Top US general ‘shocked’ by report on AWOL guns, mulls fix

Missing from the Arms Room, and found in the possession of CA street gangs? Reminds me of a story from Years ago in which the bangers were keeping one of their number squeaky clean so He could enlist to go to Armorers school. Just a thought. Who was on the Hand Receipt, who had access?

The finger-wagging breathless response is downright funny. More so as many RP members here, commanders, supply personal, those that were working with foreign nations who received American weapons..can make an educated guess many times with personal 1st hand experience on some of the likely reasons these 1900 weapons are "lost". Or how many of those 1900 "missing" weapons happened and it's not what the article leads you to believe.

Some of them are accounting errors, weapons transferred from one unit to another, to a repair depot, and paperwork errors occurred.
Some were lost in combat
Some were lost in training.
Some are damaged in combat or training and sent to a new location not tracked well in accounting documents.
Some were used in SM suicdes and now locked up in evidence lockers, ...long forgotten by most....I know of one such weapon....and it will remain there ...well forever..the case will never be "closed" thus the evidence retained.
Some were lost to fraud, sold, or "transferred" by those that had access to do so
And of course, some were lost no doubt to plain old theft.
1 weapon unaccounted for is too many, 1,900 over ten years is too many of course as well.
How many of those 1900 were on "loan" to Iraq units and "lost"? More than 320 I knew for sure...as in first-hand knowledge know. And I'm one guy from one unit talking about one single loan transaction to the Iraqi Army.

How many of those 1,900 are clerical errors, failure to do the proper transfer paperwork, or it was lost, damaged, mis entered.. (still wrong, but not stolen)

How many of those 1,900 are not accounted for, but sitting in a depot gathering dust, in a DRMO waiting on disposal, or unit arms room they were transferred to, securely locked up this very moment, but the accounting trail is not complete so they are considered "lost"
How many of those 1,900 weapons are noncurrent yet still on the books "weapons" in ROTC arms rooms, M1903 and or M1 rifles..still on the books and must be accounted for but not.


How many of the 1,900 were STOLEN outright .....that is a better metric to be concerned about.

Wonder why he is shocked. He has access to the reports so he should have been aware of the situation.