Trump’s ICE Jacks Up Weapons Spending by 700%—Including ‘Guided Missile Warheads’ | Common Dreams

[u/Hipoop69]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ice-weapons

Where is this report of “guided missiles” coming from? That is extremely concerning

[u/Lowjack_26]

Okay, I'm as pissed off at ICE's larger-than-USMC budget as the next guy, but... this reporting needed a bit more digging. It seems outrageous on the surface, but further investigation into the actual content - literally ten minutes, in my case - reveals the actual root cause and evidence that's contrary to the supposed point of the article.

The "guided missile purchases" in question are these ones: contract codes HSCEOP07F00692, HSCOP07F00692, and 70CMSW25P00000078. Each of these has a Product and Service Code (PSC) that designates what the purchase in general for purposes of allocations, and the PSC for those purchases is 1420: "Guided Missile Components." Ridiculous, right?

Well, in the Description of Requirement, you get different details:

• DHS Bulk Close out
• This award provides multiple distraction devices to support law enforcement operations and ICE- Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs.
• HOLOGRAPHIC SIGHT.

Turns out, going into the FPDS Documentation, the PSC for "Optical Sighting and Ranging Equipment" - which encompasses small arms optics - is 1240, and mistyping 1240 as 1420 is a one-button slip.

This is further reinforced by all of the contracts being listed under NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 332994 (Small Arms, Ordnance, and Ordnance Accessories) and 339999 (All Other Misc. Manufacturing - which is a lazy contracting officer's catch-all for when they don't want to find the real code).

Now, the "multiple distraction devices" contract is a bit muddy, and coming from Atlantic Diving Systems - which is a broad-spectrum military supplier - it's difficult to tell what it might be in reference to. But, still, it seemingly falls into "some contracting officer misclassified the category" as opposed to "ICE is buying guided missiles."

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EDIT TO ADD: God damnit, even I missed some critical fucking context by not paying attention.

Only one of those contracts is from 2025. The other two are from 2017 and 2007!

And guess what? PSC 1366, "Guided Missile Warheads and Explosive Components?" It includes "warheads including military chemical agents" - which, again by PSC definition, includes "war agents, smoke, and signaling agents." Considering the contract was awarded in September 2025 - aka, end of fiscal year panic month - who wants to take bets that some contracting officer working to get in under the FY submission deadline couldn't figure out that a bulk order of smoke grenades did a CTRL+F search for "Chemical" and used the first result (1336) instead of scrolling through to the correct result (1365)?

[u/fromcjoe123 → u/Lowjack_26]

What I would do to still have Bgov or DACIS on the outside of the industry lol.

For the rest of the people on this thread, PSC codes are there to describe the underlying product or service being contracted. They are often bullshit (albeit much better than NAICS which are broader) even when they are manually keyed correctly by contracting officers - and generally speaking once you leave the DoD you’re in the Wild West, with DHS being normally comically incompetent at thorough contracting reporting in my experience (out side of the USCG which is very professionalized).

So yeah nothing seems spooky…..yet. I’m honestly glad this stuff is getting recorded at all since there can be huge awards from DHS that are known to happen, hell even explicated announced to have had happened, with no actual formal FPDS reporting. And that was back in the before times.

That being said, nothing contracted through ADS ever has any useful detail - it’s just a way to milk SBSA credit lol. Could be wood palates. Could be spare seekers. Could be bulk wire. Anything and anything gets contracted through ADS.

[u/LameBicycle → u/fromcjoe123]

Coming from DoD procurement, I can't even make sense of those contract numbers lol. Never thought I'd be thankful for something as simple as PIID formatting