Hey Free, feel like finding out how many new federal law enforcement agents were hired between 2007 and now in support of the SW border initiative? I bet that will really throw off the overall numbers. But then again, DHS is getting ready for "something" and for some reason, people without clearances or a specific need to know think they deserve to know. Maybe I will go consult a left wing or right wing website and try to find out.
*sigh*
Remember weeks ago when the very number - 1.6 billion- was a "conspiracy theory"?
I'm no stranger to understanding that "need to know" is not the same thing as "want to know". I'm not sure how Department of Homeland Security ammo purchases are secret squirrel. Then again, everything is class these days, so if you want to know how many paperclips our massive new internal security apparatus uses, that's probably classified too.
>>"92 Million Documents Classified in 2011 Alone"<<
The
entire premise of this thread is predicated on
numerous credible sources repeatedly being quoted in mainstream news (CNN, AP, CBS, NBC) on the consumption of ammo by the US military. Many of those quotes go back to 2005. I myself have posted direct links (in this thread and others) to Army Generals, Marine Officers, and logistics specialists in charge of industry-specific publications focused on ammunition sales and production who each stated we used about 70 million rounds per year in Iraq. The annual consumption of ammo in Iraq and Afghanistan has been
repeatedly quoted as being between 70 million and 120 million rounds per year, depending on the year, various operations, and the sources involved. In looking at the years specified, I can tell you that I researched the years 2004, 2005 and 2006 as the height of many large scale operations abroad. I can also tell you I Googled the hell out of this topic on about a half dozen occasions and never once came up with the concrete numbers Scott came up with in such a concise and readable format. Scotth 's post is the very first of its kind I've seen/found
anywhere across dozens of news sites, blogs, "waste watchdog sites" and the like. Based on Scotth's numbers - and assuming that one unspecified "government report" is accurate, then I now have to throw out perhaps a half dozen different credible sources as being wrong on US ammo consumption.
If
Scotth 's numbers are accurate, then the buildup and militarization of the DHS suddenly looks far less ominous- but still not "routine". During the past 12 years, if one excludes "one off" purchases (as
Freefalling suggested) , the domestic consumption of ammo has gone up (depending on where you start counting)
from the tens of millions per year to well north of 400 million rounds per year, and still climbing. The last Obama numbers are put at 1.1 Billion and the current order for the next few years again bumps that up to another 50% increase to 1.6 Billion. But moving on. So, we're still going from a few tens of million to
6 to 10 times that amount in a span of 8 or 10 years, no matter which way you look at it.
Again, assuming that Scotth's link to the one unspecified "government report" is accurate, and if we throw out all the other highly placed US military and contractor quotes of consumption, we still have a massive explosion in ammo stockpiles. The only thing that has changed (if that one unspecified report is accurate) is now it looks less like a "doomsday" scenario and more like typical, ordinary governmental / bureaucratic gigantism. As with all other government entities, the push is on to grow ever larger, even as we go bankrupt.
