In 1999 the Indian government had not sanctioned money for sheds in one of the depots, so the ammunition was lying in the open, grassy fields. Instead of paying someone to cut the grass, the practice was that the grass was sold at an auctioned price. As is common, the local farmer/contractors form a cartel to keep the bid amounts low and work out among themselves how to share the money saved.
The local audit officer had placed an objection on the depot for selling the grass in the previous auction at a low contract price. So when the tender bids for the next sale of grass were opened, the bids were even lower. So the Commander of the depot ordered re-tendering to avoid further objections by the local audit officer who can get very petty. In the meantime the grass had grown quite high and was dried up by the sun. It subsequently caught fire and hundreds of crores worth of ammunition was lost. The Commander felt that this was acceptable to auditor rather than the loss of a few thousand rupees by way of contract negotiations with local farmers.
In a similar incident in 2007 , two Army personnel died and the Police had to evacuate villagers within a 30km radius when an ammunition dump caught fire.
Think the government would have learnt their lesson then? Apparently not. The Defense Minister admitted in front of the parliament today that about 85,000 MT of ammunition was still lying in the open or in temporary shelters.
(Photo — From Bob Fagelson’s collection, the ammo dump at Kanchrapara, circa 1946)
– Manu Sood, editor, 8ak — Indian Defence News
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Way to go, commies! That’s just what we all need: more government bureaucrats to tell us all how to run our lives.
The visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that India and the United States are working “very hard” to finalize the agreement on monitoring the end use of arms and sensitive defense technology that the United States sold to India, reported the Press Trust of India.
The report said it was aimed to ensure the technologies were not diverted to any other country.
Clinton also said she was optimistic that they would get such agreements resolved when she was asked whether there would be an agreement for the end use monitoring of sensitive technology transferred to India by the United States, during a visit to the prestigious St. Xavier College in Mumbai, the financial capital of India.
The U.S. top diplomat arrived in Mumbai Friday night for a five-day visit, during which she is expected to meet with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday in New Delhi.
@Activon
you couchfighter have no idea how all millitaries in this world store own bombs.
I wonder how they store their Nukes.
Well, I do have an idea of how the US stores our munitions, and I can tell you right now, this would get a lot of AMMO troops fired. Not only did they store it improperly as far as quality(keeping the grass cut, facilites, etc.), but I bet you anything they stored too much in one spot. There’s a reason USAF stores grenades and ammo in concrete igloos.
you couchfighter have no idea how all millitaries in this world store own bombs.
Posted by: flying fart prodly joyned at July 19, 2009 01:11 AM
At least his post was intellegiable.
And when you think about how many of the people in there country dont accualy attend school or have dropped out early. India has a horrible class system.
Though i doubt the storrage of there nukes are as sloppy it shows a serious gap in proffessionalism.
@AMMO
lol. realy, you have no idea about!
aside that you look to much Pentagon sponsered films.
@Valcan
still not reading your posts..
and we have an ammo shortage here in the united states.so just pack up all this ammo and sell it here problem solved.
You would need artillery support to raid the Limited Areas of Bangor or Kings Bay, and you’d be up against a full company of Marines who have been waiting their whole career to kill somebody. I wouldn’t recommend it without a Nation-State sponsor. :)
@gruntdoc91
USA have weapons for 5 years unstoped bombing of Irak. there are weapon factories wich staff do enjoy a very lazy jobs by doing bombs for exports and thrd shitholes with citizen war and wait to fill out the next USA-forces bomb shortage inside of 1 week.. so nope.. unlikely..
(a same with EU, chinese and Russian weapon production lines) ok.. chinese do run at full capacity now. they have to delivery the weapons to the terrorists in Pakistan, India, Sudan and anywhere else where some stupid farmers/asozials/relligion-idiots are going to fight “evil westerners” and their cheap exports by weapons and suicide bombing)
India’s stifling bureaucracy is legendary. There are stories about getting forms to get forms to get forms for very minor activities (with considerable lag at each junction). Supposedly there was a big red-tape reform going through India but stories like this make me skeptical.
We have a “slight” UXO problem on Saipan. Apparently the US stored some 400,000 tons of munitions in Marpi in preparation for the invasion of mainland Japan. With the dropping of the nuclear bombs and surrender, they were not needed. Some of the munitions were cleared, but much of it remained and was allowed to become overgrown. Later, a fire swept through the area. We currently have a Brownfield Act-funded program to clean up the mess left from 60+ years ago. One of the supervisors told me this was the largest concentration of UXO he had seen in his 37 years of experience.
Im stunned why the Pakistanis have not raided or bombed these sites Yet?
I mean just one bicycle bomber & Super Boom time.
Great show India.
Some security,
How much of this is in India, 70,80,50% nationwide?
Scary in deed.
Or have a Pakistani gunship open fire on dump & keep Indian Army busy fighting ammo fires with terrorisim hits nationwide
Im stunned why the Pakistanis have not raided or bombed these sites Yet?
———————————
Because of their own open pits.
AC storage pans are beyond India’s financial means and definitely out of minuscule Pak defense budget.
The wiseguy “we are smarter than that” comments are ridiculous considering that the US military with all its RFID’s and yada yada put a nuclear technology on a plane and sent it to Taiwan! If the USAF is so retarded as to not know where its nukes are do you really expect the Indian military to bother about some ammo dump in some god forsaken village in the middle of nowhere ?? Besides, with an army as large as India’s, they need a LOT of ammunition and building storage yards all over the country side is foolish.
And just because ammunition is in a air conditioned silo doesnt mean its any safer from terrorists than if it was lying in the open! They can always blow a silo up just as easily as attacking an exposed ammo dump.
Indian defence is in a perilious state of affairs. Indians are novices in all matters of defence. With their bird’s brain, they cannot see beyond a certain point. I do not think any other countries having such an open air ammo dump . May be they are duds like their thermoculer device or may be their hand granades of which 30% are duds.