Air Force transit hub stored weapons shipments in unguarded building, IG finds

A recent Defense Department Inspector General’s report found that military shipments of rifles and other weapons were stored for as long as a week in a warehouse with no overnight guards and no security system to detect break-ins.

The Air Force agreed with the IG’s finding and said fixes are planned for the facility, located at Travis Air Force Base, California. Travis is a major mobility hub in the Air Force with military cargo shipments of all kinds routinely routed through the base. The base handled 50,000 tons of cargo in 2020, according to an Air Force press release.

Released on April 30, the report noted “significant physical security risks from improperly stored weapons” in facilities on the base, resulting in “an increased risk for unauthorized access and theft” of the weapons.

The report found that Travis lacked a dedicated and secure facility for the weapons, which were temporarily stored in a “non-compliant” annex that did not meet the Air Force’s requirements for physical security.

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Air Mobility Command, or AMC, is working to resolve the issues identified by the Inspector General office’s report, a spokesperson for the command told Task & Purpose on Wednesday.

“Implementing permanent infrastructure upgrades or new facilities follow deliberate processes that require dedicated planning and resourcing,” the AMC spokesperson said in a statement. “Travis Air Force Base leadership has implemented interim risk-mitigation procedures to ensure in-transit assets remain secure.”

The report found that as recently as late September, the annex was used to temporarily store “Security Risk II weapons” for anywhere between 12 hours and a week. That category includes a host of infantry weapons like the M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, M2 .50 caliber machine guns, and Mk 19 grenade launchers.

Inspector General officials learned last year that the annex was not manned from midnight to 7 a.m and it lacked an “intrusion detection system,” falling short of the Air Force requirements for facilities used to store weapons, according to the report.

The Inspector General officials noticed deficiencies in the facility used to store weapons during a visit to the base on Sept. 24 and 25, 2025, the report says. As part of the visit, officials spoke with members of the 60th Air Mobility Wing in charge of handling, storing, and shipping cargo, including sensitive items.

In an official response to the findings included with the report, a senior leader with AMC wrote that the command would follow recommendations in the report to correct the problems identified in the report.

Specifically, AMC said it would direct the 60th Air Mobility Wing to use available funding to make required repairs and modifications to the annex and come up with a long-term plan, Brig. Gen. Anthony Babcock, AMC’s director of logistics, engineering, told the Inspector General’s office.

AMC is also conducting a review looking into how to fix any airfield security shortfalls at Travis Air Force Base, Babcock wrote in the command’s response to the report. That review is expected to be completed by June 26, and it will be used when the Air Force calculates future budget requests.

“Pending the [Fiscal Year 2028] Construction Task Order being approved in April 2027, funds will be approved to award the required contracts,” Babcock wrote.

In the meantime, Air Force officials will work to “identify acceptable workarounds up to and including manning or equipment solutions,” Babcock wrote in AMC’s response to the Inspector General office’s report.

“These interim solutions may have an impact to operations, which must be assessed and accepted at the appropriate levels,” Babcock wrote.

UPDATE: 05/06/2026; this story has been updated with additional information from Air Mobility Command.