ALTNot sure if I should blame this atrocity on the “gifts for him” people or the tacticool EDC people.
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The cost of ICE gear.
A detailed analysis by Joohn Choe on Facebook below the cut.
All these ICE guys hang thousands of dollars worth of useless crap on their rifles, actually.
I noticed it looking at an ICE raid the other day where one of the agents had what looked like a surprisingly state-of-the-art rifle setup - a “skyscraper” or extra-tall optics mount, an IR laser on a riser, and, I thought - but wasn’t sure - what looked like $3,000+ weapon laser, the BE Meyers MAWL-C1+ (the civilian version, at least).
It takes you a moment to realize what’s so odd about this all:
- all these ICE guys, actually, have thousands of dollars worth of basically tactical hipster gear on their rifles
- nearly all of them have expensive infrared lasers that civilians can’t buy, but
- none of them appear to be wearing night vision
All of it, in fact, looks pretty useless; none of it is going to make them faster at catching people who run away from them, for instance, or stop them from slipping on ice.
It is actually a somewhat interesting question to me whether ICE agents are all even capable of using all the useless crap they hang on their rifles; merely walking around with NVGs on is a learned skill, and shooting, moving and communicating under night vision is a highly specific skill that requires specific training.
But ICE’s training pipeline had been cut to just 47 days as of late 2025, as the Atlantic’s Nick Miroff reported in August of 2025; I also note that the selection standards for ICE’s elite unit, Special Response Team or SRT, appears to be considerably easier than several Army units - Airborne units, for instance, appear to currently require 42 pushups for 17-21 year old males; SRT only requires 30. SRT requires a 12-minute 1.5 mile rule; Airborne currently requires a 16-minute 2-mile run.
Ranger selection is even more demanding - advice for applicants to Ranger Indoc Program, or RIP, and Ranger Assessment & Selection Program, or RASP, suggests reaching 50-70 pushups and a 5-mile run time under 40 minutes. Ranger standards considerably exceed ICE SRT standards.
I don’t think it is entirely an exaggeration to say, actually, that ICE probably has the highest ratio of “money spent on their guns” to “missions that are actually supposed to involve shooting people” - about 73% of individuals apprehended by ICE had no criminal history or a minor criminal history in 2025; only 5% had violent criminal convictions.
Given their mission profile appears to involve, a significant majority of the time, either harassing people on the street or doing traffic stops that they’re not trained for, out of all the ‘exquisite’ units that the United State federal government keeps bearing arms, ICE could be said, uniquely, to be exquisitely useless.
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Bullet Proof
Making something bullet proof is like making it fool proof.
And the moment you make something fool proof, they make a better fool to prove it.
For fools, there is ALWAYS a chance of human error, and if you don’t think there is, you will find out the hard way.
For bullets, there’s always a bigger bullet. Or a cop killer.
First off for the basics, most armour used in the military is NOT designed for bullets. Flak vests are - oddly - designed for flaks. Steel helmets are - also designed for flak. Basically, fragments. Even if you don’t use fragmentation rounds, explosions almost always create fragmentation. Even a mote of dust can blind you if launched by an explosion.
And the reason most armour is designed for flak instead of bullets is that it’s easier. We can make armour that can stop bullets in close range, but it weighs 60lbs. There is heavier, theoretical armour. It works, but it’s so heavy it has to be balanced with it’s own skeleton to transfer the weight to the ground.
When talking about bullet proof, we have to talk about which bullet.
Rifle bullets are typically smaller, with more propellant. They don’t hit as hard, but they are accurate. Pistol bullets are typically heavier, with much less propellant. This impart more force, (stopping power), on the target, but don’t have the velocity for penetration.
What this means is that you can, indeed, create armour that stops pistol bullets in close range. Flak vest and steel helmets will typically stop rifle bullets at significant range, (200-300m is the standard accurate range for assault rifles), but in close, no.
The problem is that the bullet isn’t stopped by a forcefield. It’s stopped by the armour. This means that if it doesn’t penetrate, all of it’s force is applied, directly to the armour, and thence the wearer.
You still take the punch.
And now there are cop killers. Cop killers are the grossly informal term for steel-cored bullets. Most bullets, still, use lead cores. Lead is the heaviest stable element, and it’s down enough that it will import most of it’s force to the target.
Steel cores don’t flex when they hit something, they typically penetrate. As such, they are typically illegal, even if you want something cheap for range practice that won’t spread toxic heavy metals about. With them, even pistols can often penetrate pistol rated armour.
And this is why most soldiers do NOT wear armour. Most infantrymen never wear body armour, and only occasionally wear helmets. Because camouflage and entrenchment is much more effect, and weighs a lot less.
But, in civilian usage, you might not have to hike for a dozen kilometres with a 100lbs rucksack. You might be engaged in home defence. You might be part of an armoured car detail. Either way, you don’t have to bear the weight of your armour, your chair does. And almost all crime is with far more concealable pistols rather than much more obvious an cumbersome assault rifles. So, what this means is that body armour is much more effective, and if you ever have to shoot, your body armour will likely save your life. in this case, there is really no middle ground. If you get shot, and you are not wearing armour, you could very well die. If you are wearing armour, you could very well survive.
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Sorry could you say that again? I was daydreaming about being stuck in a post apocalypse and being rescued by a big strong soldier boy
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50 != 50
This is something that always comes up when discussing potential firearms.
.50" BMG hits with around 14-20kJ
.50" AE hits with around 2.4kJ.
And the .50" in Rapture, (circa Bioshock 2), works like an upscaled .45", which was the caliber used by the Tommygun in Bioshock. Everyone sees .50" in Bioshock 2 and laughs at how there is no way it’s .50" BMG.
Which is true, it was never designed to be .50" BMG.
The NATO calibers: 9mm, 5.56mm, and 7.62mm are standardized, and so don’t need elaboration. Others, like .38" an .357" have the same caliber, (measured from the outside and inside of the rifling), but use different numbers to mark the one with the longer case. Not because it’s needed, but so the .357" Magnum rounds won’t destroy .38" Special firing chambres. Improvements in the propellant means that most cases nowadays are largely empty. Why do we still use them? Standards. It’s easier to keep making the same ammunition than it is retool ever firearm that uses it. This would be extensive and expensive, especially for the NATO calibers.
Every other round needs the caliber and a descriptor.
.500" S&W is not a .50" BMG nor a .50" AE. The extra zero also changes the precision. Higher precision is a lot more difficult to make. .50" BMG and .50" AE were both designed for specific uses, while the .500" S&W was designed for the primary purpose of reclaiming the most powerful handgun title. It worked.
When talking about Space Marines, the .998" Godwyn is 25mm. They are unclear about which is which, but I headcanon .998" as Godwyn, and the other one as the mundane Human caliber. Since this is 25mm, people assume it should have the same power as a 25mm autocannons used by NATO. But in truth, it would probably have double or triple the power of the .50" AE, which is still half of the power of .50" BMG / 12.7mm NATO.
Even if you had a frame that could survive this on automatic, and had soldiers that could carry it, the extended cartridge would take a lot longer to do a full cycle before being able to fire it again. This is because one of the biggest things that affects firerate is the cartridge length.
The .50" AE was designed for handgun anti-material, which means combat ranges usually around 25m.
The .50" BMG was designed for heavy machine gun use, and did so well it completely redefined heavy machine guns. Heavy machine guns, pre-12.7mm, were designed to be fired from deployed positions, usually tripods sited in defilead to fire in enfilead. By itself, the FN MAG 7.62mm machine gun, when used as light machine gun has an effective range of 800-900m. When in a tripod, with pre-set firing points can be 1,800m, and some armies use 7.62mm machine guns for INdirect fire, up to 2.5-3.2km.
The Astartes Godwyn Boltgun is designed for combat ranges of 200-300m, because this is the most common combat range. There’s a reason why every assault rifle uses these as guidelines. Even worse, the Boltgun does not deal damage kinetically, it does so explosively. It only needs enough propellant to penetrate by an inch or two. More propellant would be completely wasted for their main usage. Astartes Devastators can also carry Lasguns, which when used in pairs are the main cannons of the tanks used by the Imperial Guard.
This is because we figured out the optimal power and range. If we design a new weapon system, we’re not going into this blind. And this is why the AR-15 is one of the most common weapons, as it has had decades of improvements, and is designed to work in the broadest range of combat. Any weapon that replaces it either has to do the same job fantastically better, or due to a paradigm shift, say, if hostiles start using body armour.
For the record, we do have armour that can stop assault rifle round at range, but they are too heavy to be useful for many operations. But, if armour improves, or hostiles start integrating them in some form, then service rifles that can penetrate this armour will become necessary. Which the US is working on.
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Hera Arms CQR 1.0 Stock for the AK platform just dropped.
Love it or hate it, it is iconic.
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Web Gear
So, you’ve chosen your weapon, bought weather-appropriate clothing and ammunition, and now you need something to carry it.
The past 20 years and more, there has been several serious attempts to replace web gear with tactical vests. I’ll cover those after.
The basics of web gear are:
- yoke
- web belt
- pouches
Modern (ish) web gear is designed to be incredibly customizable. The web gear doesn’t just have to fit every soldier, and every combination of clothing they have to wear, (which, as you might imagine, can get considerable in the winter), it also has to allow different layouts.
The current generation is MOLLE (pronounced Molly). I’ve never used it, but it looks a lot more robust than back in my day, during the reign of ALICE.
The ALICE in wonderland system had straps that go from the yoke to your pouches. The yoke bears the weight on the shoulders. A web belt is a MUCH wider belt, and bears the weight on the hips, while also keeping you balanced. Loose kit swings. C9 belt box bandoliers always seem to find a way to fall right in front of your groin when going prone.
The pouches then clipped into the web belt or yoke. The web belt and straps could be adjusted and, (in theory), locked. This allows you to quickly adjust the size when you put a jacket on. You can put what pouches you want, where you want.
The US normally goes into battle with just ammo and water. Canadians tend to carry a few meals, and jackets, and M72s. For a rifleman, frontline is 250 rounds, and we normally carry twice that. 5 mags means 150 charged, with 100 carried in a bandolier holding clips, (NOT MAGAZINES). STANAG mags typically come with mag chargers that dramatically speed up mag charging. Our canteen comes with a small stove and cup, allowing us to heat our Individual Meal Packs with poison pills solid fuel tablets. We celebrate when we get our hands on MRE heaters, but the stove and cup are still useful for saying making tea or boiling suspect water.
You probably also have to carry miscellaneous pyrotechnics, like smoke grenades or para-flares.
Still remember the idiocy when they decided that white smoke was bad for our lungs.
I’ll save you the long version, but the short version is coughing up rainbow phlegm.
You also want cam paint, and something to wipe up the ball sweat. Not joking.
If you have a pistol, you’ll want a holster and ammo. Military holsters are more designed to stay in place as you move about the wilderness instead of quick draw, and typically come with room for two additional mags. Concealing isn’t so much of an issue in the bush, as you hopefully have a rifle to go with it.
Tactical vests have two great sins:
- lack of versatility
- not strong enough
God, the number of tactical vests that aren’t designed to be robust enough to survive… combat.
But, if you are buying your own for your own use, you can pick one that suits you.
A lot of people want to get a vest to get a plate carrier, but:
- armour isn’t that good
- if it is, it’s heavy
- There is no reason for your plate carrier to be your web gear.
Yes, you can combine them, but if the plate carrier is lacking in any way when it comes to web gear, either number or location of pouches, you’d be better getting a simple plate carrier and a vest or web gear to go over top. You also don’t have to wear the plate carrier on the outside, and can, in fact, wear jackets over top of it.
TL;DR: the most important thing when getting web gear and/or tac vests is:
- suitability for your needs
- robustness
