Anyone know if the general purpose guys are shooting up steel core?  API?  FMJ?  Just curious here....

I am sure ISISIS is using whatever the U.S. state department is sending them to use, courtesy of US, the taxpayers

In Kandahar province in '05-'06, terps and ANA had polymer coated steel case something or other. Probably a lot of stuff floating around from various middle Eastern countries and stuff that was purchased by DoD. I'm just speculating, though.

Probably all that combloc surplus that we stopped importing, captured Iraqi and Syrian stores, and a mix of what we've been buying and shipping over.  I know in Syria we were sending the secularists rebels Russian and Chinese surplus.

From what I've seen here and there, anything and everything is possible.. A lot of Iranian 7.62 was being found in Iraq and Afghanistan, so no doubt that stuff is still around the region.

1DD

I read an article posted on the forum a while ago that listed some of the rounds found in a Taliban fighters magazine. Interesting is that they didn't load just one type of ammo. It seemed like they just dumped all their cartridges in a pile and loaded their mags with random ammo.

Found the article, http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/reading-rifle-magazines/

Saw this 2 weeks ago:

http://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/37cum5/where_syrian_civil_war_ammo_comes_from_warning_pdf/

The part in the Reddit article about Wolf/Tula/etc. is true. I saw a Syria video some time back where guys were loading up mags out of Wolf boxes.

Pretty much this.

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It's a hodge podge of asymmetrical wars against a between mix of combatants with industrial bases and those without. For those without an industrial base the ammo used is whatever they can get their hands on from supporters, capture, the black market, etc. Eventually there probably will be indigenously loaded ammunition by some of those current combatants that lack industrial bases if it goes on long enough. Remember back to the hidden Israeli ammunition manufacturing during the British occupation of Mandatory Palestine.

Just as an example of diverse ammnition supply sources, when I was in Kuwait during Desert Storm, (1991) I examined a bunch of 7.62x39mm we had captured. A lot of it was Chinese, a fair amount was Iraqi manufacture of recent vintage, up to 1990 dated. The balance was represented by every Warsaw Pact country, except East Germany, and also Yugoslavia. I found ball, steel core and lead core, tracer and API.  Most of it was dated in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's but I found one round from the USSR dated 1958. All of this came from just the Iraqi 5th mechanized infantry division, so no doubt other units in other areas could have had different supplies, with more or less diversity...

1DD