Quote Originally Posted by GeneTwo View Post
Ammo question for military folks. Say, 1000 rounds. That sounds like a lot of bullets to me. Does that transfer over to the military or does 1k rounds seem like a small amount when you take into account firefights and the size of a squad and that kind of stuff. So when Saul says that there wasn't that much ammo at the guard station there could have been like 1k to 5k rounds.
In my last unit the "guard ammo" in the arms room consisted of 50 rounds of 45 caliber and 100 rounds of M-16, in magazines, in a locked ammo can. Just enough to provide ammo a single magazine for each member of a small guard detail.

As for whether 1,000 rounds of ammo is a lot, it's relative. It's far more than a foot soldier can comfortably carry, but it's not much at all for an armored vehicle. And don't forget that different rounds have different sizes and weights.

An M-16 magazine, loaded with 30 rounds of 5.56mm ammo, weighs about a pound. 1,000 rounds in magazines is about 34 pounds. A 100 round belt of 7.62mm machinegun ammo weighs about 7 pounds, so 1,000 rounds is about 70 pounds. Ammo weight and bulk add up fast, making it hard for a man to carry on him.

In contrast an M-1 tank has three machineguns (a 50 caliber and two 7.62 mms), and carries over 20,000 rounds of ammo for them. All that ammo weighs close to a ton, but that's not a big deal for a big, powerful vehicle like a tank.