Chapter 31 Family Ties part 3

[Condor]

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.

I'm not military, but 1000, 5000, doesn't sound like a lot to me. lol.

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.

Relative, that's a good way to look at it. From what I understand, that's one of the main reasons the US adopted the 5.56 rd as opposed to the larger (and of course heavier) 7.62x39 rd, to allow soldiers to carry more ammo.
When you say 7.62, that's 7.62x51mm (or .308) right?
Also, doesn't the military downloaded M-16 mags to 29rds?

Relating that back to WA. Back when Michael, and the others escaped The Colony, Victor, Pegs, and Kelly raid the weapons and grab "all the ammo". At best, they could have only carried a couple thousand rounds between the 3 of them. With a compound as large as The Colony, they should have had tens, if not hundreds of thousands of rounds between what they could scavenge and surely they would set up some type of ammo production facility. All they would need is a few loading presses and the raw materials.