By James Smith
In the middle of December 2012, the Customs and Border Protection Agency presented a pre-solicitation for 50,000,000 rounds of .40 S&W caliber ammunition, ostensibly for training. The contract would provide a total of 250,000,000 rounds over the life of the 5 year contract. The contract was to be issued on 20 January 2013. CPB, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has included the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency with this solicitation.
Today, CPB and ICE announced via the solicitation process that they will be awarding the contract on or about October 7, 2013. Added to the original solicitation was this sentence:
“Resulting award will be used for training/qualifications only, not for duty use, and will be used as a direct substitution in lieu of procuring like quantities of duty ammunition.”
From their individual websites:
