Weather Service ammo request was clerical error

| August 14, 2012

“We don’t need no stinkin’ ammo” says the Weather Service, according to the Washington Post;

Due to a clerical error in the federal business vendor process, a solicitation for ammunition and targets for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement mistakenly identified NOAA’s National Weather Service as the requesting office. The error is being fixed and will soon appear correctly in the electronic federal bidding system. The ammunition is standard issue for many law enforcement agencies and it will be used by 63 NOAA enforcement agents in their twice annual target qualifications and training.

So that’s about 365 rounds per agent per training and qualification session. That’s still a lot of shooting. I guess the National Weather Service would rather take out weather criminals with science than waste ammunition.

The Post also reports that NOAA had to withdraw a $5000 request for a magician to entertain at their leadership conference last Spring. I know where they can find a parachuting clown for the price of a bottle of Old Rocking Chair.

Category: Breaking News

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streetsweeper

HAHAHA! You, are one bad boy Jonn! Give ’em hell!

Spade

Last pistol course I took here in NOVA required 500 rounds (and I shot more than that). So 365 is a little light, really.

Vic

I’ll give them a pass. I occasionally work with NOAA’s fisheries people and they have pretty regular contact with armed and methed out commercial fishermen with no available backup. If was them, I’d want access to long guns and MORE ammo.

hoosierbeagle

Man, got my hopes up….every fcstr needs at least a .40…

DDB

If I didn’t hate clowns that would sound like a good post-retirement gig.

Eric

I wish my Army unit got that many pistol rounds per pistol firer every year to “train” and “qualify” with. We’re luck if we got the standard 40 per firer to shoot.

Steadfast&Loyal

They were getting serious about the war on climate change.

Steve

365 rounds? Sounds like a slow Tuesday to me.

You bitch about cops being “militarized” (whatever the fuck that is), now you bitch about how many rounds they shoot in training.

Jonn, I don’t think you don’t like cops…

malclave

But without the ammunition, how are they going to defend the Weather Control machine from the U.N.’s black helicopters?

UpNorth

Why would anyone use JHP ammo for training? I can maybe see why you’d fire it for qualification, but why shoot up JHP for training?
Oh, that’s right, we get to pay for it, so no worries.

CI Roller Dude

I could shoot 500 rounds in an afternoon without even breaking a sweat.
I do think the Fed gov needs a new motto…maybe you guys could start a contest. here’s a start:
“Your Federal Govt…we waste more money before 9, than most countries waste in a life time”
“Your Fed Govt, your tax dollars wasting away”
“Your Fed Govt, you need it when?”
“Your Fed Govt, 200 plus years of tradition unchanged by progress or common sense.”

How in the f…k could they order ammo by mistake? Are they all totally retarded? Do you know how much trouble it is to even order ammo for the average police dept?

UpNorth

CI RD, the first one is a winner, they DO waste more money before 9, than any country wastes in several life times.

Hondo

UpNorth: it’s possible it could have actually been cheaper to buy one type of ammo. Buying two different types of ammo might have required two different procurements (it shouldn’t have, but when it comes to the rules of relatively small Federal procurements like this one things get complicated). In that case, the overhead costs of a second procurement would have likely more than offset any savings.

Twist

A Government agency made a clerical error? Say it isn’t so.

Spade

“How in the f…k could they order ammo by mistake? Are they all totally retarded? Do you know how much trouble it is to even order ammo for the average police dept?”

They didn’t order it. They just issued an RFP with the wrong name on it.

Government Contracts people are notorious for copy/pasting stuff from old RFPs into new RFPs and occasionally bizarre stuff gets pasted in. And even the ones they write often have a lot of mistakes in it.

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[…] Hell, close enough for Government work, yeh? Hat tip to Jonn Lilyea. “We don’t need no stinkin’ ammo” says the Weather Service, according to the Washington Post […]

Devtun
Spade

SSA has 230 armed investigators, mostly dealing with fraud cases.

Dave

UpNorth – what Hondo said – plus there’s a basic principle: never rely on ammo you haven’t tested THOROUGHLY in your gun. Practice with RNs, go live with JHPs and they jam – that is officially a bad situation.
That’s 365 rounds per year… say quals are 50 rounds each, so 265 remaining for 12 months practice: a little over a 50-round box of ammo per calendar quarter, right? Doesn’t sound ridiculously high to me. If anything, that’s pretty low – you ain’t training any DeadEye Dicks with a box or so a quarter.

Marine_7002

“Clerical error” doesn’t surprise me a bit.

The Aircraft Recovery biz in the Marine Corps (arresting gear, visual landing aids, airfield matting) is funded with “blue” (Navy) dollars, so all requisitions for that stuff goes through the Naval Aviation supply system.

Many, many moons ago, a Marine working in a Recovery section supply office somewhere (I think it was at Bogue Field) typed up a requisition for some parts (remember the old ones, had carbon paper in between the copies?) and transposed a couple of numbers.

A few weeks later, imagine the surprise in the supply shop when they got a phone call from some anonymous SupO somewhere in the NavAir bureaucracy. He needed help with the delivery of a locomotive, railroad, (1) each.

That Marine is forever known in Recovery legend as “Choo-Choo.”