What Happen To Captured Weapons in this time? Max Guns Issue got the answer :
For the U.S. Army, it depends on the type of weapons, and what are they needs.
That In Iraq, many unit of U.S Army regularly captured caches (sometimes very large ones) of weapons. Typically these were your standard “slavshit” weapons that included in it busted up AK-47s and AKMs, old RPKs, a few RPG-7 launchers and the look like it. If we’d search through them, take anything that looked like it would be in good condition (usually AK-74s and some AKMs, when we could find ones in good condition), the weapons will be given to the Iraqi police or Iraqi Civil Defense Corps trainees as service weapons. The rest of the weapons were blown up. In some cases, literally entire warehouses are blown up at once.
Max Guns Issue included some pictures of it, but as we noted in another question, we blew a cache once that probably contained thousands of weapons, in what it was basically a rentable storage facility that have size 10x10 or 20x10 rooms stacked to the ceiling with AKs, 80mm mortars, RPGs, all kinds of stuff, even a few foreign arms (some old StG 44’s were in there, a few FAMAS, etc.) Then in blown up case, U.S Army call a procedure named EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) to blew the site, there was so much ordnance that the “minimum safe distance” for the detonation was 2 miles.
For larger things, like ZPTU an 57mm AA guns that could take down an entire plane squadron in the right hand, an old T-55 russian tank are an obsolete weapons to use in this modern war except in lower asian county war, and other kind of weapon. The U.S Army will disable them in place. They’ll melt/destroy the barrels of the weapon, and will mark them that the next work of engineers is for further demolition of that weapon, and then move on to next position/location.
But for little occasion, a company brought back a few very rare items as a trophy (not individuals, I mean the entire unit as an entity). This included a gold plated suppressed MP5, an ivory and lapis lazuli AK, and a captured AA gun. that trophy weapon is located now at U.S Army headquarters (the guns are framed, and the AA sits outside as a museum piece).
