The most important of these is firstly excess age of ammunition stocks based on the usual life time expiry period under normal conditions (e.g. storage under prescribed climatic conditions) and early expiry of the lifetime under special conditions (stress on the ammunition on account of temperature, vibration or shock during transit to deploy ments) and secondly surplus inventories of ammunition stocks due to reductions in troop strength, dissolution of certain military units, discontinuation of a weapon system, a change in deployment prin ciples, banning of certain ammunition types or grades and the withdrawal of troops from war, crisis and deployment zones while leaving ammunition inven tories behind.