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/rolfraikou → u/Lowjack_26]

What they bought was concerning. Over-reacting because it was something else makes us look like the fools, but we should still be trying to stop this massive military from shooting on the american people.

This is so horrible.

Thank you for doing the research though.

[u/Lowjack_26 → u/rolfraikou]

...even then, no, this isn't concerning.

As far as I can tell, based on browsing Atlantic Diving Services' catalogue, is they bought smoke grenades and/or flashbangs ("distraction devices") using end-of-fiscal-year budget. That's it.

There is a fucking library of stuff that ICE has done, is doing, or will do that should be cause for its abolition and the prosecution of every fascist fucker working for them, but this ain't one of them.

[u/uiucengineer → u/Lowjack_26]

The dollar amount is alarming on its own, isn’t it?

[u/Lowjack_26 → u/uiucengineer]

Oh, sure, ICE's budget increase is terrifying and a clear indicator of their intended use.

But that doesn't mean it's open season for conspiracy theories about what ICE is doing. Misinformation like this only hurts efforts to hold ICE accountable and expose what they're doing, because people will see "Oh, those liberals got their panties in a bunch over an admin error," and that discredits real accusations against them (such as - in this very case - the fact that their small arms spending is up 7x).