons go. Well no, forget that because He REALLY doesn’t remember. Some Presidents might lie about not knowing something, however Our illustrious Leader Of The Free World actually has no clue as to what happened yesterday.
” No Joseph, the zipper goes in the front.”
Yes this is Our President , aren’t We proud.
A friend said he lost one similar to this one in a boating accident. Seems odd since we live in a dessert.
Update: He now says he will loose it tomorrow!
Your Friend Was Sailing In A Prairie Schooner!
No, no, no, Marsupial One. King Dribblecup is playing FOUR dimensional chess…
Just look how he cleverly disguised a raised middle finger as a fistbump when recently meeting with ( kissing the ass of) the despised Saudi King. That right there is truly high level gamesmanship.
“Just look how he cleverly disguised a raised middle finger as a fistbump when recently meeting with ( kissing the ass of) the despised Saudi King.”
So you have your panties all in a wad because of a fist bump, yet you have no problem with Donald Trump bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia in the Muslim Sword Dance of Loyalty. Fascinating double standard.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eFOyCwCRTgw
I guess it’s not surprising, given the fact that the conservatives are running a Turkish citizen who is a Muslim, owns a home in Turkey and is a veteran of the Turkish army and voted in the 2018 Turkish national election, for the Governorship of Pennsylvania.
There goes that infamous miner49 goal post shifting. He’s talking about one thing and miner moves the goal posts to amplify an argument he want to have on another thing with something else.
We get it miner49, you don’t like Trump and routinely masturbate at the thought of Biden and like dacian being in love with Hitler and extolling his virtues you want to do the same for your hero Biden.
Oh yeah, Miner, I forgot it was orange man that called out the sauds shortly before a middle east tour to have oil commitments to turn up the spigots shortly after getting caught selling a million barrels of crude to his cohort in China. You remember, strategic reserve oil, for US defense? Yes indeedy, all DJT’s continued shady deals.
Oh, by the way, Xiden said he takes Secret files home all of the time… but that don’t worry you none.
“Oh yeah, Miner, I forgot it was orange man that called out the sauds shortly before a middle east tour to have oil commitments to turn up the spigots… “
No, you have that exactly backwards. It was Donald Trump who pressured the Saudis to cut production, thus leading to the present high price for oil seen on the world market.
It was important to trumps owners, the fossil fuel industry, to cut back on production and raise prices and profits.
“APRIL 30, 20207:07 AMUPDATED 2 YEARS AGO
Special Report: Trump told Saudi: Cut oil supply or lose U.S. military support – sources
By Timothy Gardner, Steve Holland, Dmitry Zhdannikov, Rania El Gamal“
“The effort illustrated Trump’s strong desire to protect the U.S. oil industry from a historic price meltdown as governments shut down economies worldwide to fight the virus. It also reflected a telling reversal of Trump’s longstanding criticism of the oil cartel, which he has blasted for raising energy costs for Americans with supply cuts that usually lead to higher gasoline prices. Now, Trump was asking OPEC to slash output.“
“Reuters asked Trump about the talks in an interview Wednesday evening at the White House, at which the president addressed a range of topics involving the pandemic. Asked if he told the crown prince that the U.S. might pull forces out of Saudi Arabia, Trump said, “I didn’t have to tell him.”
“I thought he and President Putin, Vladimir Putin, were very reasonable,” Trump said. “They knew they had a problem, and then this happened.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-trump-saudi-specialreport/special-report-trump-told-saudi-cut-oil-supply-or-lose-u-s-military-support-sources-idUSKBN22C1V4
The facts of history don’t change.
And the fact is, Trump done snookered y’all.
MINOR Miner49er. That was Obuma the Phony who did the bowing, NOT Trump. Nice try.
“Governorship of Pennsylvania.”
Come again?
senate seat…and that guy owns lots of houses…but not in Pennsylvania…of course his opponent has a curious income stream, as well…all this should come out in the debates…if they ever happen….
how many presidents have all but gotten on their knees and kissed some Saudi’s ass…nothing new there….
Biden couldn’t play tic-tac-toe against a chicken.
LOL
Good one
Would be awesome to watch him lose to a chicken though.
Even the army has boating accidents?
non-com in charge of an arms room is a good friend to have…..especially in the reserve or the guard
Every conflict the US Government gets involved with, direct physically leaves large stockpiles arms behind or just straight forward dumped with no accounting. Then we have the arms aid package deals we send all over the world to “our shady so-called friendly’s” with no accounting where they finely end up. Not to mention the new this week Ukraine almost $3 billion package will be the largest single chunk of the total of $13.7 billion that the United States has sent and announced since Russia’s February invasion. Where…. pray tell in the end, will that big chunk- piece of pie finely land on who’s mess kit! “There will be no accounting of the lost and stolen”.
The US enables war across the globe. Follow the money.
What’s Russian been doing in Ukraine since 2014 and Syria? Not to mention other places in the Caucuses.
You know what they say. It takes two. Russia was fighting people funded by us. The US gave Ukraine nearly $1 billion for “security, programmatic, and technical assistance” and $2 billion in loan guarantees in 2014-2015. We funded everyone possible near Syria, trying to take out Assad. We made sure the civil war drug out and displaced a record number of people, not to mention the piles of bodies. They blamed it on climate change in order to a) push the climate change narrative, and b) sweep the consequences of Nobel Peace Prize Obama’s terrible policies under the rug.
at least they’re killing russians….
Hardly anything to get butt hurt about when one considers what that idiot Biden left behind during his blundering Afghanistan pullout.
Oh, the M240 machine gun? They are priced between $6,600 and $9,000 each! 64,000 machine guns including the M240, M249, the RPK 7.62m and the NSV were left behind for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I hope that stolen M240 magically finds its way up some old senile mans &#@*
I don’t give a rat’s behind who was or is president, this is mismanagement and criminal on the part of our so called leadership.
Well,
I worked across an Army Reserve unit and the armorers would break a part in two, send it in for a complete replacement part then wait a decent amount of time and send in the second broken part. Once again they’d get another replacement part. That’s how they built guns and sold them. They were eventually caught.
If you were a mechanic in the Air Force and failed to leave without a complete set of tools, using the above approach, you were considered an idiot. And I wasn’t in the Air Force.
Any official reports in the US about number of missing weapons is an official lie. Just Sayin’
Just sayin’ Anon, and you did nothing to turn these people in? Then you are as GUILTY as the people you allege did the deed.
this sort of thing was [and is]pretty common…just an extra source of income…remember that flap when they lost those 40mm grenades?….were they ever recovered?
WHAT NOW , REALLY NEED BETTER GUARD ON WEAPONS.
ONE DANGEROUS GUN …
UUUM CAN GO FULL AUTO … HOPE CAN FIND SOONER , THAT LATER ….
Who told you a machine gun can GO FULL AUTO!?
Hope whomever tossed this over the fence has also tossed several cans of ammo over with it. These are hungry beasts and chew up a huge amount of money/ammo very quickly.
you’d be surprised what’s discussed in those bars outside of Bragg…..
It was NTC. Not Bragg.
NTC!
Been there twice, got T-shirts…..also OPFOR are not a joke. They will kick your azz.
Oh goodie, I get to tell my favorite missing weapon story! As an ANG/AF logistics guy I spent several years as the Inventory troop – one of the check and balances in the AF’s accountable equipment system. In the small arms world I was the guy who did the physical count and kept track of the serial numbers – both the mobility weapons we stored for the rest of the wing and the “in-use” weapons that the SF and aircrew kept in their areas. During one of our rotations in support of NATO in the Balkans, one of our loadmasters took off his M-9 shoulder rig and laid it on top of a pallet of humanitarian meals while working on an issue with rigging, promptly forgot he’d done so until a few seconds after the load slid out the ramp and door – bye-bye M-9! At least they were smart enough to call back and let us know so I could start the paperwork to account for the lost pistol. AFOSI from the nearest AD base showed up after the folks got back from the rotation, did their interviews, we filled out all the forms and I ran the computer transaction to drop accountability, deleted the pistol from our records and had the Equipment gal order a replacement. So some lucky Bosnian got a barely used Beretta with a full mag (I forget how many additional mags they carried – 4 maybe?) along with his bagged nasty, I got to do a bunch of paperwork and talk to a couple of easily amused OSI agents and the aircrew – including the pistol dropper – got medals. Aim High – Air Force!
How much spam are they going to get saying someone saw the ATF handing it to mexican cartel members?
If the time comes that you need it, laws will be a thing of the past and your likely nemesis the government.
Completely unrelated but, anyone know a good source for linked ammo?
We left a shitton behind in Afghanistan.
you’ve got a friend in the army…no?…then get one…buddy of mine was the pyrotechnics officer at a large army base…fourth of July at his house was a real blast!.
Weapons being stolen from the military [and pretty much anything else that’s not tied down] has been going on since there have been Armies. They tell me that an SA80 is worth, if you can get your hands on one £GB20,000 at the very least and 5.56 ATO at least £GB10.00 [ around $US13] a round. Recently a couple of UK Army NCO’s were locked up for selling 9mm NATO rounds at £GB5.00 [around $US6.00 ] a round so it happens everywhere and is not unique to the USA .
In Russia it would seem that some bugger has sold of most of everything not tied down judging how ineffective the Russian have been in Ukraine. Possibly the reason for the over use of Artillery because is ‘where have all the bullets gone’? Not to mention rations, clothing, and fuel
Overuse of artillery??? That’s a hoot. Haven’t really bothered with studying Soviet Era tactics, have you? Thought you’d mentioned something about being an armorer in the UK. Even a basic discussion around others would have informed you that Russians primarily rely on mass and firepower. What that actually means is overwhelming their opponents with artillery bombardments and quickly maneuvering forces using mechanized infantry and armor to seize their objectives. Fortunately, their armored assets are getting picked off through the combined use of precision long range fires and a mix of armed/unarmed ISR. But you could also take the time to maybe google (or DuckDuckGo) something before talking out of your fifth point of contact? Russian stockpiles of ammo are pretty cheap–cheaply made too–and plentiful. Or they were before some mysterious ‘smoking incident’ sent one up in flames last week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_operation
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE231.html
https://mca-marines.org/blog/gazette/seven-principles-of-soviet-tactical-doctrine/