This report is part of AOAV’s investigation into the US DoD spend on small arms, guns and ammunition from Sept 11, 2001 to Sept 10, 2015. Our research found many discrepancies between the contracts published on the DoD’s website and those found on the Federal Procurement Database System- research that can be read here. For information on what a small arm is, please see here. To understand more about US DoD contracts visit here. The investigation also included an examination of US expenditure for small arms for Iraq, which can be read here, and Afghanistan, see here.
Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) Force Fund reports detail additional budget requests to Congress with regards to funding Iraqi operations. Specifically, they address arms provided within the ISFF, that is Iraq Security Force Fund. AOAV specifically focussed on requests for additional weapons to arm Iraqi security and police forces. The reports are useful for tracking the unit costs of arms requested, as well as total costs of arms given to Iraqi security forces. Whilst there is some commonality with DoD and FPDS resports, a number of instances do not appear on all three reports. This may be due in part to the fact that OCO reports only detail requests to Congress; whether these were granted is unknown.
OCO reports were only found for Iraq for the fiscal years 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2015. Thus, AOAV recognises that the data is incomplete, and the actual figures are likely to be much higher. Here is a spreadsheet showing the details of each weapon as mentioned in the OCO reports.
Summary
AK-47 5000
Machine Guns 53,282
Assault Rifle (not incl. AK-47) 43,200
Sniper Rifle 2248
Shotgun 346
Pistol 2910
Total weapons issued to the Iraqis in the years concerned: 106,986
In 2007, the Asia Times reported that The Pentagon had issued 169,280 AK-47s, 167,789 pistols and 16,398 machine guns to Iraqi police and border force. None of these figured corroborate with our DoD and FPDS analysis. The Office of the Secretary of Defence has also published figures for each fiscal year, pertaining not to specific countries, but to the ‘Global War on Terror Request.’ It is difficult to locate the source of these figures; all spending is grouped either under ‘Iraq Freedom Fund’, ‘Iraq Security Forces Fund’ or a host of other spending sources in various countries. Thus, though millions in arms and ammunition spending is detailed over the course of the annual reports, it is impossible to know where these arms were headed to.
For the data on 14 years of DoD contracts for small arms, ammunition and attachments, please go here.
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