Screenwriting Work Drying Up? Become A Pentagon Contractor
Clearly, the only requirements for supplying arms to the troops in Iraq are having a pulse and being able to invoice into the hundreds of millions. C.J. Chivers writes in The New York Times:
Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan's army and police forces.
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.
Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company's president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company's purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.
This week, after repeated inquiries about AEY's performance by The Times, the Army suspended the company from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr. Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian.
They couldnt afford armored vehicles for troops (leading to many more injuries that could have been prevented) but they can drop 300mil on crap like this? Shoot. They spend tax money lazily like I do in the dollarstore.
Investigation, lawsuit and jailtime please. For both this company, the officers of the company and whichever procurement moron in the pentagon steered money that way.
rsj at March 28, 2008 4:45 AM
Jebus! People complain about Pork spending and earmarks, but good Christ does there need to be some oversight on military spending.
A 300 million dollar contract! Gee maybe you want to meet the person you're dealing with, poke around the office a little bit. Or maybe it might make sense to buy it from a freaking factory! You could probably even get a decent wholesale price.
Completely agree with rsj. Jail time for everyone involved with this bullshit.
flighty at March 28, 2008 8:45 AM
This makes one long for the days of $600 screwdrivers.
justin case at March 28, 2008 8:54 AM
the problem I have seen over and over with pentspending is that there is SO MUCH oversight, that they don't see anything. Common sense is never taken into account... Sure congress will grill someone over this, and so will the GAO, and so forth, but what will change? from what I read up on this, it's a conjunction of everyone wanting to save money, and the vaguries of the world weapons market. if you want to equip an army with AK's, you can find them everywhere and cheap, but if you don't inspect every one, you have probelmes. Munitions is even worse, because, how are you going to inspect a million rounds?
On the other hand, you source all this stuff standard US Mil? it's 4X as expensive. It's better stuff, and so forth, but you have to pay for what you get.
The fear was that if we just gave cash to the Afghanis, it wouldn't end up well, and the fear is well documented, but the flip side hasn't been better.
It could have been worse...
SwissArmyD at March 28, 2008 9:23 AM
Wait a minute. Aren't you complaining about the "cost"? Do you want these guys to go for new ammunition, then? You have to have a little more discernment here. This ammunition is NOT going to Americans (who are not expending it at the rates suggested) unless it gets accepted into the GSA catalog and is ordered by a National Stock Number as property of the US Government. Also, there is a factor at work that makes the procurement cited, if not its legality, more reasonable.
Just as you are paying more for gas in part due to the emergence of China as an industrial power, you are paying more for all metals. Please, please read up on the firearms and ammunition market! A perusal of Shotgun News will show you that ammunition prices have tripled in the last three-or-so years. The "decent wholesale price" is total nonsense; what do you think that company is doing when it taps warehouses with old stock?
New .50-caliber rounds are over $4 apiece on the free market (again, look at Shotgun News). All of this material weighs tons, literally, and it can't be shipped cheaply.
So maybe these guys are getting paid a little much, but you'd better have your wallet out if you want them to work out of LL Bean, which gets about $10 for ONE magazine's fill of 5.56mm NATO, the ammunition of the M-16 and AKS-74 (the same stuff is about $250 for 1000 by the case from Wolf™ - five times what it was ten years ago). If you want quality, you have to lose your anonymity and travel with agents to personally inspect the lots shipped, and that means about a hundred people on the payroll in high-risk travel to unstable foreign countries.
Another thing: ammunition differs in quality so much that some 40-year-old stock is superior to new issue. Yes, really - though most Communist-bloc stuff isn't thought of as great.
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Ammunition is only now growing as a political issue for the ordinary citizen. You cannot be trusted (sorry!) to carry an M-16 unless actually in uniform -- unless you have, and I kid you not, $21 thousand dollars for a new one just like your neighbor is carrying now in Iraq. This "political inflation" is in place internationally, as ammunition is considered a commodity, like fuel. Like the dollar. Which price is....?
So if these guys are crooks, OK, go get 'em, but get a clue about supply problems, too. And remember: Congress, not the President, funds 100% of government action.
Radwaste at March 28, 2008 10:00 AM
Good points Radwaste.
My sensibilities figure if you are dropping that much money, get quality. I knew about the commodity Price spike, but I hadnt made the connection between higher metal prices and ammo. thanks. I still think they need to cough up the money and bonuses and a perp needs to walk.
Gets back to my dollar store comment. it is one thing for me to say, eh I dont know if this cleaning product will actually work but for one dollar ill give it a try and a totally different(orshould be different) thing for the procurement people at the pentagon having the same attitude.
rsj at March 28, 2008 11:08 AM
Another thing: Afghani weapons aren't standardized. They'll be using 5.45x39mm, 7.62x39mm and 7.62x54R as well as 5.56 and 7.62 NATO. Those first three sizes can't be had cheaply in the US. (Some of the 7.62x54R can actually be 100 years old, though that would be rare.) Here's a vendor.
Radwaste at March 28, 2008 11:27 AM
I'm not saying you should/can buy ammunition cheap. But if you're going to spend that money make sure you're buying it from a reputable source, not some bullshit guys who submitted a form.
Reading the article is scary.
The "company" basically bought DECAYING stockpiles of crap ammunition from Albania (stockpiles which the US government had helped pay to be destroyed) and then sold it to the US government. The government then gave it to our allies in Afganistan. The lastest ammunition from the company has failed inspection upon arrival.
Now that's a waste of money.
flighty at March 28, 2008 11:53 AM
Well, here's a litmus test for you: Name a "reputable source". Remember: find the lowest bidder. Don't forget shipping.
You'll be performing a public service, especially if you can show your Senators and get them to realize you're right. Along the way, you might fire them up to find out why the earlier destruct order had not been carried out - but I have more news for you: nobody wants to destroy ammunition. they might need it, and when it is needed, nothing else will do, and "old" is 'way better than "none". So they have to be forced to do it, especially in that area, where we disarmed people "for their own good", promising to protect them, then left them to be slaughtered.
Radwaste at March 29, 2008 7:50 AM
Well I used to shoot a lot of old ammo. The vast majority of it worked just fine. When I was a teen I was shooting NRA competition, I must have shot a few thousand surplus .30-06 and 8mm Mauser rounds. Much of it had decaying packaging. It went BANG though. The earliest smokeless ammo I fired was some .30-06 with a headstamp of 1918. This would have been in 1960-1963.
We also found some black powder cartridges that had been hidden by a southwest Texas ranch foreman who died in about 1890 when we were tearing down his "last stand fort" that he never had to use. Some four out of five of those went "BOOM!". Too bad we'd never heard of cartridge collecting back in the ealy '60s.
Old isn't bad. Nor is foreign bad. There is no country in the world that equips it's sons (and now daughters) with bad ammunition. It's not like making cartridges is mysterious.
Peter at March 29, 2008 12:58 PM
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