If You Miss the First time, try Firing another 300,000 Rounds
Friday, 27 July 2007
According to the educated guess of military researcher John Pike, the
director of GlobalSecurity.org, U.S. forces have expended at least 250,000
small-caliber bullets for every insurgent killed in the present wars. That's a
lot of misses, for which the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are no doubt
grateful. With better marksmanship, U.S. forces could have already slain a large
fraction of the people residing in those unfortunate countries. Of course,
medium- and heavy-caliber bullets, artillery and mortar shells, rockets, and
bombs have also killed many people in the present wars, their vastly greater
force compensating for the smaller numbers expended.
The application of overwhelming firepower in lieu of alternative tactics has
long been the American way of fighting a war. In World War II, U.S. factories
cranked out, along with mountains of other munitions, about 41.4 billion rounds
of small-arms ammunition, enough to permit the users to take about ten shots at
every man, woman, and child alive on earth at that time. Military historians
tell us that the U.S. warriors actually concentrated their fire somewhat, so
some of the earth's inhabitants were spared exposure to that particular risk.
Among the many fiscal measures for which mainstream economists can credit the
current Bush administration, we may count a tremendous stimulation of the demand
for ammunition – as much a blessing in bulking up the GDP as purchases of any
other final good, they insist. According to a July 2005 report by the Government
Accountability Office, "[b]etween fiscal years 2000 and 2005, total requirements
[per year] for small caliber ammunitions more than doubled, from about 730
million to nearly 1.8 billion rounds, while total requirements for medium
caliber ammunitions increased from 11.7 million rounds to almost 22 million
rounds."
Most of the U.S. forces' small-arms ammunition is manufactured by contractor
Alliant Techsystems (ATK), which operates a government-owned plant located near
Independence, Missouri. In 2004, however, ATK's 1.2 billion cartridges fell
short of the government's demand. Army Major Gen. Buford Blount III stated,
"We're shooting it almost as fast as they can produce it." As an emergency
measure to help make up the shortfall, the government also contracted with
Winchester Ammunition (a division of Olin Corporation) and Israel Military
Industries, Ltd.
The latter contract did not strike everyone as a shrewd move. At a congressional
hearing, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), a member of the House Armed Services
subcommittee overseeing the matter, addressed Army Brig. Gen. Paul Izzo,
executive officer of the ammunition program: "Can you tell me whose idea it was
to contract with a firm in Israel to provide ammunition to kill Muslims? I've
never heard of anything so goddamned stupid." To allay Abercrombie's anxiety,
Izzo and Blount promised to use the ammo produced in Israel only for training
purposes and to employ only good old American-made ammo for killing people in
Iraq and Afghanistan. As reporter Katherine McIntire Peters remarks, this
"distinction . . . likely has more resonance among lawmakers than among those on
the receiving end of the ammunition."
By the end of 2005, the Army had established an acquisition strategy for
purchasing as many as 2 billion rounds of small-caliber ammunition annually and
brought in a second domestic prime contractor, General Dynamics Ordnance and
Tactical Systems, to supply the government with 300 million rounds annually from
its plant in St. Petersburg, Florida. With ATK producing 1.2 billion rounds per
year and modernizing its plant to produce as many as 1.5 billion, the Army's
overall acquisition settled at about 1.8 billion rounds annually.
For the four fiscal years 2002-2005, the military's small-arms ammunition
"requirements" totaled nearly 5.6 billion rounds. With approximately 3.6 billion
being added during the next two years, the total for fiscal years 2002-2007
comes to about 9.2 billion rounds. If we assume that U.S. forces in Afghanistan
and Iraq have killed 50,000 people with small-arms fire (a high estimate, I
suspect), then they have needed, for training plus actual fighting, 184,000
bullets per person killed. If they have killed only 30,000 in this way, then the
figure rises to almost 307,000 bullets per person shot dead, which is roughly
equal to the estimate Pike ventured two years ago before he decided to "round
that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."
If we assume that only 3 billion of the 9.2 billion small-caliber rounds
consumed by U.S. forces during the past six fiscal years were fired in combat in
Iraq, then, given an Iraqi population of approximately 27 million in recent
years, the rate of U.S. small-arms fire during the present war works out to more
than 100 shots for every man, woman, and child in the country, or more than ten
times what the world's population received per capita from U.S. forces during
World War II.
Where do all those high-powered bullets go? Is it any wonder that check-point
foul-ups so often end with the innocent occupants of a vehicle, many of them
women and children, being shot dead, or that exchanges of gunfire in urban
settings take such a toll in persons killed or wounded by stray shots from
American guns? Iraqis have complained repeatedly since the occupation began that
U.S. troops have itchy trigger fingers and react wildly to attacks, real or
imagined, by firing their automatic weapons almost at random into the
surrounding area. Combining tense, frightened solders, massive firepower, and
densely inhabited neighborhoods does not make for a safe environment.
Moreover, not to belabor a point, but I do hope the reader will remember that we
are considering here only small-arms fire, to which in any realistic account of
the war we must add the expenditure of enormous quantities of medium and heavy
bullets, mortar and artillery shells, rockets, and bombs, along with a
substantial amount of old-fashioned pummeling with boot heels, rifle butts, and
assorted other clubs. The Iraqis have not been lying in a bed of roses for the
past 52 months.
Unfortunately, the future does not appear to hold much relief for them, and
many, many more are destined to perish in the lethal thunderstorms of U.S.
bullets, shells, and bombs. Why, we might wonder, must this madness continue?
What good can it possibly accomplish? When Congressman Abercrombie told Gen.
Izzo that he had "never heard of anything so goddamned stupid" as buying ammo
manufactured in Israel for use by U.S. military forces in killing Muslims, he
might well have weighed his words more carefully, because at least one thing has
been manifestly even stupider: invading Iraq in the first place.
Robert Higgs [send him mail] is senior fellow in political economy at the
Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. His most recent book is Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government. He is also the author of Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy, Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 and Against Leviathan Government Power and a Free Society.
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