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Originally Posted by CDAT
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.
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Sure. There's a big difference in loadout between a dozen SOF operators and a dozen radar technicians for a carrier (just using those as an example since they're probably close to each end of the spectrum).
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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?
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At four weapons per person, it's be a bit under 700,000 people. The proportion starts to skew back the other way once you take into account the USAF and USN; aircraft carriers and airfields have relatively low ratios.
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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.
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I was poking around a bit to see what would be available on the civilian side, and
one bulk seller listed how much revenue they received for each caliber. The largest was 9mm Para, followed by .223 Remi, .45 ACP, .40 S&W, .22 LR, 5.56x45mm NATO, 12 ga, and 7.62x51mm NATO. I don't know what it looked like back in the 90s, though.