NYPD: Explosives
vanish from airport

Police in New York City have issued a department-wide alert for officers to be on the lookout for missing explosives powerful enough to bring down a commercial jetliner.

Primasheet explosive can be applied in strips directly on target

Newsday reports the explosive, called Primasheet, vanished at New Jersey’s Newark International Airport in early September.

Officials with the Port Authority originally “said they did not think terrorists had anything to do with its disappearance and that their investigation was focused on who signed the explosive in and out of the agency’s training center at the Newark airport,” the paper stated.

The explosives, often used for demolition projects, were last seen as a police K-9 Unit trained bomb-sniffing dogs aboard a Continental Airlines plane.

The NYPD alert describes the missing explosive as a half-inch-thick slab of sheets, with each sheet measuring four inches square. It goes on to say Primasheet “requires the use of a commercial or military detonator in order to function,” according to Newsday.

Distributed by Valley Associates in Ontario, Canada, the explosive is waterproof and moisture-proof, and “can be applied in strips directly on the target.”

According to the company’s website, the sheets “can be easily cut to any desired shape and applied with an adhesive. The flexible sheet can be applied as strips or diamond shapes directly on the target or used to improvise linear shape charges.”

Terminal 3 at Newark International Airport

Newark International handles over 400,000 plane movements and 30 million passengers per year.

New York police issued the alert last Monday after simultaneous terror attacks outside two Istanbul synagogues killed 20 and injured 300, and as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was ending.

The last accounting of the material was Sept. 4, aboard the Continental plane, but officials say the disappearance was realized during an internal audit Sept. 23.

Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law-enforcement agencies have been notified as soon as possible in the event of security breaches with possible terrorist involvement. NYPD reportedly made the announcements for up to ten days during roll call once the Port Authority was aware the explosives were gone.