Similar stuff happened a during Iraqi freedom with weapons and ammo. During post deployment the inventories came up short. People injured or killed I assume. Their weapons ended up somewhere. I was under the impression the weapons were written off as destroyed or turned over to deploying units. Who knows where those weapons ended up after 2009. I wonder how many of those weapons ultimately found their way back to the States via black markets.
I’ve been retired for a while, but even back then, the crooks had better rifles and pistols than we did.
They really wanted night vision and guided missiles.