The crawl on Fox news says we are sending 20 mil rounds of ammo to Ukraine.Is this coming from our military stock? I have zero problem with this but our shortages have been blamed on the components required to manufacture ammo being in short supply for us shooters. Does the government have a supply of ammo components ?

Your jaw would probably fall off if you knew how many rounds of just 5.56 ammo our military has stockpiled

My guess is we are buying it 'locally' and sending to Ukraine. Makes no sense to ship 20M rounds by boat from US (which wont get there in time to matter, unless Putin wants to go on safari) or by air (cost more than the ammo)

How many men of fighting age do they have willing to make the invasion of cities more costly than it's worth?

Remember their woke crowd almost had a re-communist revolution not 6 years ago. Every last one of those assholes should be on the front lines so they can range the Russians.

Do they not have artillery? Mortars? Mines?

Small weapons aren't going to be much help if we aren't sending Javelins and Stingers by the hundreds.

Not sure what caliber the Ukrainian military uses currently, but the US keeps stock piles of ammunition calibers of all types just for this reason. We supplied Afghanistan, Iraq and and many other third world crap hole insurgencies with tons of ammunition to throw at each other.

The real story depicted in the movie "War Dogs" was pretty surprising to me, it incredible at what's going on behind the scenes at any given time.

When I was in the CG, we bought ammo for use five years out(including training and combat allocated ammo). Our national forces rotate pre-positioned ships that essentially float around in a given section of the world waiting for shit to pop off. Those ships have ammo, gear, trucks, hummr, backhoes, dozers etc. aboard. I would hazard that we have over a billion rounds of small arms ammo just sitting in magazines across the nation and aboard ships. Sending a few million rounds is not going to affect our stocks or current production. It’s already been made and has been bought and paid for years ago.

It would be interesting to know what kind of ammo we're sending them. When it comes to small arms, as has been pointed out here elsewhere, the Ukrainians use a lot of 5.45x39 and apparently still have healthy stockpiles of it.

FWIW, we could buy 7.62x54R anywhere in the region and the source/s would almost certainly be close enough geographically to make shipping a relatively minor cost. I would guess the same is true for heavier automatic, anti-aircraft and artillery rounds as well.

Fun fact. Our government/military accounts for ammunition not by each but by the short ton.

Edit: nevermind, I suck at math.

quote:

Originally posted by sig226fan:
Not sure what caliber the Ukrainian military uses currently

For rifle calibers, primarily 5.45x39, but also 7.62x39, 5.56x45, and 7.62x54R, along with small amounts of 7.62x51.

Don't forget, our civilian ammo shortage is manufactured by the two organizations who control 95% of civilian mfg.

The admitted recently to keeping volume down, so profits will be high.

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
How many men of fighting age do they have willing to make the invasion of cities more costly than it's worth?

Remember their woke crowd almost had a re-communist revolution not 6 years ago.

Huh? They did not have any "revolution", "re-communist" or otherwise in 2016.

You probably mixed Ukraine up with some other country.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
It would be interesting to know what kind of ammo we're sending them. When it comes to small arms, as has been pointed out here elsewhere, the Ukrainians use a lot of 5.45x39 and apparently still have healthy stockpiles of it.

Obama made them destroy 15,000 tons of ammo along with 400,000 rifles back in 2005-06.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
I would hazard that we have over a billion rounds of small arms ammo just sitting in magazines across the nation and aboard ships.

There is waaaaaayyyyy more than a billion rifle cartridges in storage. Hell, the military has, in any given month, around 400,000 short tons of all kinds of ammunition that is now excess, obsolete, or serviceable and can be sent for recycling or treatment. I've also seen consumption figures for rifle training and the demand there is well over 1 billion rounds.

We probably bought the ammo in the Czech Republic, Poland, or Serbia and trucked it to the nearest Ukrainian border.

We supply military aid to lots of countries, and not all of them use NATO standard ammo. So, our government regularly purchases ammo in non-nato calibers to distribute to allies or as aid. We don’t stockpile as much as we do for the rounds we actually use, but it is needed enough that delivering 20m rounds probably isn’t a big deal. As mentioned, the ammo it’s self has likely never seen US soil. Probably sourced over in Europe either from a vendor or existing stockpile. While we can produce a surprising amount of Russian ammunition and weapons domestically, it is usually cheaper to buy it in bulk elsewhere. Heck, the Russians would probably love to get some RPG launchers made by Airtronics. Those things are much nicer than the originals!

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
It would be interesting to know what kind of ammo we're sending them. When it comes to small arms, as has been pointed out here elsewhere, the Ukrainians use a lot of 5.45x39 and apparently still have healthy stockpiles of it.

Obama made them destroy 15,000 tons of ammo along with 400,000 rifles back in 2005-06.

I thought Dick Lugar organized that.

I bet sigforum could match that amount, with enough left over

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Obama made them destroy 15,000 tons of ammo along with 400,000 rifles back in 2005-06.

I believe you, but in the multitude of pictures out there every Ukrainian and their dog seems to be carrying an AK74, and the only ammo that works in them is 5.45. At the same time, there don't seem to be many countries in Central/Eastern Europe that still manufacture 5.45 ammo - the Ukrainians lost their own plant producing 5.45 some years ago. Until we see massive transfers to using other arms and ammunition then I think we have to assume they still have plentiful supplies of those articles.

The inventory: https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri...istance-for-ukraine/

Ironic, the same guys trying to take my firearms are sending a boatload of those same firearms, along with ammo, to Ukraine. I suspect there is little expectation they will be returned and I am interested in the background check process.

FWIW, I have no problem equipping the Ukrainian people with weapons.