Missing Rifle
Someone has some ‘splaining to do. The Army has launched an investigation into the whereabouts of a D.C. National Guard unit rifle that disappeared during training in Virginia three weeks ago. People familiar with the probe say that an M4 rifle and scope was lost mid-March, while members of the quick reaction force detailed to protect the Capitol were training at Fort A.P. Hill.
David sends.
Army probes missing rifle from National Guard unit deployed to the Capitol
A misplaced or unaccounted-for weapon is a major security risk, Guard members said.
By NATASHA BERTRAND, ANDREW DESIDERIO and LARA SELIGMAN
The Army has dispatched its in-house criminal investigative arm to probe the potential theft of a rifle from the D.C. National Guard while the unit was training in Virginia three weeks ago, an Army spokesperson confirmed on Thursday.
The M4 rifle and its scope went missing around March 11, according to two people familiar with the investigation, as members of a quick reaction force that was formed to protect the U.S. Capitol were training at a weapons range at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia.
A misplaced or unaccounted-for rifle is a major security risk, Guard members said, especially due to the current mission of securing the Capitol after a mob of insurrectionists breached the building on Jan. 6. The nation’s capital remains on high alert nearly three months after the attack, amid continued warnings about potential extremist threats to the area.
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command notified the D.C. National Guard of its investigation on Tuesday, and those who were at the range on March 11 gave their statements to investigators on Thursday, one of the people said. They filled out nearly a dozen pages worth of questions about their whereabouts and recollections. Chris Grey, a spokesperson for the Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed that the command is investigating the missing rifle.
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The Defense Department does not take such incidents lightly. A commander and sergeant major were fired last year after their infantry battalion lost two rifles during a training exercise in December 2019 at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was still investigating the missing rifles a year later.
Not exactly a career enhancing move. Read the entire article here: Politico
Thanks, David.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Army, Guest Link
Army has some company. Several Marines in deep Kim Chee after ammo & explosives go missing at Camp Pendleton.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/03/31/marines-under-investigation-after-ammo-explosives-reportedly-go-missing-pendleton.html
A rifle is just another rifle. But bombs going missing is a much larger problem. They need to find that stuff.
Did anyone check the latrines?
Yeah.
And how long was it missing before it was noticed?
If it’s measured in days, that’s bad…
Too easy. Whoever signed that M4 out of the armory is responsible.
Come on man, it ain’t racket science.
In my county, there was a city police department that was missing a rifle.
It was postulated that the rifle was removed for training on the range. An audit was done to find out who had the rifle last and all that.
Turns out the rifle was found. It was located in the home of the…….
……wait for it……
……the supervisor who had conducted the audit who had never signed it out.
He “forgot” he had it.
For the record, this was in Brevard County Florida. We literally launch rockets here. 😉
I had genius 2LT (I’m not stereotyping, this guy would have to improve to meet the stereotype) that conduct a post-FTX inventory of the battalions KYK-13 fill devices. In the course of his inventory, he noted that one company had one too many, and one company was one short. He immediately notified the commander of the shortage, neglecting to mention the surplus in the other company, and the battalion was immediately locked down in the motor pool when they should have been going home after 2 weeks in the field. 2 hours later, after verifying (by serial number, as it should have been done originally) that the surplus item and shortage item were in fact the same item, we all went home. The 2LT’s ass remained in the commander’s office.
When I was a PL I wouldn’t allow the PSG to do mass turn in of weapons after FTXs. As soon as I left he convinced the new 2LT that it was a good idea.
The very first exercise they went on they lost an M9 that way. I was now the S2 and suffered some serious Schadenfreude for his dilemma, but not for the soldiers. The whole unit was locked down for the 4 day weekend. Angry spouses at the motor pool gate and all. On the last day of the weekend they found it tossed under a conex.
Not sure why but they did a rehab transfer on the PSG to range control. Apparently losing range requests was the perfect job for him. I’d probably have sent him to the gym to pass out basketballs.
Brevard County?
That’s All-Points Logistics territory.
I don’t see what the big deal is. We had hand grenades missing after my battalion provided guards to the the 8th Infantry Division’s ammo dump at Budenheim, Germany. We found what happened with one though, when a couple of my battalion’s dicksteppers exploded it in a large steel dumpster behind the barracks at Lee Barracks in Mainz. Several more were never found.
Ammo control in A’stan was such that you’d open drawers and find random loaded mags and frags that were just excess. (‘Scuse me, I just need a pen… ) All over the place.
Combat zones sometimes tend to have a more casual attitude towards handling weapons and ammo.
“loaded mags and frags that were just excess”
LOL
Love that word-‘excess’.
One day the ammo dump at Coleman Bks. discovered they were missing a case of hand grenades. Since I was lucky enough to have been on guard duty at the dump the previous night I immediately became a “person of interest”. What fun! They locked down the entire caserne. Lots of unhappy married folks, NCOs, and Os. I got to travel to 8th Div. HQ to chat with the CID folks, with an armed escort. I seem to have pissed them off a bit when I started grinning and chuckling to myself during the “interview” (right out of the book–“good cop, bad cop” and all). Heck, security at that dump was a joke, anyway. A couple of days later a case of grenades was found in the back of a truck parked in a motor pool or so I heard. It sure broke the monotony of garrison life. Who knows, I may still be on some terrorist watch list somewhere.
My guess is that somebody missed or miscounted a case when loading/unloading the truck.
“Alright everyone, Arms Across America time. Form up on your section leaders, we’re going from Arlington to the Mall, let’s go. Sergeants, keep your eyes out and bring anything serialized to the First Sergeant. If it doesn’t grow, it goes.”
Time of the mother of all police calls.
From DC to Fort AP Hill is about 77 miles, 301 or 95. Take your pick.
Best pack a lunch.
*grin*
Mmmmmeh, someone’s ass is a-gonna be in a sling.
The Ghost of LTG Ambrose Powell Hill has the rifle. It’s in the basement of the New London Armory as we speak, being duplicated in sufficient quantities to issue to Jubal Early’s Army of the Valley. The Stonewall Brigade has the job of securing the Long Bridge, after they take Fort Stevens.
This story is as believable as the one about “…continued extremist threats in the area.” in this article.
Sounds like someone’s rifling the rifles. One of my USS Okinawa shipmates from A Gang had to search all the A/C ducts in the Marine Officers berthing spaces by opening up the access doors after they came back from every operation while in Viet Nam. He said that he found all sorts of stuff that were supposed to be shit canned before boarding the ship or turned in. When the ship hit a Liberty port, dogs were brought onboard to sniff out any contra band that was brought onboard
Had I known they were not going to search my bags….
“You had only one job…”
WELL, I’d volunteer to take it, if anyone finds it, I mean, it takes .223 and 5.56 right??
I mean, I’ll take time off to go look for it if they provide me ammo for it.
(Stuff’s like gold these days.)
Bitcoin? Nah, I’m investing in 12ga slugs. You can’t hardly find them, I mean for a reasonable price.
How the hell are the street dudes in Bal’more and Chi-raq paying for ammo these days anyway??
Jes thinkin’.
Hell I watched some dudes at the range today tossin off like 30 round clips of .223 or 5.56 like it was penny candy at a Shriner’s Parade.
They must have been rich or Daddy paid for it.
Hell, my son and I blazed away the other week with a whopping 10 rounds each and I felt like King Midas.
Its why I love the .22 LR. Rifle, carbine and pistols. I’ve an old top-break .22 revolver. 9 shots on the cylinder. I get double takes from some when rounds 7, 8 and 9 get squeezed off.
At $.19 a round for .22lr you must be rich to think that is cheap.
We were in a rotation at Hohenfels back in 2000 or so and a couple infantrymen found a rusty M16A1, yes A1, under a tree. Never did find out how long it had been there or who lost it, but it had to have been there for years since everybody had switched to A2s. Might’ve been the same rotation when somebody lost a pistol off a tank with the speculation that it fell onto a muddy tank trail and sank in.
When you think about it, soldiers do a pretty good job not losing weapons, considering the number of possibilities. In RVN one of our LRRPs dropped an M60 out of a Huey. No joke, the entire LRRP platoon went gun hunting, maybe not on line in the bush, but close. They didn’t find the machine gun.
In Vietnam in ’66, we were losing way too many grenades on routine patrols where there was no action. Troops returning from such missions were frequently finding the fuse component of the grenades still attached to their web belts but the body of the grenade was somewhere back in Indian Country.
Many losses were attributable to being inadequately secured, but we also found that apparently the almost constant movement through heavy vegetation could cause the body of the grenades to unscrew from the fuse and fall to the ground.
The battalion commander had NCO’s walk trail to watch for these missing grenades. Young Poe’s best take was a half-dozen or so, mostly HE’s, on a day-long, platoon-sized movement.
We later learned that villagers sympathetic to the VC had been following our troops at a distance and policing up these errant grenades to turn over to the local VC units for use in boobytraps.
We had a guy who had a grenade on his flak vest come unscrewed like that and fall on the ground. Unfortunately it was an old grenade and the pin was also loose and the spoon was bent a little and lifted just enough to let the little doohickey inside start the music. I think he lost a finger or two.
Max Cleland, a former head of the VA, had a similar experience with a grenade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Cleland
We also had a problem with people losing ammo (7.62 and 5.56) on our little hikes. I was not, as you may guess, in an elite unit.
Yep, once the end of the spoon allows the striker to release, the delay fuse is ignited, and it goes boom four seconds later. Only the detonator took your guy’s finger off, as the explosive, composition B, is inside the body of the grenade, which had apparently fallen far enough from the detonator not to be ignited.
In addition to splaying out the cotter key blades of the pins on our grenades, we also taped the spoons to the body of the grenades in a manner so we could quickly tear off the tape. At night we partially removed the tape and made the pins easier to pull. That was our SOP. Never had a grenade accidentally detonate or heard of one in any unit I served with.
Also, Cleland is the only officer who was awarded a Silver Star for what was a friendly fire accident when not engaged with the enemy. It was about as warranted as Lurch’s three purple hearts.
Not that it would surprise me, but the link immediately below to “sourcewatch” disagrees. I make it a standard practice to discount any award or decoration worn by an officer by at least one grade.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Max_Cleland
Oddly enough, I was in the same battalion. Got there right after Tet. Heard some interesting stories.
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/ASPJ/Book-Reviews/Article/1192399/the-lost-battalion-of-tet-breakout-of-the-212th-cavalry-at-hue/
The favorite VC grenade booby trap was made by putting a C-rat can over one of our grenades, then the pin was pulled. The can was tied to a bush or small tree trunk. Fine fishing line was tied to the grenade in the can and strung across the adjacent trail. When the soldier hit the fishing line it pulled the grenade out of the can. The spoon flew off and a few seconds later the grenade detonated. I saw the results of such an incident: Four wounded, the man who hit the tripwire lost a leg and an arm, as he drug the grenade right into himself as his ankle pulled the grenade out of the can.
I think the preferred terminology now is “IED”. “Booby trap” sounds so plebian, unbefitting the new all-volunteer, professional Army of Warriors. Hoo-ah! and all that.