The hackers, who say they struck in honor of the anniversary of the uprising in Bahrain on Feb. 14, 2011, the first of the "Arab spring" revolutions across the Middle East, said they wiped out the company's Web servers and released names, email passwords and identifying information of its employees.
The Combined Systems site remained down Tuesday.
Don Smith, the chief executive officer, didn't return a call. The privately held company has refused to comment in the past, including in December, when two dozen protesters showed up at its Jamestown offices to decry the use of tear gas by the Egyptian military and police to suppress democratic activists.
Video news reports show that the gas canisters fired at demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square are stamped "Made in the U.S.A." by Combined Systems.
Amnesty International has called on the U.S. to stop the company's shipments to Egypt.
The company, which employs about 100 people, was founded in 1981 and supplies anti-personnel devices and nonlethal munitions to the U.S. military and the armed forces of other nations, as well as law enforcement agencies around the world. Among its domestic customers is the U.S. Marine Corps.
The Anonymous group has targeted the computers of numerous agencies and companies worldwide, often working in tandem with the Occupy movement in showing support for democratic campaigns sweeping Arab nations.
Among its most noteworthy intrusions was its claim last month that hackers had listened in on a conference call between the FBI, Scotland Yard and police in several other nations about their joint investigation of the Anonymous network.
The FBI, however, insisted the group had not gained access to any bureau computers, saying hackers had instead obtained an email giving the time, telephone number and access code for the call. The email had been sent Jan. 13 to dozens of people in many countries, and one foreign national had forwarded it to a private account that Anonymous hacked, the FBI said.
No one knows if Tuesday's attack on Combined Systems was carried out by the same group, but it bore the hallmarks of other Anonymous intrusions.
In a profane rant on Facebook, hackers demanded that the company "lay down your arms" and accused it of being run by war profiteers who sell "mad chemical weapons to militaries and cop shops around the world."
The group said it had marched on the company's offices and "now it is time to march on your websites." The hackers said the company's tear gas has been a tool of oppression.
"From the streets of [Oakland, Calif., to] Tahrir Square, to Palestine, Greece, Bahrain and Syria, your sinister instruments of torture and brutality have been used by the vile swine enforcers of the rich ruling classes to repress our revolutionary movements," the Facebook posting said.
The group also claimed to have intercepted emails from Combined Systems customers and threatened to attack any system administrators or Web developers who try to help the company rebuild its site.
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