That seems to be less than accurate.

Serial numbers were verified by the company armorer when we checked them out and checked them back in.

Coincidentally, classified documents were also carefully checked out of and back into the document vault..

Times change.

and the entire unit got the wonderful experience of marching back and forth across their operational area until they found it. It took 12 hours in the summer desert sunshine in east Texas.

Did a chipmunk steal it?

He was in the army in the early 80s and he said that the bulk of his unit struggled with simple tasks and that they were not the brightest bunch of people.

Not the Russian army right?

Has happened more than once. Or, impromptu head call, was in a hurry to get back in formation, and with all the other gear, left weapon behind.

When he was in the army, was driving in a "jeep", saw a rifle sticking up out of the ground by some brush. Was stuck in about a foot or so, IIRC. Fell out of a chopper. Unit had been looking for it for 2 days.

Geez, man!

So a full case is 85-90 lbs more than an empty

Some people are making a lot of money, keeping other people very paranoid.

I'm pretty sure that they'll very quickly trace these to the folks that sold them to the surplus auction house, and someone is going going to become very familiar with military investigators and lawyers. They don't screw around when weaponry goes astray.

I've seen what happens when a single M-16A1 (an older model than the ones in the story) is misplaced. Entire bases get locked down, and massive resources are deployed to find a single missing weapon.

Given the information that was on the tags, this should be an easy one to solve.

I do feel somewhat sorry for the person that made the error...their life is about to get VERY interesting.