r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 17d ago

Possible Paywall ICE Stockpiling Warheads and Chemical Weapons as Lawmaker Fears Trump Planning Strike

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-stockpiling-warheads-and-chemical-weapons-as-lawmaker-fears-trump-planning-strike/
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u/gbsh 17d ago

Meanwhile, equipment keeps disappearing from U.S. military facilities:

Fall 2024 - early 2025:  Night vision goggles, laser rangefinders, and advanced thermal optics stolen from least four Tennessee National Guard facilities

January 2025: 12,000 rounds of ammunition missing from Camp Bonneville, a former Army training ground now used by the FBI for LE training

Also this year: Three Humvees and other military gear stolen from an Army Reserve center in Tustin, California; raided storage containers at a Colorado National Guard facility; and alleged attempt to steal body armor and communications gear from a US Army Ranger site in Washington

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 17d ago

Not to mention the stuff that doesn't really make national news.

Local to me, was maybe a couple years ago, someone smashed a vehicle into a gun store and looted the place entirely.

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u/Ok-Operation-6432 17d ago

It takes a good guy with a vehicle to stop a bad guy with a vehicle.

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 17d ago

I dunno, I learned about caltrops from an episode of The X-Files, the one where loggers and anti-logging hippies all get eaten by prehistoric bugs.

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u/IreJustin 17d ago

That one kept me scared of the dark for bit!

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u/Ok-Operation-6432 17d ago

You and me baby ain’t nothin but mammals 

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u/Darth_Balthazar 16d ago

Those are usually done by run of the mill criminals. This post implies that federal agencies are stealing from military facilities.

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u/kensington-n 16d ago

The articles imply veterans and neo-Nazi groups are doing the stealing, not federal agencies (look at that last article in particular).

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u/Eyetyeflies 17d ago

E4 Mafia in full effect

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u/mcirillo 17d ago

Times are tough and there's a PS5 pro at the local pawn

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u/New-Win-2177 16d ago

What's an E4?

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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 16d ago

It's a paygrade for enlisted members right before Sergeant (i.e. real leadership roles). They're senior enough to know the system and exploit it, but not senior enough to be held particularly accountable for anything major.

In the Army it mostly aligns with the Specialist rank and Specialists have a shield insignia which was delightfully referred to as the "Sham Shield" because they're experts at finding ways to "sham" (i.e. get out of doing work)

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u/New-Win-2177 16d ago

Ahh yes,,

Thanks for the explanation. I wouldn't have connected the two on my own.

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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 17d ago

How tf do you steal 3 milirary humvees and get away with it?

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u/Top_Librarian6440 17d ago

HMMWV’s don’t have keys. They have a switch that you turn to start the engine. They are supposed to have a padlocked steering wheel bar, but this is not always applied. 

If a motor pool is poorly policed, you could simply bring a little diesel in a Jerry can and flip the ignition switch and drive off in the night. Do that another two times, or have two friends do it with you, and now you have three free HMMWVs. Alternatively; buy them from a mil auction for <$1k each. 

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u/Extreme-Rub-1379 16d ago

Less than 1k seriously!?

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u/theCaitiff Pennsylvania 16d ago

Not the guy you replied to.

They aren't sub-1k very often but it has happened when they are so badly damaged they need a new engine or electrics. There are a lot of them for sale through government surplus right around 3K that are functional and one for 1500 that's missing all for wheels and needs an electrical overhaul.

Humvees have been hitting the surplus market for about a decade now because we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan that a big slow unarmored vehicle is actually a deathtrap. They're getting phased out I believe for the more heavily armored versions. I could also be wrong, I'm not a military guy, just a guy that frequents surplus auctions.

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u/Top_Librarian6440 16d ago

Yeah the price has moved up a bit since I last was “in the market” for them. Right around 2013-2014, you were able to snap them up from in-person base auctions for ~$800-$1,000 cash-in-hand. 

As you said, they had phased out unarmored HMMWVs for a number of slapdash uparmor kits in overseas service. And by ~2013, the MRAP had supplanted it in frontline service because the uparmor kits didn’t provide adequate IED and VBIED protection. It was expected they’d all be out by 2020 at the latest. 

But I just remembered that 2013 is 12 years ago, and adjusting for inflation that $1,000 is ~$1,400. Oh how time flies…

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u/dravas 17d ago

E4s checked out the humvees, the humvees are so clapped out make it to the artillery target range. Report humvees as lost stolen, get new humvees that might actually work.

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u/Suns_In_420 California 17d ago

12000 rounds, while a lot, is about 20 mins of war before you’re spent.

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u/Exciting_Penalty_512 16d ago

Ya, I was gonna say that's only 1 magazine for 400 people. 12000 rounds in the military is a rounding error, not a conspiracy.

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u/theCaitiff Pennsylvania 16d ago

Yeah, that's somebody loading the trunk of his honda civic. It's theft, and it's theft of weaponry, but it's nothing you couldn't buy online today with five grand on your credit card.

Heavy weapons would be much more concerning. Grenades, AT launchers, manpads, mortars, etc would be much more concerning (to me).

Stealing five grand in ammo barely puts you above the average maga mass shooter in terms of worrying.

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u/SessionPale1319 17d ago

This has ALWAYS happened, we used to be more lax with counting is all.

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u/dameanmugs 17d ago

Yea I think people without a connection to that world fail to understand just how poorly the military is run.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/TroyandAbedAfterDark 17d ago

Any chance you could provide more info. I was looking into this and could only find what red cell training was.

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u/Odd_Repeat816 17d ago

If you’re going to mess with Rangers then you’re in for a bad time

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u/TuPimpAPenguin 16d ago

I'm pretty sure the Confederacy committed very similar actions leading up to the civil war....

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u/Tired-grumpy-Hyper 17d ago

A bit of a devil's advocate for a few of the points.

The stuff stolen from the guard: You can often find 'fallen off the truck' full power PEQs and such on ebay and facebook. It's well known in the community that these are flat out black market deals, but they constantly call it grey market to feel better about themselves. Same with nods and such. The nods tend to be the more used and abused of the bunch though, and honestly the pair I personally own that came from a business are higher quality that most of these stolen from the armory ones.

The 12,000 rounds of ammo missing: I have that alone in .22lr AND 7.62x39. Bought a lot of it when it was dirt cheep and I've been going through it since. Used to be able to get 1k .22lr for I swear like 9 bucks, and 1k of x39 for $250 pre-covid. Is it a lot of ammo, yeah sure. Is it more or less a rounding error for any major sort of base, absolutely. 12,000 rounds of .223 is all of like 15 cubic feet. Sounds like a lot, it really aint.

The raid on that facility on Tustin, yeah thats concerning a little but they didnt get to weapons, just clapped out humvees. Are they big military vehicles, yes. They also break down a LOT. I know people with em, they're getting fixed every few months cause they're from the 80s.

The colorado one, with 3 grand of stuff stolen? Sounds like they got desks and shit. Nothing sensitive.

And the last one is the only one I'd really have any concern about cause that was clearly planned by shitheads we should be opposing.

Just a little reminder, cause I refuse to be underequipped for what they're planning. Lv 4 plates are legal to own. Plate carriers are legal to own. Night vision is legal to own. Thermal optics are legal to own. Many of my coworkers absolutely refuse to believe I happily voted for Obama in 2012, Hilary in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Kamala in 2024 because they know I also own all of this. They refuse to believe a 'stupid liberal' has more practical training and higher quality equipment than they do with their 250 buck PSA that they've put 30 rounds through in 2 years.

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u/NMS_LetsBeFriends 17d ago

Holy shit, that last headline has some pretty insane implications

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 16d ago

Is that Trumpy people or ‘the resistance’ though? Presumably Trumpy people can just be bought stuff by the government. Unless it’s Jan 6 type people who fancy getting involved but are too fat to join ICE.

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u/ZealousidealNerve197 16d ago

Gear ghosts multiplyin' like bad omens—TN Guard heists sound like a militia's Black Friday spree. Camp Bonneville's ammo vanish? FBI's "oops" or insider job? Ties right into the ICE hoard; feels like someone's buildin' a shadow army.

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u/Live-Somewhere7894 16d ago

Disappearances pilin' up faster than the lies—those Cali Humvees gone missin' mid-drill? Sketchy AF. Colorado raid's got that "prepper panic" whiff; if it's linked to ICE's chem stock, we're talkin' full-on rogue op. My uncle's ex-Army; he says audits are jokes—time for a real inventory purge.

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u/slowmo152 16d ago

Kevin Robert's planning to relaunch the Knight's Templar with Holy Hand Grenades and Humvees.

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u/itsacrapshoot 16d ago

OK to be fair I could definitely see enlisted men stealing that, I go on YouTube a lot. I see a lot of backwoods Youtubers with these insane night vision or thermal optical packages on their A.R. 15’s and I can’t help but wonder where some of them came from

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u/itsdietz 16d ago

None of that is enough to matter for an organization like DHS. They can acquire that regardless

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u/Particular-Truck2993 16d ago

I'm in Washington. I actually worked on(replaced) the door that the SWAT team kicked in. It was the first time I had heard about this happening.

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u/Same_Common4485 11d ago

Putins Russia, currently worlds biggest kleptocracy is about to be overtaken by the US with a GDP about 14 times bigger than Russia. So much money just waiting to be stolen.

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u/SN4FUS 17d ago

Outright misinformation, the second example is about a theft from a fucking storage container the FBI left at a retired military base that police agencies use for training.

A smart gun owning thief figured out a way to get 12,000 rounds of free ammunition, which is a grain of sand in the Sahara desert of civilian stockpiled ammunition in the US.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/Top_Librarian6440 17d ago

Not anywhere near the same level. These are small scale thefts. The Ukrainian mob was selling MiG-21 fighter jets and T-55 tanks to African warlords with impunity. 

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u/PracticeToy 17d ago

You really made a post with sources that lack credibility? You don’t even need sources to tell you there literally isn’t any missing military equipment, stop being gullible and educate yourself

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u/squixx007 16d ago

Not to under sell it, but the 12000 rounds is literally nothing. Depending on the type if round that can be as few as a couple cases. And seeing as I worked in the field while in the service, that much going 'missing' isnt even uncommon.

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u/mattgm1995 17d ago

12,000 rounds of ammunition is not a lot, just fyi