No Soviet surplus ammo?

[KrankyKraut]

Idle musings, for sure, but...

Surfing the 'Net for surplus ammo, one can find stuff from almost all conceivable former Warsaw Pact countries, plus some other ex-or current-socialist states, but I have not seen any genuine Soviet military surplus ammo (i.e. in military cans, with Red Army markings, etc.). I wonder why? They have cleaned out their arsenals of surplus rifles, so why isn't the ammo available? I wonder if they think that they may have some use for it in the future. The other ex-Warsaw Pact countries probably think that the chance of another war in Europe are slim to none. I wonder if the ex-Soviet countries think the same...

Or perhaps there's a much simpler explanation for it.

 

[White Horseradish]

Well, first of all, 7.62x54R is still in service in the Russian army. For the past ten years or so, there have been regular expenditures of it in Chechnya. Same is true for 5.45. 7.62x39 has likely been passed on to the client states when they switched to 5.45, so some of the stuff you are buying may in fact be Russian. I know of at least one instance where someone bought cases of Russian ammo that came from Czech Republic.

 

[armoredman]

Actually, 7.62x54R is still in service in all the countries surplusing it, in light and medium machineguns. Longest serving military cartridge ever. I would love to get some Russian stuff for my Russian rifle....

 

[Langenator]

Actually, a lot of the surplus is coming from former ComBloc countries that have recently become part of NATO-Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic.

I'd imagine that they're transitioning over to NATO standard calibers-which would mean 7.62x51 for their GPMGs and sniper weapons, and 5.56x45 for their assault rifles.

Most of the actual surplus I've seen has been in 7.62x54R, non-belted, from these countries, plus a goodly amount of 8mm Mauser (some of that, oddly enough, from Romania, which was supposedly using standard ComBloc calibers).

 

[Moonclip]

The former Yugoslavia area still uses 8x57 in some sniper and machine guns I've heard making it the oldest military caliber still in use I'd think. I've seen Romanian too but I have read that Romania was one of the more backward and poorer areas of the Com Bloc so they may have had old WW2 castoffs for a while until getting the SKS and AK.

 

[White Horseradish]

Actually, 7.62x54R is still in service in all the countries surplusing it, in light and medium machineguns. Longest serving military cartridge ever. I would love to get some Russian stuff for my Russian rifle....

Yeah, but not all of them are using it actively right now...