[CDAT]

Originally Posted by The Dark

For number of arms, in 2013 the United States advised the Small Arms Survey that they had 2,700,000 total military small arms; in 2010, there were 1.43 million active service members, so the numbers provided suggest around 2 firearms per service member on average, not including reservists. This is probably a little low, since other trinitarian militaries were around 2.5. Typical proportions of arms globally were found to be 72% selective-fire rifles, 13% pistols, 9% machineguns, and 6% other. I would expect the Twilight War military to be slightly higher, both due to having more servicemembers and (probably) a higher proportion of gunseople.

As for number of weapons per service member I do not know if they count the M203 as a separate weapon from the AR that it is attached to or not, but regardless some groups have many more weapons that others. For example my last years in I was EOD my three man team had one M4 each, two M203's, one M14, one M82, one M249, one M240, and officially one M9 for the team (but when we deployed we had one each). This gave our three man team between ten and twelve weapons for the team. There were nine teams just like mine in the company not counting the command/supply elements. Now yes we are still talking about lots of weapons but how many teams like this would it take to make up the numbers of weapons listed?

Originally Posted by The Dark

More importantly, though, military caliber ammunition could become a problem within a fairly brief time. Unless something has changed in the past few years, Lake City (Missouri) produces all the 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and 12.7mm for the military (I think 20mm also, but I never was involved in procuring that). Now, the stockpiles are likely in the billions of rounds (the number's classified, but the DoD regularly transfers millions of rounds to other agencies like the FBI or Marshal Service for their training without batting an eye, which gives at least a rough feel for how vast the number must be), but even if most aren't hit by the Exchange, distribution is still going to be a PITA in the post-apocalypse. I agree with the upthread comment that selective fire would likely be eliminated from most weapons in order to conserve ammo, and there'd probably also be a push to include the more common civilian calibers among second-tier units.

I have no idea about the ammo made and all that, but I do know that I have received in Iraq .50 Cal ammo with 1945 date stamp on it. I assume that it is a case of using the oldest first, but also know what happens when you assume. I would guess that old WWII ammo weapons (.45 ACP, .30-06, maybe even .30 carbine) would have surplus ammo, the newer rounds (5.56, and 7.62) would be more likely to run out early.