Nearly half of powerful .50-caliber ammo seized by Mexican government came from US Army plant, defense minister says
https://www.icij.org/news/2026/02/nearly-half-of-powerful-50-caliber-ammo-seized-by-mexican-government-came-from-us-army-plant-defense-minister-says/?utm_campaign=news&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit
31 Comments
I’m not surprised. There can’t be a million .50 calibre ammunition factories in Mexico, and there’s literally hundreds of thousands of US service members. Whether it’s corruption or the cartels sending people to join to get access to arms & ammunition, that’s probably the easiest way to get hold of it.
DUH! Written in capital letters is insufficient to express the level of…..words fail me….lack of education.
When I was stationed at Fort Bliss we had 100% ammunition/brass turn in requirements specifically so that there was no chance of ammunition being stolen. If we didn’t return 100% of unused live ammunition or expended brass then the DA 5811 had to go all the way up to the division commander for approval.
I have personally had to rake through El Paso desert sand under the August sun looking for lost 5.56 brass, instead of having to get lost ammunition paperwork signed off by a 2 star. Anything like large amounts of .50 or large caliber ammunition being lost would have gotten very significant investigations.
So that is to say, if cartels are getting 50 cal ammo from the US army plants, it’s not because a select few soldiers are managing to sneak any away from training. Any significant amount of ammo being skimmed off the top would need to be coming from higher up the food chain in the logistics process, or directly from the plant itself. Ammunition is strictly accounted for once it’s in the ASP/Unit level. It’s much more likely this ammunition is being legally purchased on the civilian market and then smuggled south, instead of being stolen from the military supply.
Shocker!
Nearly all the ammo coming from the country with the most guns in the world.
Shocker!
The US also leaves most of their their vehicles being after wars. That way they have a reason to fight again in a few years and get to waste billions in taxes building new ones
Lake City is contracted out to manufacute NATO rounds for sale to the public. .50 cal is an expensive NATO round not popular for hunting so its not produced by many other manufacturers. No shit a large percentage of it found anywhere would be from a US surplus ammo seller. No one else is making this at quantity. Saying its from the military is disengnious. Lake City was a WW2 munitions plant but now it also produces ammo for consumers too…..
Well duh? I mean that’s not really shocking is it?
Operation F&F
Pretty scary that the cartels have that powerful level of ammo. I have personally seen what a 50 cal round does to a human being. Really messy.
I wonder how much trade Mexico in America do on the black market. They buy our guns we buy their drugs if anything it’s the Mexican border patrol to keep the guns out.
Where was the other.50 caliber ammo made?
I hope they resolve this Fast, Mexico must be Furious
Turns out when you freely sell deadly weapons and ammunition to the public, bad guys can buy it too. Who knew.
100% of this is coming from the Mexican army and national police. They have been corrupt for decades. I highly doubt less that 5% is smuggled through the border to Mexico from the US.
I saw a youtube video a while back where they were asking a Mexican Federale about the corruption in the Mexican police.
He immediately said: “The US Border Patrol is much more corrupt…where do you think all the guns the cartels get come from?”
Fort Brag Cartel baby
When I was in the Marines from 2008-2012 one of our line companies platoon sergeants (who was also one if my SOI instructors) got busted as an active member of the Mongols who had been smuggling weapons and explosives to them for years. This really comes as no surprise
Brings to mind a certain gun walking operation that happened 15 years ago, after which the administration blocked investigations until they could gain control of Congress and quietly end them…
Stop calling this ‘smuggling.’ In logistics, we call it ‘institutional leakage.’
When 50% of seized heavy ordinance traces back to a single Army plant, it’s no longer a security failure; it’s a shadow supply chain. The cartels haven’t just corrupted the border; they have successfully integrated themselves into the US defense industrial base. This is the military-industrial complex eating its own tail.
A whole consortium of journalists and not a single one thought to wonder if the ammunition might have originally been bought by the Mexican government for their own forces, or given by the US government for Mexican forces to use, and was corruptly sold off by people in the Mexican government or forces.
We’re all tryna find the guy who did this
Rogue Mexican government elements sell or gift the bulk U.S. made ammo to the Cartels. En Méjico esto no sorprende a nadie. Most guns on the other hand, are commercially sourced. Many Americans profit off this trade. This should not surprise anyone.
So the US provides the mexican military with battle rifles, automatic rifles, and ammunition.
A significant percentage of mexican army members desert, with their weapons, to join a cartel.
It used to be really bad, something like 30,000 soldiers a year 20 years ago. Right now it’s still in the thousands (2-4k) a year. That’s a ton of soldiers, and yes, they bring their military-issued weapons with them.
Where else would these be made? Poland?
You can order that ammo from that plant to most of the us as a civilian. I don’t get why they are even mentioning that the plant also produced us army ammo.
The CIA is supply cartels, not army bases.
Where do the other 50% come from?
Well yeah… why wouldn’t the ammo come from the country that manufactures the most ammo and weapons?
Nooooo??
russia has a huge chunk of their parts, equipment, and some ammunition supplied by US and EU companies through third parties despite sanctions. There’s zero accountability or enforcement as long as someone is making money.
We complain about how corrupt other countries are, while pretending we aren’t corrupt as hell either.
Reading the top comments… did everyone forget that the FBI was literally selling arms to cartels and pretending they’re losing the shipments in sting operations?