Enlighten us then... what was the actual amount and where did it go?
Mr. K wrote: “Enlighten us then... what was the actual amount and where did it go?”
The dollar amount didn’t go anywhere. There never was an intention of buying those quantities. I managed a similar contract for the Army. Contracts are negotiated years in advance and it’s difficult to project requirements.
The contract will have multiple line items corresponding to different types of ammunition. There will be multiple lines for 9MM, 7.62MM, etc. The 7.62 might have lines for different bullet weights, powder charges, etc. Each line will have a maximum and minimum quantity that can be order. The prices may vary by quantities. When you sum all those different lines you can get quantities in the billions. But, no one will order all the maximum quantities for all the lines.
For example, in my contract, a summation of maximum quantities across all the lines would have resulted in dollar amounts five times my budgets. But, this contract allowed me to tailor each years orders to the ammunition expenditures in theater. Those orders could not be predicted in advance hence this type of contract which is very common in ammunition.
You can dig into the actual orders placed (matter of public record), if you want to know how many were actually ordered,