There is a “high level” of ammunition wastage in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Department of National Defense (DND) is looking for ways to address the problem.

DND Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said Monday, Jan. 23, that among the possible solutions they are eyeing is the recycling of ammunition so they can be used in the training of the soldiers.

“It has come to my attention that there is a high level of wastage of ammunition in different branches of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. We should avoid this problem from happening,” Galvez said.

“Ang gagawin natin (What we will do is) we will convert these ammo to training ammo,” The Defense chief added. “Hopefully we can have some procedures on how we can prevent the wastage.”

Galvez did not specify the extent of the ammunition wastage in the AFP although he noted that certain financial, logistics, and supply processes were put in place to address the problem.

He said the wastage occurred because of the decreased lethal operations by the military against the communist and terrorist groups.

“Sa armed forces, ang naging strategy natin is non-lethal mostly so more on CMO na napakalakas. Nakita natin na ‘yong ammunition consumption bumaba (In the armed forces, our strategy is non-lethal mostly so more on CMO which are very strong. We have seen that the ammunition consumption went down),” Galvez stated.

“’Yong wastage natin dapat mayroon lang authorized level (Our wastage should only have an authorized level),” he said.

Ammunition have varying shelf life depending on various considerations such as quality, components, and storage among others.

But the DND has started an evaluation to determine whether the shelf life of the ammunition can be extended.

“Because of Covid-19, the resources are very thin and we would like to encourage the Defense department together with the Armed Forces of the Philippines na talagang dapat maoptimize ang resources both logistics and financial (the use of both logistics and financial resources should be optimized),” Galvez said.

He compared the use of ammunition to handling Covid-19 vaccines which he already had an experience of.

Galvez served as the vaccine czar of the previous Duterte administration and led the country’s vaccination campaign at the height of the pandemic.

“I speak from experience as the vaccine czar during the previous administration. During our vaccine rollout, the government was able to maintain an acceptable degree of wastage, and we always protect the vaccine as gold because vaccine is life,” he stressed.