There is no good use for them. Too bad that money didn't go for education..

they have been buying millions of $$$ in ammo lately.

I am so damn happy I don't pay income taxes anymore.

which will still remain mostly unused and end up being discarded...

Still, we've got to fix this shit somehow...

A lot of the incentives is to funnel money to their ammunition making buddies to replace it. Plus I'd be pissed if I went into battle with half ass bullets. Hell now that I think about it I did go into battle with half ass weapons, M16. it was about as unreliable as a 1901 model T is today compared to a 2014 ford focus.

Most believe the AR-15 is the best weapon ever created by mankind.

The anti-gun people would be screaming they heads off.

they will not work. So that is opening themselves for labially. You knew that, but that is ok.

Yes, for those who have no idea about guns, bullets do have a shelf life

Dry, cool conditions ammo can last indefinitely; hot, wet conditions will cause deterioration of the ammo.

What happens with old ammo is the failure to fire (FTF) rate becomes too high to be acceptable for military or law enforcement use and it then has to be disposed of, either by selling it or destroying it. It remains perfectly acceptable for general target shooting or plinking.

However the real reason the Pentagon won't sell off that ammo as surplus is due to politics, not liability.

Military surplus ammo, both American and foreign made, has been available to American shooters for decades, although supplies have mostly dried up as the warehouses have been emptied out.

Greek 30-06 surplus: http://www.thecmp.org/Sales/ammo.htm

I have personally encountered Korean surplus, South African surplus, Bulgarian surplus, Swedish surplus, among others, that have been available on the US market in various calibers over the past 20 odd years.

If, and that's a big if, it is properly stored. Now , if this stuff was being left out in the blazing heat and sun, or got flooded, then yes the primer and powder might have started to deteriorate, and the brass corrode.

In any case (pun intended), this stuff is going to be recycled. The powder and primers will be destroyed, but I am willing to bet all the brass will be inspected and most reloaded, buy someone. If not, it will be sold for recycling. And the projectiles will be sold for recycling too. Someone is going to make a boatload of money off recycling this stuff.

There has to be more to this story, and I would like to know what it is.

the US Government is not going to open itself to liability. This is why a lot of this crap is not sold in the civilian market.

Hey, I would prefer the brass goes to OTHER things and not ammo, but that is just me... same goes for lead

There would always be someone looking to cash in, in a lawsuit.

they USED to sell small ammo but that stopped a while ago.

have a fun day

And no, I am not alerting on you, but I expect alerts anyway. So alert away.

FYI, this is a bottom of barrel complaint

Then they wouldn't have to mess around with all those bullets they don't need.

And don't forget the $7 billion worth of MRAPs they're trashing in Afghanistan.

I want to be a military contractor when I grow up.

They could at least sell the small caliber ammo to us taxpayers rather than destroy it. Whomever is in charge of this cluster fuck should be relieved from duty and then assign someone with a clue.

We would usually find ourselves out on field training exercises near the end of the fiscal year. In order to get ammo in the budget for next year's training you have to consume all the ammo budgeted for the current year - otherwise you get less for next year. So we would get orders to fire all the ammo we had available to us, in a very short time period. We would spend quite a bit of effort to compute firing data that would allow us to spell our battery motto and such in the sky with illumination rounds. (We did a pretty good job, too!)

People need to remember the military has all kinds of expensive ammo - artillery, tank, missiles, etc... besides small arms ammo, and much of it has a shelf life. You don't want to send people out with ammo that might have a 50% fail rate. None of which excuses DOD's atrocious book keeping - but that's really another matter.