Alliant Tech Systems runs the Army's sole operational ammunition plant for small arms ammunition, Lake City Arsenal.  The Army used to have about 10 more, but these have been either sold off or mothballed.  Lake City has been ramping up production on all calibers and will approach 1.3 billion rounds of ammunition by the end of this production year.  Especially critical is the .50 Browning machine gun rounds.  The Army estimates it only has 4 to 6 million rounds (repacked WW2 ammunition) left on the shelves and the .50 is back in large scale production at LC.

 

In addition, the Army has standing contracts with Federal, Winchester, Remington, and other major players.

 

Several years ago, the Army decided to go "green" and changed the composition of its standard Ball cartridge from lead to a more "environmental friendly" core -- probably some kind of steel or alloy -- but I'm not sure what it was.  This was over concerns about lead contamination of ranges.  (Note to Army: Lead is a naturally occuring substance mined from LEAD mines.  What is this nonsense about lead contamination?) 

 

The resultant change over to the different core material of the bullets and their difficulty of manufacture severely cut into the Army's ammunition supply -- a self-inflicted wound -- but still a major concern.  The Army then contracted with Israeli Military Industries (the only other producer of this kind of projectile) to make up the shortfall.  However, the weenies at the State Department and DoD had to assure our Arab "allies" that the American Infidels would not shoot Muslim Islamofascists with Israeli ammunition!  The IMI ammo, primarily 5.56 NATO, was reserved for stateside ranges only [2004]. 

 

Now, it is interesting to note that some of the biggest complainers about a shortage of domestic ammunition for their LEOs are the politicians of some of the most virulent anti-gun cities.  I say cut them off from all their ammo from any source until their attitude improves! 

 

For those shooters of the .308 Winchester or 7.62x51 NATO cartridge, there is a virtual drought in this caliber.  Non-premium loadings are bringing as much as $0.60 a round in places. 

 

Another problem for the U.S. ammo market is caused by the expansion of NATO.  Many of the former Warsaw Pact countries (the Soviet's reluctant allies from the Cold War days), have been admitted to NATO.  One of the things they've had to do is to change calibers -- and a lot of their older, perfectly serviceable Combloc war reserve stocks have been scrapped. 

 

Lots of pristine 7.62x39 ammunition has been destroyed, particularly that of East Germany.  This also extends to 7.62x25 pistol, 7.62x45R rifle, and 9.2x18 Markarov.  Russian and Ukranian producers such as Wolf and Silver/Brown Bear have ramped their production of NATO and Combloc cartridges, but it is still not enough. 

 

There is also another problem with the Eastern European and Chinese ammo (now banned from import) -- steel cases.  The Russians and Chinese (and some others) use a lot of steel cased ammunition with either a laquer coating (that is, paint) to keep it from rusting or they give it a copper plating.  The laquer coated ammunition can cause a lot of problems with some brands of domestic and military firearms.  Be very careful if you decided to use the Russian and Ukranian (that is, the painted case) stuff in your pet rifle or pistol.  Some will shoot it without a hitch and others (usually with tighter toleranced chambers) will not.  It is a crap shoot as to whether a certain firearm will function, so go slow and test things out before you drop a bundle of cash of a bunch of it.