bang! bang! bang! - the universal bullet

In recent headline news (Telegraph UK) the British Army seems to be running out of blanks for training purposes.

To quote direcly from the article: A "senior army officer" (i.e. who could be anybody speaking on condition of anonymity) said "There is nothing more dispiriting than soldiers having to go on exercise and shout 'bang, bang' because there is not enough blank ammunition. Any benefit from the exercise will be lost because soldiers just won't take it seriously. Why should soldiers who are being sent to Iraq, where their lives will be endangered, be forced to shout 'bang' in training because someone in the Ministry of Defence can't do basic arithmetic? It's a disgrace."

Makes you wonder if:
a) The SAF will ever "run out" of blank rounds.
b) If such event came to pass, the SAF would admit it in public.
c) why in BMT we had to go "BANG BANG BANG BANG".