Tuesday, April 10, 2012

This time, the arms race is domestic

For a scale comparison, the Army in 2010 ordered 200 million rounds of its improved M855A1 5.56 round for use in Afghanistan, describing that amount as a 12- to 15-month supply.

7 comments:

SWIFT said...

"This time, the arms race is domestic". Yep, and when the time comes to stand eye ball to eye ball, like at Lexington, I wonder who'll blink? Or, will another shot be heard around the world? Where ever the next Lexington takes place in CONUS, I hope the patriots are better led than another Cpt. Parker. It always gives me heartburn when I read of the battle.

Anonymous said...

Are these the .40 S&W rounds that make you into a "Designated Marksman" with the semi-auto handgun or sub-machine gun? How's that drop/windage table look at my range? What... no training beyond 50M?! What about Cope's 200M Glock class? Agency wouldn't pay for it! Bwahh haha.

Doesn't .223 weigh less than .40S&W? Uncle said it was the best possible compromise for US infantry, and we can carry more rounds than with those heavy .30's. Huh, go figger.

Battery powered megaphones or radio-remote speakers might be needed to facilitate the surrender of Federal Agents to numerically inferior patriots.

Just tryin' to think a little ahead.

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

I think that I will stick with my trusty M1 Garand and that 30-06 round as well as my Remington 700 in 308 that has been sighted in at 800 to 1000 yards. I guess those puny 40's won't be too much of a worry for me. Just planning ahead.

Anonymous said...

I'll be boycotting Federal ammo for this.
And thats fine with me,cause Remington makes a better .40 S&W load anyway.

I would like to ask fellow patriots to join me in this boycott.

Those corporations that choose to do business with illegitimate entities of the out of control federal government don't deserve our business.

Californian said...

"Improved M855A1 round"...that's rich.

Hey guys! Let's pay 2x per round so that American Soldiers can have a new cartridge that's rougher on their weapons (higher chamber and operating pressures than M855), is only marginally more accurate (not in full-on mass production like -855), has slightly higher velocity, and otherwise offers basically no improvements whatsoever.
But it's "green" ammo! That's important, right? Appeasing the enviro-whackos rather than getting quality ammo to the troops?
(related to that, I find it darkly amusing that -855A1 was supposedly developed as a response to concerns over lead contamination of Stateside training facilities, yet the Army's big priority was getting it to troops in-theater first).

ShortTimer said...

For those who missed it last time, I've copy & pasted my comment from the last time this came up:

To give some idea as to how the big numbers make sense, a USBP trainee goes through about 2000 rounds before leaving the academy during training, practice quals, and basic proficiency. A class is 50 students, so that's over 100,000 rounds per class, not counting remedials, which may bump the number up to 110,000 rounds or so.

In 2007-2012, the academy was graduating some 100+ classes per year, resulting in easily 10,000,000 rounds per year just to new agent training.

A USBP agent goes through quarterly firearms qualification, which is a 72 round course, usually with some additional training tossed in, so about 400 rounds per year minimum that they will fire in the course of training.

Ammo issue is usually 150-300 rounds per quarter (depending on stations' budgets and ammo availability), so each agent will get 600-1200 rounds per year issued to them, of which they might only use 400 for official training - the rest is proficiency ammo for them on their time, or sometimes for proficiency fire after quals if there's more training scheduled.

Take let's say 25,000 agents times around 1000 rounds per year and you get some 25,000,000 rounds per year. That's not including firearms instructors (who go through ammo at the cyclic) or Bortac/Borstar and SRT or whatever they're calling it these days.

Spread this out over a potential 5 year contract to supply up to 450,000,000 rounds to DHS, and 125,000,000 could easily go to USBP alone, if not closer to 150-200M.

Add in the potential for what the academy was burning through in the last 5 years of the hiring pushes and you're looking at over half that 450M going to USBP. Hiring for USBP is down, but ATK has to plan for it anyway.

Add in other branches of DHS, US Marshals, FBI, US Customs, etc., almost all of whom use the .40 S&W as their primary round, and you end up with a very plausible, normal number to base a contract off of.

US Marshal service just had a hiring push for 5000 applicants - if they take even 1000 of those, with training similar to USBP, that puts them in the 2 million round mark, if over 5 years, 10 million round mark just for new hires. Add in quarterly qualifications, and you're looking at millions upon millions more rounds.

450 million rounds is a good forecast number for the 5 year period (1 + 4 extension).

Hope that clears this up a bit.

bloodyspartan said...

You guys are not looking at this logically, This is not for Battle.

It is for EXECUTIONS!

KNEEL DOWN AND DIE!