By Yang Zhongjie

Recently, the US military has frequently experienced weapons and equipment theft scandals, according to foreign media reports. Analysts believe that the US military's weapons and equipment theft is difficult to get rid of due to constraints of multiple factors.

Continuous stealing scandals

The Associated Press (AP) reported on June 15 that US military investigators recently found a box of grenades in a residential house in Atlanta, which can penetrate a 7.6 cm-thick steel plate, with a killing radius of about 15.2 meters. The US military investigator said it was stolen from a military train from the US Marine Corps Armory in Florida to the Letterkenny Army Depot in Pennsylvania. During the 17-day transportation, and even after arriving at the destination, no one ever found out that it was stolen.It was not until three days after entering the warehouse that a soldier discovered that the seal was broken and an ammunition box was missing.

Coincidentally, the head of Fort Bragg recently said that according to statistics from the base, there were 177 cases of theft of government property in fiscal year 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, theft of military equipment showed an upward trend. According to Gassaway,the head of the law enforcement center at the base, they have tens of thousands of dollars in assets that have got stolen and sold elsewhere.

Most of these stolen weapons and equipment were sold to street gang members and used in street violent criminal activities. Among the eight violent crimes identified by the AP, five types of stolen military guns were used to shoot civilians, and many criminals were armed with military weapons when they were caught.

Thought-provoking reasons

Based on a comprehensive analysis of the relevant situation, the main reasons for the frequent theft of weapons and equipment in the US military are as follows:

Loose supervision. According to the AP, reasons for the recent theft of weapons and equipmentare mostly simple, such as the door was unlocked,the guards were sleeping, no record of the monitoring system, intrusion from outside or other security breaches. According to US media, the outflow of military weapons has three major channels: direct sale of stolen goods, transfer through pawnshops and military surplus stores, and online transactions.

It can be said that the loose supervision of the US military weapons and equipment has reached a jaw-dropping level. According to US media, two businessmen recently colluded with a number of US soldiers at Fort Campbell in Kentucky and have stolen about $1 million worth of military equipment from the base. The equipment was sold openly on auction sites and then sent to Russia, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and other countries. The stolen military equipment includes various types of guns, gun parts, sights, helmets, medical equipment, and individual soldier protective equipment.

"Confidentiality" becomes the protective. With regard to the theft of weapons and equipment, the US military usually refuses to disclose specific information on the grounds of "confidentiality", which gives people an opportunity to take advantage of it, leading to frequent theft cases. The US military has not submitted any reports of guns stolen to Congress since 2017.Many times, the US military does not know who stole the guns.

The transportation lacks a security guarantee. According to a report released by the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, the recent missing case of armor-piercing grenade further highlights the "lack of necessary security guarantees" for military weapons and equipment in US rail transport. Railway freight giant CSX is solely responsible for this task. After the incident, CSX published a statement that the company complied with the required security protocols during the transportation process and "no abnormality in sealing was found during the transportation of the container", but it did not gain the trust of the media.

Woeful future

In general, more internal reasons than external reasons contributed to this issue and the fundamental reason lies in the lack of supervision and accountability mechanisms. The US military has long been accustomed to the theft of weapons and equipment, thus, the situation would get worse and worse.

At the same time, continuous scandals make the outside world increasingly question the capabilities of the US military. Recently, the US military has frequently flexed muscles through high-intensity exercises, high-density forward deployment, and high-profile power demonstrationsin order to divert domestic and foreign questions about the ineffective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the poor overall level of combat readiness. However, the frequent theft of weapons and equipment has exposed many problems within the US military.

With the continuous details of the equipment theft and the s fermentation of corruption in the US military, the outside world may cast more doubts on the US military.