“You have to look at capacity in three parts,” says Bronson. And that doesn’t account for ammo fired by the owners of guns bought prior to this year.

This forecast is incorporated into the president’s budget, which then undergoes approval and authorization and appropriations by Congress for a given fiscal year, says Muth.Īssuming the owner of each new gun purchased in 2020 then purchases 50 rounds-two and a half boxes-of ammo, that’s two billion rounds of ammo bought (and probably fired) in a single year.

Each year the DoD provides a 5-year snapshot of small-caliber ammunition needs.

In reality, the way the military goes about budgeting and purchasing ammo is a predictably slow, boring process. But that almost never happens and sources confirmed that it’s not happening now. So technically, civilian ammo production could be displaced by the military if the full extent of the contracts were called in. Most military contracts are written in a way that obligates companies that get the winning bid to produce much more ammo than is actually called for. The military administers its contracted production carefully, to ensure it will never run short on supply even if a new warzone or emergency flares up.īut what about those stories you might have read about the military increasing its spending on ammunition? Isn’t it possible that the military is increasing its ammo buying so that civilians see a shortage? Technically it could be possible, and it’s here that the rumor-mongers have some traction. In 2019, Winchester Ammunition’s parent company won a 7-year contract to operate the plant. By some estimates, LCAAP produces 4 million rounds of small-arms ammunition every day. 308, and other small-caliber rounds, are made at the military-owned Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri. The military’s big ammunition contracts don’t directly affect the civilian market because nearly all of those munitions, specifically 5.56, 7.62. There are no volume changes.” Global shortages of the raw materials required to make cartridges is one of the many rumors swirling about the ammo shortage. The processes are the same as they were 12 and 24 months ago. You’re asking me if anything’s changed in the law-enforcement or military ammo world? Not a thing. If anything, police officer numbers are down. I don’t know if you’ve read the news lately, but with all the ‘defund’ conversations, departments aren’t exactly in a hiring boom. “You can relate any changes in law enforcement consumption to hiring policies in departments around the country. “When law enforcement or government contractors purchase more ammo, it’s when they hire more officers, and the one time they go through inventory is new-officer training,” said an executive at a major ammunition company, who asked us not to use his name because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

Where do space marines keep their ammo