Toys For Terrorists – Just Add Explosives

by Lucas Bowser

If you want to play cops and robbers it’s easy to find to toy guns, handcuffs and outfits to enhance your fun; and for a session of cowboys and indians, hats and plastic bow and arrow sets are easily available. If comic book characters are your thing it’s no problem to acquire costumes of famous characters like Batman and Joker complete with their accompanying gear, gadgets and weaponry. But what about some of the modern action characters commonly seen on TV today, like terrorist bombers of Jihadi or homegrown persuasion? Or what about some of the more obscure villains from FBI and DHS literature, like the dangerous sounding “returning veterans,” or the arch nemesis “constitutionalist?” Costumes can be fairly simple with hooded sweatshirts and blue jeans often sufficing to fit the cause, but what about the associated props and terrorist gear? If your interest is in acting out mock scenarios of terrorism, then Inert Products LLC has you covered. As “the world’s leading supplier of inert training products and services,” they can fullfill all your terrorism wargaming and scenario drilling needs. Well, that is if you are Law Enforcement, Homeland Security, or the DoD. Their products and services are not available to the general public although they “have custom designed and produced many props for major movies, film and TV productions.” Twentieth Century Fox’s “24″ TV series, MSNBC’s “The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist”, Showtimes “Homeland” and Annarupna Pictures’ “Zero Dark Thirty” are just a few of the productions that have used the services of Inert Products, LLC.

Inert Products LLC provides government agencies and security forces with “highly realistic inert training aids used in training against terrorist threats.” Their product line ranges from simulated suicide vests and belts, imitation IEDs, replica RPGs, mock machine guns, and dummy drug labs.

Here are some products from their website with links and added comments listed below.

Inert TNT Suicide Belt.

Inert Incindiary Devices (pictured above)  Oh wow! Thermite! Just like the terrorists used on the WTC! Seriously, is this supposed to be a common tool for terrorists?

Printer Cartridge IED.  I bet this was top seller back in 2010. Remember the foiled cargo plane bomb plot in early November was said to have been an attempted terror attack using an ink printer cartridge loaded with a combination of PETN and lead azide sent on UPS and FedEx cargo planes. It’s interesting that although the government later claimed it had it had been monitoring intelligence on a possible attack of that type since early September, there were actually government terrorism drills being run in August that mimicked the real event that occured a few months later. AP reported in an article titled, “Around the world, a race against time bombs in air” that the “FBI called FedEx and UPS, which had participated in a government terrorism drill in August. The exercise: A homemade bomb slipped onto a cargo plane.” The drill preceded both the claimed intellegence by less than a month, and then the actual event by just a few months.

During this “race against time” it was also reported that a Mumbai-bound flight from Amsterdam was grounded at 11pm on November 4th, making an emergency landing after a suspected explosive was found in the flight’s cargo hold. Mid-day.com reported that a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) official thought it might have been “a mock drill on the part of the US authorities to check the preparedness of our airport authorities to fight terror.”

How about the now famous “Domestic Pressure Cooker IED” (comes with backpack.) I bet this one is really taking off since the Boston Bombing. This item is not marked as a, “New Arrival” as many others are so the foresight in having this available with the backpack pre Marathon Bombing would seem to certify the companies expertise and depth of knowledge of terrorist tactics. But $589.00 for a pressure cooker and a backpack?! That’s a price only the government could love.

This would have been a useful tool to use in the terrorism drills that have been held during the Boston Marathon for the past several years. Who knows, maybe they were used. The drills are admittedly run without the knowledge of the marathon participants or spectators. We should also consider that this product might have been used during the 2013 Urban Shield Boston drills which were planned months before the Boston Bombing. The drills were allegedly canceled because the massive anti-terror exercise contained scenarios that were “eerily similar” to the actual events. Included in the scenario were, “backpacks filled with explosives” placed throughout Boston.

But Wait!! There’s More!!

Inert Products also provides this unique service. The website states,

“Any of our static / mock up devices can be made into a functional training device with the addition of our Universal IED Training KIt.”

ON SALE NOW for just $2,899.00 Sorry, supplies are limited to govenment agencies only.

Was part of Urban Shield 2013 coordinated with the drills that admittedly take place during the Boston Marathon every year? Could these drills have been a dry run mass casualty exercise that turned into the real thing? It’s not hard to see how products like these might have been used.