ammo to Syria?

[SSN Vet]

With all the buzz about the recent policy change to arm the Syrian opposition, there have been several news articles discussing the topic.

So I'm listening to the radio and some state dept. weenie says that small arms and ammo. are on being offered to "trustworthy" anti-government types training in Jordan. And when they move ont to interview a Syria "expert" he says that what the opposition desperately needs is ammunition.

So I also can't help wondering if the US supporting this fiasco won't drive ammo shortages even more.

And the little light in my head goes "ding" .... and I also can't help but wonder if that's what the massive DHS ammo purchases are really all about.

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[hso]

wonder if that's what the massive DHS ammo purchases are really all about

As has been explained repeatedly here the purchases are "massive" when you realize that DHS is composed of a large number of armed federal agencies ranging from the USCG to the Secret Service.

 

[MtnCreek]

Just a guess, but I would think they need 7.62x39 and DHS probably bought something more like .40sw. Arming Al-Qaeda; our tax dollars at work.

 

[SSN Vet]

That may be HSO...

but that doesn't really explain the congressional testimony that revealed that the DHS using 3-4 times the ammo. per man than the Army does?

 

[itsa pain]

ammo goes to everyone but regular americans we get scraps from the table by design

 

[Al Thompson]

but that doesn't really explain the congressional testimony that revealed that the DHS using 3-4 times the ammo. per man than the Army does?

More of an indictment of the Army's lack of training IMHO.

 

[Potatohead]

More of an indictment of the Army's lack of training IMHO.

yikes! thats not good. im goin to the range more than our military?

 

[Telekinesis]

yikes! thats not good. im goin to the range more than our military?

Most likely. I spoke with a friend enlisted in the Air Force and he said he has only qualified twice in six years and his only shooting outside of that was 50 rounds for fimiliarization in basic.

I don't see this as hurting the ammo situation here as most of the Syrians are likely shooting AKs and PKMs etc chambered in 7.62x39, 5.45x39, and 7.62x54r. I would even be willing to bet that the ammo we do give the rebels won't even be US sourced. During the cold war the soviets made a lot of that ammo and I would be willing to bet that for the most part it is still sitting in armories all over the world. It would be much simpler to buy, bribe, or steal that ammo than it would be to convert US ammo production to produce the needed ammunition.

 

[Ignition Override]

SSN Vet:

Last Wednesday Congress decided to investigate the plan by DHS to order so much ammo (some is only an option to buy).
This has delayed the order.

So far, it is only their intention to buy much of, but not all of what they bid proposed.

Some of the people who want everyone to believe that the order is linked to the shortage of available ammo are also the same people who took it out of circulation to resell it on GB or Armslist.

They are worried about the much lower prices compared to last winter and see their profits melting away.
The more anxiety they can create, the longer they can profit.

 

[moxie]

It's a common misconception that "the military" trains a lot with small arms. As telekinesis noted above, training is actually minimal. Infantry and special ops types get far more, but the rank and file get just a smidge. Shooting "expert" and getting a ribbon is shooting about 90% of 50 rounds into a big silhouette target.

Another misconception involves the idea that most soldiers/airmen/marines are routinely armed. Not so. At any given military installation the only people armed on a regular basis are the cops, the security police, AFOSI, CID, etc. This was only too apparent during the Ft. Hood shooting. The only guy with a gun was Maj. Hassan.

 

[frankenstein406]

What's the storm rifle chambered in? They found a container of them over there.

 

[HoosierQ]

Storm rifle? Sturmgewer perhaps? That's chambered in 7.93x33. I know they found a bunch of them over there...saw the YouTube video. Not sure where anybody's going to find much of a stockpile of that caliber but there is some of it around still.

 

[Outlaw Man]

I heard once that Richard Marcinko claimed that SEAL Team 6, when he was leading it, expended as much ammo as the entire Marine Corps on the West coast. Then, and even now, I'm not sure how impressive that is.

Unless there's one I don't know about, we should have a strategic ammo reserve, much like gasoline, that is bursting at the seams before we start giving it away. Only all that surplus should be in the hands of the militia, not a government warehouse.

 

[AethelstanAegen]

So I also can't help wondering if the US supporting this fiasco won't drive ammo shortages even more.

No. The ammo is almost certainly to come from places like Serbia or other former eastern bloc countries with large stockpiles. Yugoslavian surplus has been turning up in Syria for a while already.

not sure where anybody's going to find much of a stockpile of that caliber but there is some of it around still.

A factory in Serbia still makes the stuff.

 

[SSN Vet]

Trust me... I'm under no illusion as to how much training most military rates receive with small arms.

But the army is a HUGE organization with >500k heads active duty and another >500K reservist.

When we stuck our nose into the flap in Georgia, after the Russians came in and squished the Georgian forces like a bug, they found cases and cases of US supplied ARs on board ships docked in Poti.

I don't see any reason to think that we aren't going to be pumping the same into Syria.

Sounds like ammo demand too me.

 

[MUSIBIKE]

Ammunition production capability will increase to a point when all of this mess blows over, the prices must fall real hard. Looking over on GUNBOT.net and AMMOSEEK, at least things are becoming available again.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

More of an indictment of the Army's lack of training IMHO.

+1
I don't think they practice all that much. My best friend is career Marine Corps and I've outshot him every time we've ever been to the range. Of course most of his shooting has been in the Marine Corps and I've been doing it since I could keep both ends off the ground.

 

[Torian]

More of an indictment of the Army's lack of training IMHO.

Exactly the problem. Lucky to shoot twice a year, and usually it's only once a year, when we need to qualify. If we are on a deployment train up, we will get a bit more time on the range, but not much.

Law Enforcement or other specialized personnel in the Army (CID, MPs, etc) spend a lot more time shooting. The standard around here seems to be that if you are walking around with a loaded duty weapon on a daily basis, you get more ammo and more training.

 

[AethelstanAegen]

When we stuck our nose into the flap in Georgia, after the Russians came in and squished the Georgian forces like a bug, they found cases and cases of US supplied ARs on board ships docked in Poti.

I don't see any reason to think that we aren't going to be pumping the same into Syria.

I'm not quite sure where you're going with the Georgia comments. Of course Georgia had ARs...we've been selling them ARs for years, so there's no surprise there.

If your point is we won't be sending ARs to Syria, thus no effect on 5.56 demand, you're right. Most of the arms will very likely come from former eastern bloc countries all to happy to sell their surplus (which can include some pretty sophisticated stuff). Long story short, I do not see this impacting the demand and supply of ammo here.

This also definitely has nothing to do with DHS orders (and that's a topic we've certainly well beaten to death in a ton of other threads).

 

[HoosierQ]

I've always been interested in that little round because it was the first and because, let's face it, German arms manufacture has always been quality...somebody knew what they were doing when they came up with that round and I know that Germany, immediately post-war had interest in pursuing it further in their post-war, NATO firearms...but not having as strong of a vote as they might had they not just lost an apocalyptic war, they ended up going with "our boy", the 7.62x51.

 

[0to60]

There's nothing unusual about the US helping rebels fight gov'ts we aren't fond of. Back in the 60's when the US and Russia vied for presence in the middle east, we got Israel and the Russians got Syria. If US-friendly rebels overthrew the soviet backed Assad dynasty, that would be a good thing for us (on paper, at least).

 

[Ignition Override]

MUSIBIKE: True, and as Gunbot reported for over a week that 7.62x39 is .25/rd., and 5.45x39 at .18/round, it is much more than just available.
That is a steady, dramatic drop for both types. The ammo 'flippers' are starting to sweat....

As for Syria, some of our drones could help punch large holes in runways/taxiways used by fixed-wing planes. How quickly they
could be repaired, no idea.
The attack jets and helicopters are probably dispersed enough to make targeting in clusters very difficult.

 

[Killian]

The news articles I saw didn't just say the US would provide ammunition alone to the rebels, but small arms as well. One way to send a message that you are ACTUALLY supplying support is for your nations arms to show up on the battle field. If the US started sending a bunch of Russian or Chinese made guns to the battlefield, how would the rebels know they needed to be beholden to us? Is it a guarantee that message would filter down to lower ranks? I don't think so. But if some lowly rebel private holds a rifle that says "Made in America" on it, it becomes clear who is helping you. I would expect quite a lot of M16s to start showing up over the next few months. If and when they do, and the demand for 5.56 goes up as a consequence, prices on ammo will probably rise.

I'll go on record as saying also that I think arming Syria rebels smells a lot like arming Al Queda to me, and there is no telling where it will spin to if Al Queda takes over Syria. Between two devils, I'd pick Assad--the devil we know--because all he would be concerned with for the next 10 years is rebuilding his military and civilian infrastructure back to where it was in 2011. He'd be busy for a while doing just that and not so much focused on being a headache to anyone else. Quite a number of the fighters in Syria are foreign Islamists fighters, Tunisian or Libyan, and will soon be Egyptian, now that Morsi has said they won't prosecute Egyptians who want to fight in Syria. If the rebels win in Syria, I don't see why they wouldn't move on to other countries like Jordan or Saudi Arabia in the same way Libyans and Tunisians moved to Syria to fight.

Besides all that, messing around in the Middle East hasn't really netted the US a lot of gain in the last few years. Iraq goes to Iran, Libya falls and they kill our ambassadors, Afghanistan will go back to the Taliban. I'm having a tough time seeing how Hezbollah and Al Queda killing each other is a fight we want to step into on the side of to help Al Queda.

 

[moxie]

Very good analysis Killian.

 

[MtnCreek]

" Very good analysis Killian. "
+1.