BRITAIN/INTERNATIONAL: Frontline troops given dud ammo.THE Ministry of Defence has admitted supplying defective ammunition to soldiers in Afghanistan. A national newspaper reported that a platoon from 3 Para refused to go on patrol until the problem was resolved. The MoD has confirmed British troops were forced to borrow ammunition off American and Canadian troops. The batch is believed to have come from the Czech Republic Czech Republic, Czech Česká Republika (2005 est. pop. 10,241,000), republic, 29,677 sq mi (78,864 sq km), central Europe. It is bordered by Slovakia on the east, Austria on the south, Germany on the west, and Poland on the north. or Pakistan, where a round costs 60 US cents, compared to $1.50 for British, Canadian or American ammunition. The ammunition was for the .50 calibre Browning heavy machine gun A heavy machine gun refers to either a larger-caliber, high-power machine gun or one of the smaller, medium-caliber (rifle caliber) machine guns meant for prolonged firing from heavy mounts, less mobile, or static positions (or some combination of the two). , which can be mounted on a Land Rover See LANRover. . The newspaper reports one paratrooper demonstrated how poor the rounds were in a video posted on the internet site YouTube. The video shows two soldiers in a sandbagged The word sandbagged is a colloquial expression used to describe a situation in which one is publicly rejected or corrected in the presence of peers, often causing embarrassment. position struggling to operate the machine gun. One is shown constantly re-cocking his weapon as a colleague tries to feed through the ammunition belt while enemy fire can be heard in the background. The Browning machine gun fires up to 550 rounds per minute and can penetrate buildings and lightly-armoured vehicles. A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "Three months ago there was a single defective batch of .50 ammunition. "Some ammunition was borrowed from the Americans and Canadians for the short time it took to be replaced. "At present there are no problems with .50 ammunition or any other kind of rounds used in theatre." |
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