U.S. uses Israeli ammunition in Iraq

9/26/2005 3:34:00 PM GMT

According to a report published Sunday by a leading British paper, the United States is buying ammunitions from Israel to cover shortage due to Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with an estimated 250,000 bullets for every fighter killed.

The amount of ammunition the U.S. Army uses has more than doubled in five years, due to its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, The Independent said Sunday, citing a government report. The U.S. forces now use 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year, and since the American ammunition-makers are unable to keep up with demand, the U.S. started to buy supplies from Israel.

"The Department of Defense's increased requirements for small- and medium-calibre ammunitions have largely been driven by increased weapons training requirements, dictated by the army's transformation to a more self-sustaining and lethal force, and by the deployment of forces to conduct recent U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq," said the report by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

However, the former head of U.S. forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks declined to give an estimate how many bullets the U.S. forces have expended for every Iraqi fighter killed, sating that it’s not a simple or precisely scientific matter. He said his forces "don't do body counts".

Based on the GAO's statistics, John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that the U.S. forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. "How many ‘evil-doers’ have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don't know," he said.

"If they don't do body counts, how can I? But using these figures it works out at around 300,000 bullets per ‘insurgent’. Let's round that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."

Commenting on what some officials said that many of these bullets were used for training purposes, Pike said: "What are you training for? To kill ‘insurgents’."

President George W. Bush should learn from Israel's experience of "occupying the Palestinians" rather than buying its ammunition, said Kathy Kelly, a spokeswoman for the peace group Voices in the Wilderness.

Contrary to what the American President believe, Kathy said that true security for American people would be achieved if the U.S. pursued a fairer policy and started to have better relations with other countries and was not involved in the occupation of Iraq.

The report also revealed that although millions of dollars have been spent on upgrading the government-owned, contractor-operated plants that produce small- and medium-calibre ammunition, still that seems not enough to meet current munitions needs in their current state.

"The government-owned plant producing small-calibre ammunition cannot meet the increased requirements, even with modernisation efforts," said the report.

"Also, commercial producers within the national technology and industrial base have not had the capacity to meet these requirements. As a result, the Department of Defense had to rely at least in part on foreign commercial producers to meet its small-calibre ammunition needs."

The U.S. DoD is now relying on two producers to meet its requirements, the U.S. firm Olin-Winchester, and Israel Military Industries, an Israeli ammunition manufacturer linked to the Israeli government, a report in Manufacturing & Technology News said.

Source: Independent News

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