Today in military incompetence: missiles stolen for scap

[Zixinus]

Romanian officials have reassured the public after the theft of more than 60 missile warheads from a train.

The warheads were taken from a railway car carrying military equipment to neighbouring Bulgaria on Saturday.

Officials said the stolen warheads could not be detonated because they were in component form without explosives.

Investigators say the missiles could have been stolen for their scrap metal value.

Romanian media said when the freight train stopped in Giurgiu, southern Romania, it was found that doors on the railway car had been forced and four boxes of 16 warheads stolen.

Officials are investigating how the theft could have happened while the consignment was being guarded by paramilitary police.

Bulgaria's economy ministry said the warheads belonged to Grad missiles which are normally fired from multiple-rocket launchers.

In a statement it said the shipment was part of a transfer of "nonfunctional components and parts" for reprocessing at the VMZ factory - one of Bulgaria's largest military factories - in Sopot.

Romanian officials close to the investigation told two daily newspapers that the warheads did not contain explosives.

Romanian police spokesman Florin Hulea also reassured the public, saying the warheads posed no risk.

Talk about lack of security.

[Sea Skimmer]

Pretty dumb, but the things more or less are scrap with the explosives unloaded. It’s a 122mm steel tube and that’s about it.

[Enigma]

Pretty dumb, but the things more or less are scrap with the explosives unloaded. It’s a 122mm steel tube and that’s about it.

But how much would each weigh? About what 50 to 100lbs each? That's a total of 3,000 to 6,000 lbs. Around here scrap metal goes for about 0.13 a pound so the scrap value for the thieves would be around $360 to $720. Then again might be worth more than scrap metal, for example stainless steel goes for AFAIK 0.70 a pound.

[Sea Skimmer]

If its just the warhead assembly and not the entire rocket it'd weigh more like 25lb empty. Grad rocket warheads only weigh 41-55lb loaded depending on the myriad models in service. Its no bold assumption to speculate that people stealing scrap metal like this are likely drug addicts or otherwise people on very hard times who really wont care how little money they might get. The steel quality should be fairly high but it certainly will not be stainless steel.

[folti78]

Collecting scrap metal* for a living is decades old occupation here**, especially in the most poorest segment of the population***. In Hungary there were cases of fatal train accidents traced back to people stealing cables and batteries for their metal.

* read: everything is scrap metal that wasn't nailed down properly. Since the introduction of the affordable battery powered grinders, this changed to anything you can cut off with said grinder fast.
** ok it's Hungary, but welfare wise we were better off than Romania in the last few decades. Yet this is a serious problem here, especially in poor rural areas.
*** The Roma people are heavily involved in the business even before the fall of communism. After the fall, they were the first ones to lose their jobs, creating the dirt poor underclass with no hope of employment. That they always had an informal local government(the gypsy barons/voivods), helped the creation of Roma scrap metal mafias really fast.

[K. A. Pital]

Collecting scrap metal* for a living is decades old occupation here**, especially in the most poorest segment of the population***. In Hungary there were cases of fatal train accidents traced back to people stealing cables and batteries for their metal.

* read: everything is scrap metal that wasn't nailed down properly. Since the introduction of the affordable battery powered grinders, this changed to anything you can cut off with said grinder fast.
** ok it's Hungary, but welfare wise we were better off than Romania in the last few decades. Yet this is a serious problem here, especially in poor rural areas.
*** The Roma people are heavily involved in the business even before the fall of communism. After the fall, they were the first ones to lose their jobs, creating the dirt poor underclass with no hope of employment. That they always had an informal local government(the gypsy barons/voivods), helped the creation of Roma scrap metal mafias really fast.

Heh. Sounds like really similar to Russia. We have our bunch of destititute people dying while trying to dig out some cable under current or whatever once in a while. Really that's indicative of how far poverty has penetrated Eastern European socities.

[folti78]

Pretty dumb, but the things more or less are scrap with the explosives unloaded. It’s a 122mm steel tube and that’s about it.

But how much would each weigh? About what 50 to 100lbs each? That's a total of 3,000 to 6,000 lbs. Around here scrap metal goes for about 0.13 a pound so the scrap value for the thieves would be around $360 to $720. Then again might be worth more than scrap metal, for example stainless steel goes for AFAIK 0.70 a pound.

That won't be a big money for you, but in poorer areas around here, $300-400/month is the best income you could hope for, unless you are really-really lucky. I don't know how things fare in rural Romania though, but I doubt it'd be better than that.

Heh. Sounds like really similar to Russia. We have our bunch of destititute people dying while trying to dig out some cable under current or whatever once in a while. Really that's indicative of how far poverty has penetrated Eastern European socities.

Pretty much, there were sound bites around here, that large scale theft by destitute people strangled whatever economic development the affected areas could hope for, costing the country some billion HUF in GDP.

[Irbis]

Collecting scrap metal* for a living is decades old occupation here**, especially in the most poorest segment of the population***. In Hungary there were cases of fatal train accidents traced back to people stealing cables and batteries for their metal.

Same thing happened in Poland. It's getting better now, but in the 90s 'scrapers' stole unbelievable amount of stuff, including several whole rail tracks, tanks left as monuments, or even demolished (almost) a few quite big buildings for rebars and pipes. A few hundred $ goes a long way, especially for people with alcoholic problem (they would do that for even a few dozen $) or just hungry or homeless ex-state workers.

[PeZook]

Same thing happened in Poland. It's getting better now, but in the 90s 'scrapers' stole unbelievable amount of stuff, including several whole rail tracks, tanks left as monuments, or even demolished (almost) a few quite big buildings for rebars and pipes. A few hundred $ goes a long way, especially for people with alcoholic problem (they would do that for even a few dozen $) or just hungry or homeless ex-state workers.

There was an abandoned building which was demolished lately around my city, it had massive concrete bars cut out wholesale from major concrete support collumns, which always made me wonder just how it was done by destitute homeless guys.

Same for disassembling and moving train tracks. Seriously...how? This was either more organized than some random scrappers, or these guys are amazingly resourceful and should immediately be hired to build highways instead of random Chinese consortiums

[Simon_Jester]

Railroad tracks may not actually be that hard, depending on how they were laid down in the first place. In the 19th century you could badly damage railroad tracks with nothing but hand tools if you were ambitious enough (see Andrews' Raid. Depending on how they were assembled, freeing the rails from the ties and prying them up could be fairly straightforward, as long as you have a truck nearby to take the rails.

[PeZook]

Railroad tracks may not actually be that hard, depending on how they were laid down in the first place. In the 19th century you could badly damage railroad tracks with nothing but hand tools if you were ambitious enough (see Andrews' Raid. Depending on how they were assembled, freeing the rails from the ties and prying them up could be fairly straightforward, as long as you have a truck nearby to take the rails.

Yes, moving the rails is exactly my point. Where do you get a truck if you're a destitute homeless guy?

Then again, there was a story of a family being arrested when they charged into a military firing range to collect scrap metal from previous artillery firings. They were really organized about it, had intel, transportation, shared roles...

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, moving the rails is exactly my point. Where do you get a truck if you're a destitute homeless guy?

You find someone who's sleeping in their pickup truck, offer them some large fraction of the proceeds, and dangerously overload the thing to get as much money as possible out of your trip.

Especially in eras like this, or the economic chaos of decommunization, there are a lot of people on the streets who are basically functional, intelligent, and quite capable of organized activity.

[PeZook]

You find someone who's sleeping in their pickup truck, offer them some large fraction of the proceeds, and dangerously overload the thing to get as much money as possible out of your trip.

Especially in eras like this, or the economic chaos of decommunization, there are a lot of people on the streets who are basically functional, intelligent, and quite capable of organized activity.

Yeah, I meant it more in jest than anything ; Especially since that level of organization sometimes manages to escape even professional managers.

Hell, the collumns I mentioned earlier? Even better: you'd have to organize an entire complicated operation to steal those, with heavy cutting equipment and multiple people.

[folti78]

You find someone who's sleeping in their pickup truck, offer them some large fraction of the proceeds, and dangerously overload the thing to get as much money as possible out of your trip.

Especially in eras like this, or the economic chaos of decommunization, there are a lot of people on the streets who are basically functional, intelligent, and quite capable of organized activity.

Yeah, I meant it more in jest than anything ; Especially since that level of organization sometimes manages to escape even professional managers.

Hell, the collumns I mentioned earlier? Even better: you'd have to organize an entire complicated operation to steal those, with heavy cutting equipment and multiple people.

After a while, scrapers will range from a few homeless dudes with some hand tools, to people who does it as a side/weekend job to organized gangs, who can pool together the resources needed for bigger jobs, get the intel etc.

Back in the early 90s my dad worked for Hungarian Telecom, they had a constant problem with organized gangs stealing the above ground telephone/telex lines every night. But only the ones no longer in use (because their traffic moved to underground cables)m owning to inside intel, who never been caught. They worked really fast and it took a long time to work out methods to detect where they are working exactly. It turned out they worked in teams with young guys specializing in climbing up the utility poles without any equipment (the standard poles were tar soaked wood), cut the wires with a simple plier and a collector dude who collected the cut wire on a simple reel made from two Y shaped wood. Each team had it's own pickup/small truck to collect the reels and move between the locations.

Now these were the early gangs, but if they had a proper leadership*, they stow away enough money to retool themselves when the telco lines were disappeared. (Unsurprisingly, at the end of the 90s they started to prey on the railroad's communication lines too, forcing them to upgrade their comms network).

* of course they had, they were Roma people who has their own society and leadership thanks to being semi-segregated from the mainstream society thanks to racism and the half-assed attempts of the communist regime to integrate them.

[Tribun]

That reminds me of an amusing story that happened some years ago. One night, the overhead lines of a railway line had been shut of for some reason, and of course a gang of idiots (later confirmed to be actually organised) tried to steal the cable. Imagine what happened when just as they started to mess with it, the power was turned on again...

Hint: 15kV isn't healthy for the human body.

Btw., this is what in Germany overhead line poles usually look like:
picture