250,000 bullets per kill

US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel... A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year...

John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO's figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. "How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don't know," he said.

"If they don't do body counts, how can I? But using these figures it works out at around 300,000 bullets per insurgent. Let's round that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."

Pointing out that officials say many of these bullets have been used for training purposes, he said: "What are you training for? To kill insurgents."

There is additional information at the Belfast Telegraph article, where a commenter raises a valid counterargument that the bullet count may be for the entire armed forces, while the body count is only for Iraq/Afghanistan.  Still, it's a lot of bullets.