Stolen US Military Explosives Endanger Lives: Report

Hundreds, in not thousands, of armor-piercing grenades, hundreds of pounds of plastic explosives, as well as land mines and rockets have been stolen from or lost by the U.S. armed forces over the past decade, emerging in the civilian world and endangering people’s lives, reports the Associated Press. Troops falsified records to cover up some thefts, and in other cases didn’t report explosives as missing or even failed to safeguard explosives in the first place. Some thefts have drawn attention locally, as happened in 2019, when training rockets were found in residences just off Fort Hood in Texas. Others were uncovered that have not been reported publicly, among them the Camp Lejeune thefts and a 2013 case in which 36 sticks of unguarded TNT were stolen during a training exercise at Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

Explosives, many taken by military insiders, have been found in homes and storage units, inside military barracks and alongside roads, even at a US-Mexico border checkpoint. Military officials said thieves in the ranks are a small minority of service members and that — compared to stockpiles — the overall amounts of lost or stolen explosives are minuscule. And while Congress is planning to respond to the recent discovery that poor accountability and insider thefts have led to the loss of more than 2,000 military firearms since 2010 by requiring that the military give lawmakers detailed loss and theft reports every year, such reforms do not make it harder to steal explosives such as C4 that are more difficult to account for than firearms.