
Germany's military missing over 60k rounds of ammunition - everybodyknows
https://m.dw.com/en/germany-military-ammunition/a-54214817
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steve19
60,000 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.

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hdjrkrmfkt
US army fired on average 250k rounds to kill one enemy combatant in Iraq.

[https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-
forced-t...](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)

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kapnobatairza
Another way the movie Starship Troopers would predict the Iraq War.

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tandr
Sorry, I miss the reference. Would you be kind and expand on it a bit?

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HomeDeLaPot
I 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...](https://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/dept/ammunition/rifle/5-point-56-nato)

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dasm
As 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.

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inetknght
That 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.

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gao8a
One 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

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trhway
USSR/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...

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dmurray
As 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.

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cal5k
This 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.

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gentleman11
This 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

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linuxhansl
Little 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).

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40acres
Hold 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.

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emptystacks
The sequel to the $2B missing wirecard cash. What's next to complete the
trilogy of missing things in germany?

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xenonite
n quarantined persons missing?

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gweinberg
In modern warfare that's enough to kill approximately 1 person.

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johnkoetsier
!!!

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Tuna-Fish
This 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.

