Afgans been getting bad ammunition
The NY Times (emphasis mine):
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.
Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law.
It is a long article. Somewhat sensationalist. Looks like some kids (18, 22 and 25 years old) found a source of soviet ammo and sold it. This is the kind of story that they will make into a move.
Read it here.
UPDATE:
This photo from the US Army shows the state of the boxes of ammo they were receiving
Hat Tip: Danger Room
Hard to tell, but it is probably corrosive as well. Sad to see that our troops are getting sub-par ancient surplus ammo.
Most of that Afghan ammo looks like Yugo 7.62×39.
We are getting it in Iraq too. We have commercial 5.56 ammo purchased on US Army consignment that throws primer caps on nearly every round. Anecdotally we have determined three rounds to be the nominal failure point. About every three rounds, one of the caps has worked its way somewhere crucial, causing a malfunction. The two most often seen are trigger seizure when the cap acts as a wedge and your trigger jams, and caps that ride cartridges into the breech wedging themselves in. Often this jam has to be cleared by the armorer with a mallet and rod. I have personally had one instance of a runaway gun when the cap worked its way into the trigger jamming it in auto fire despite being selected to single. I have heard at least one story of a catastrophic failure resulting in a totaled weapon. On the upside I have been getting in alot of failure drills and transition drills. Supposedly there is a turn in point on one of the FOB’s trying to collect up this ammo, but I have no info, it is just something I heard. I make a point of publicizing this failure issue at every opportunity lest someone get killed because of it. I am reminded of legends associated with the early days of the M-16, GI’s lying dead in the mud with cleaning rod in one hand, and a locked up M-16 in the other.
They did make a movie with a plot similar to this “Afgans been getting bad ammunition” blog story; namely, Lord Of War (Nicholas Cage)….
I knew it was a shady deal as soon as soon as I saw that the owner of Botach Tactical was involved.