Inside US Military Facility Recycling Billion of Used Cartridges

Welcome back to The Daily Aviation for a feature on how the US Military recycles expended ammunition for a more sustainable environment.

Voice, text and video editing belong to The Daily Aviation, any use of these content without permission is forbidden.

Don't forget to subscribe us on Facebook or Twitter.

You have a question or you would like to send us footage. Send us a message.

[George-tzcv]

80% of the video had nothing to do with recycling brass.

[JoeHarkinsHimself]

On my first business visit to Korea in 1970 I noticed that the stairs in many office building were capped with brass. The cranks for opening windows were brass. I saw umbrella holders that were obvious slightly machined artillery shells. Someone finally satisfied my curiosity by explaining they were, like many other commons hardware items at the time, made from recycled munitions from the war there in the early 50s.

[paullinkins]

During my time in the US Army we had to pick up every expended cartridge and link. It wasn't as much as to account for every round but rather to keep the range clean. The worst were the rubber obturators from the 4.2" mortar extended range HE rounds. They get blown to pieces and fly something like 75 yards away. Second place went to the links and cartridges from the 25mm on the Bradley because that was often fired while moving and scattered everywhere.

[Modine.]

This is a reloaders dream right here. 👍

[hvguy]

The military has an air conditioned forklift but no barrel handling attachment?! Wild

[notyou]

Recycled? I saw nothing of recycling ammo. I saw scrapping operation for spent cartrage casings. What you failed to mention is that at one time the casings were sold to China in blatent violation of federal statues that forbade such transactions. Once fired brass was supposed to be sold in bulk back on cyvilian market for reloading purposes.

[ger]

"Before flight, a maintenance team goes over the aircraft and inspects all parts based on a checklist." Boeing should do this 😛

[stevelalondejr]

I worked in a Brass mill/foundry called Chase Brass we melted millions of pounds of military brass shell casings from small arms to shells as big as your leg, it was suppose to have been dead ammo. Not all were, once shook into a melting furnace some would go off a 50 cal primer will get your attention. They said during Vietnam there was a semi load of 2'' brass rod leaving the plant at least everyday being used for military ammo of some sort. This vid is not a true showing from what we bought and melted none were ground up they were whole shell casings.

[clintonsmith]

We recycled brass in basic training in 67.
I suspect it was being done long before that.

[Itmakesyouthink]

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the reloaders salivating.

[thrillhunter]

imagine joining the military just to end up a factory worker sorting filthy brass.

[badmoon]

Did you notice all the overweight soldiers and airmen? WTF??? Look at videos from 20+years ago, and you never saw such out of shape people in our military. SMH

[SlyNation]

Well this is good to see. I hate seeing all these military videos, especially the Navy, where huge amounts large and small cartridges are allowed to simply roll off the deck and into the ocean.

[desertengineer]

The sad truth is very little “brass” actually gets re-used. It’s too expensive. Most just gets crunched and sold for metal scrap. A foundry will melt it all, purify it for the desired alloy, and it just gets repurposed. Ammunition grade brass is just easier to buy and press new.

[Happy-Honkey]

All that brass. Makes me miss the days of cheap ammo.

[bandittelevision]

What were they doing at the beginning of the video? It looked like coal..great job explaining anything..

[richardst-laurent]

It saves money & it helps the environment, i say never stop trying to improve for a better safer cleaner world, for all to live in.

[bonjovi]

Those "Unlawful and dangerous" range goers that pick up the brass are also called free citizens of the United States who do not roam on military firing ranges. The free citizens of The United States, only pick up brass fired by other free citizens on non-military shooting ranges, and yes, they use the brass for resale, also known as recycling.

[JohnCon-tipi]

At the infantry school in 69, we fired or supervised the firing of an unbelievable amount of ammunition, just on machine gun training OCS Candidates. And, yes, we recycled all of it, numbers of cases of .308 or .50 cal (on Saturdays) each day is just a guess, and it varied during the week. I know that as an instructor demonstrator I personally fired over 300, 000 rounds of ammunition in a year, including over 5k rounds every Friday night. Lots of brass...

[trcythmpsn]

Some of those cartridges saw more tours in the GWOT than soldiers did haha