Possible stupid question re:surplus ammo

Donny Fenn1

Donny Fenn1

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my understanding of "surplus" is just that equipment or product that is surplus to the users needs.
For example ammo cans, once the ammo is used those cans become surplus.
Or a factory gets an order for 100,000 rounds of something and makes 120,000 because they have the raw materials.
Or a government/army has a "use by" date for an item and they don't use it and it becomes "surplus".
Oh, and by being "surplus" by rights it should be cheaper as it has been depreciated by some bean counter along the line or is "stale".

So my question how come ammo from communist/former Warsaw block states (lets say China) showing up here in 5.56NATO or 7.62NATO is "surplus". They didn't make it for NATO/don't use it themselves.

Would it not just be, ammo, and not marketed as surplus?
 
Surplus ammo is ammo that was manufactured for a military, but was eventually not needed, and so sold to the private sector. It is surplus for this reason. It doesn't need to be made for NATO. Most ammo that filters through over here nowadays is not the old USSR stuff or Cold war stuff. Ammo is produced by countries like the eastern block for private military contractors which sometimes don't need it all. It is not wasted though. It's sold to us :).

China is the same. ####, they'd sell us dog #### if they could. But McDonalds has that under control. Surplus ammo is always going to be available as armies exist and orders are made for ammo, not all of it is sometimes needed from the order or excess is made Incase of problems. So we benefit. There are problems with this though. Sometimes quality can suffer due to orders need to be made quickly or cheap for some military forces or companies. Just the way it is really. Can't be too picky when getting surplus. It's made for bulk orders in quick time at low price manufacturing. You can't expect too much from it.
 
You are right, the term has become too broadly used.
Surplus, in the shooting world, used to mean Military Surplus. Nowadays I just use the terms Commercial and Milsurp.
 
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