[ARC5] Surplus Disposal

[Mike Morrow]

> One time I saw a rep from the adjacent CIA building trying to get 
> some surplus Techtronic scopes only to be told that MARS had first
> dibs on them.

I suspect that was most likely in the mid-1960s when the USAF and US Army
MARS programs had several significant scandals exposed where new equipment
that was still being purchased by the taxpayer (and much of it not electronic)
being declared surplus for immediate USAF MARS or Army MARS acquisition and
distribution to a favored few members.

Navy-Marine Corps MARS was not caught up in the scandal and fraud because
the equipment issued to its members remained property of the NAVMARCOR
MARS program unless cannibalization had been authorized in writing.  When
one left MARS all accountable equipment went back to MARS.  My R-105/ARR-15
had been through two former members before it got to me.  The last piece of
gear I got was in early 1970.  By the end of the decade, the MARS equipment
programs had been abolished.  I received the original custody forms I had
signed years earlier for *all* things I'd been issued, along with a form
letter stating that accountability had been dropped.  They'd been keeping
good records.  I always kept those forms with me when I was on active duty
back then, just in case I was ever required to explain why I had an AN/SRR-13A
receiver in my BOQ room.  (But I never was.)

In the mid-1970s when my submarine was being overhauled, I would on occasion
look past the chain-link fenced-in area of a surplus property storage and
disposal yard at Portsmouth (NH) Naval Shipyard.  Apparently they also dealt
with surplus from the nearby Pease AFB, for there was always stacks of 
military avionics gear that sat outdoors in the summer's rain and winter's
ice and snow for months or years.

Mike / KK5F