Gadgets for fighting terrorists

Wile E. Coyote would love it.

Under an Acme Gadget Division banner, Ryland Fleet enticed passersby to consider his product, a .30-caliber machine gun mounted atop a vehicle and fired by the driver using a joystick.

“You don’t buy it because you need it,” explained Fleet, who wears all black and machine-tools his weapons at home in the Virginia woods. “You buy it because you might.”

America’s post-Sept. 11 fear of terrorist attacks not only spawned the $55-billion-a-year Homeland Security Department, it also fueled a domestic defense boom for survivalists, backyard inventors and small businesses that scrambled beside major contractors for sales to local, state and federal agencies.

About 650 mostly small vendors peddled their sometimes-bewildering wares to government officials at a federally funded exhibition for three days last week at a regional airport here in rural Virginia in one of the nation’s largest such trade shows. The event’s slogan: “Fighting terrorism with commercial technology.”

“This is designed not just for overseas applications,” said Carl White, a spokesman for the fair, which was not open to the public. “It’s for the local courthouse, or prison, or any other state or local asset vulnerable to terrorism.”

To weed out so-called dreamware -- gizmos that look good on “24” but don’t actually work -- only companies with proven technology were invited to exhibit.

Scott Stuckey’s giant loudspeakers can direct ear-piercing sirens at approaching targets. He said his San Diego-based company, American Technology Corp., just sold a set to the Maersk Alabama, the cargo ship attacked by pirates last month off Somalia. Other shipping companies, airports and nuclear power plants are customers as well, he said.

“Inside 100 meters, it approaches the threshold of pain,” Stuckey said, giving a brief demonstration that caused other vendors to cover their ears and shout at him.

Fair organizers barred what Ryan Alles called “the pots-and-pans, shoe-insert and T-shirt stands” that he sees at lesser trade shows. His company sells $1,500 kits that he says can help people escape burning high-rise buildings. In case of fire, clip a pulley onto a bracket on the wall outside, climb into a flame-resistant bag that looks like a huge silver cocoon, push off and lower away on a rope.

“It’s not an Armani suit, but it works,” promised Alles, a former Florida firefighter.

One also could order the latest in camouflage body armor and hazmat suits, or brightly hued “decorative bollards” for the boutique look when protecting buildings against onrushing vehicles. Armored SWAT vehicles with ramming bars also come in several colors.

Ten booths offered small, unmanned aircraft that carry surveillance cameras, including one $6,000 system disguised as a sea gull. One company sold bicycles designed for parachute drops, and another showed photos of a sky-jumper with a large dog lashed to his chest in a harness. The dog’s bulletproof vest costs extra.

Friends could fly along in a Buckeye Breeze, which looks like a go-kart with a giant propeller stuck on the back. It chugs through the air under a parachute wing, comes with “crushed velour” seat covers and is offered in teal, aqua and Red Baron Red. Assembly is required.

Nearby, an energetic salesman, German Arias, pulled a reporter into a shower-like glass stall, pressed a button and flooded the enclosure with thick, choking fog and blinding strobe lights.

“This is best of show,” he said from somewhere in the fog. “It makes you invisible.”

Across the way, Bill Grimm insisted that his Corner Shot device deserved top honors. It attaches a small video camera and semiautomatic weapon to a gun stock with a swivel hinge, allowing it to shoot around a corner. The system is popular in Israel, he says, but hasn’t caught on here yet.

“Americans like to see before they shoot,” explained Grimm, who heads the Golan Group in Boca Raton, Fla.

There was much to see at the Force Protection Equipment Demonstration, as the biennial fair is called. Booths bristled with tire-spiking belts, vehicle X-ray systems, nerve gas detectors, laser guidance units, night vision goggles and more than 3,200 other items designed to foil terrorists.

Officials from Pentagon agencies and the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Energy -- as well as foreign diplomats, state police officers and other first responders -- crowded the carnival-like fairgrounds. Bangs, buzzes and the occasional trumpet blaring reveille filled the air.

At midday, many of the fair-goers boarded buses to a firing range at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, about 10 miles away. Sitting on bleachers, they watched live tests of bulletproof glass, explosive charges, grenade launchers, and other things that went boom on a sunny afternoon.

Back at the iRobot booth, Lowell Howard used the down time to practice with bomb disposal robots, each with video cameras and mechanical arms, that he sells to the military and police. Howard fiddled with an Xbox-style game controller and sent the largest robot, the SUGV300, bouncing through ruts like a World War I tank.

“I always wanted to put a La-Z-Boy on it and drive it around,” he confessed.

It wasn’t possible to determine how vendors rang up sales on the first day. But Fleet, president of Acme Gadget Division, was optimistic that he had found a buyer for one of his armored, turret-mounted, belt-fed machine guns.

“A Colombian general,” he said, “was very interested.”

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bob.drogin@latimes.com