This report is part of AOAV’s investigation into the DoD’s small arms expenditure during the War on Terror. 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.
The United States Department of Defense Inspector General is responsible for maintaining that the Department of Defense (DoD) is complying with rules and regulations, particularly in terms of accountability and efficiency. In 2012 the Inspector General issued a report critiquing the failures of the Army Contracting Command contract management for the procurement of small arms, including accessories and spare parts, destined for Afghanistan as part of the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF).
The aim of the report was to evaluate the contract award, pricing, and quality assurance provisions for small arms to the ASFF to determine whether they were in accordance with applicable acquisition regulations. The report found a number of failures in regard to the small arms contracts. These include failures in the contract management such as lack of fair competition procedures for contracts, lost contract documentation, and failure to address contractor poor-performance. Ultimately 19 out of the 45 contracts investigated were not properly awarded or managed in accordance with the regulations and at least 25 out of the 45 were missing some form of documentation. These failings led to wasted funds and severe delays.
In Appendix C of the DoD IG’s report, the IG listed the contracts that had been investigated where small arms contracts had been issued using the ASFF. Of those listed in the IG’s report AOAV found that only 5 of the 45 were listed in the DoD’s contract database. Though this may be partly due to the DoD only announcing contracts ‘valued at $6.5 million or more’ according to their contract webpage. However, a total of 8 were listed on the Federal Procurement Database (FPDS) as awards worth over $6.5 million. Importantly, for 4 out of the 5 awards that do appear on the DoD archives/announcements, it is not mentioned that the small arms are being procured for Afghanistan.
The total of $147,427,126 was found for the 8 contracts, for which 24% ($35,396,050) cannot be found on the DoD.
The 5 contracts listed on the DoD included:
1) W91CRB-09-C-0112: 10,697 non-standard weapons, 66,874 AK-47 magazines and 16,050 spare parts from Alliant Techsystem Inc worth $ 21,081,648;
2) W52H09-08-D-0121: worth $ 9,933,440 for 15,521 M16A4 rifles base from FN Manufacturing as well as;
3) W15QKN-09-D-0019: an undisclosed amount of M249s worth $ 39,958,331 from FN Manufacturing;
4) W56HZV-09-D-0175; $ 32,143,048 to Colt Defense LLC for an unknown amount of M240B machine guns;
5) W56HZV-11-D-0049; $ 8,914,609 for 1,212 M24 sniper rifles with bipods that went to Remington Arms Co – the only one that specifies the arms are for Afghanistan.
The 3 contracts not listed on the FPDS include:
1) W52H09-07-D-0425 (Order BR02) a contract found on the FPDS to be worth $12,813,359 (Colt Defense), which is purported to be for the procurement on M4/M4A1 Carbines;
2) W52H09-11-D-0001 (Order 001) a contract found on the FPDS to be worth $ 9,975,050 (FN Manufacturing), which is purported to be for the procurement of M16A3/M16A4 Rifles;
3) W91CRB-04-D-0025 (Order 0006) found to be worth $12,607,641 (Taos Industries) on the FPDS, which is purported to be for the procurement of mortars and other non-standard weapons.
For the data on 14 years of DoD contracts for small arms, ammunition and attachments, please go here.
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