Former ATF Agent and Counterterrorism Explosives Expert Breaks Down Bombs Placed By Radicalized Former Soldier in New Orleans Attack

As most Americans were celebrating the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, a former U.S. Army Information Technology (IT) specialist named Shamsud-Din Jabbar was driving a truck rented from the peer-to-peer car company Turo, headed into the French Quarter of New Orleans. Footage gleaned from CCTV cameras showed Jabbar pass a parked New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) squad car on Canal Street before abruptly turning right at 3:15 AM on January 1, 2025 and then speeding down Bourbon Street, mowing down pedestrians as he careened down the road, finally coming to rest after hitting scores of people, 14 of them fatally.

Jabbar then engaged in a brief gunbattle with NOPD officers before he was neutralized, including using a suppressed rifle he legally purchased on November 19, 2024.

The suppressor and another one recovered from his rented Airbnb residence on Mandeville Street in New Orleans appear to have been improvised and privately made.

The Mandeville residence had been set on fire at approximately 12:15 AM on January 1, 2025, according to an investigation conducted by ATF’s National Response Team, in an apparent attempt to conceal evidence, but the fire never progressed to the rest of the home, despite Jabbar dousing it with copious quantities of flammable liquid.

Had the story ended there, it would have been as spectacular as it was tragic, but a darker picture emerged when law enforcement revealed Jabbar had also placed two improvised explosive devices (IEDs), concealed within coolers, which were capable of being remotely triggered, and that the devices did not incorporate the usual propellant powder low explosives which are the most prevalent type of IED in America according to the U.S. Bomb Data Center, but instead utilized a synthesized high explosive variously described as R-Salt or RDX, making the devices particularly lethal, and highly unusual in the U.S.

The further revelation Jabbar was trailing an Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) flag on his truck, had pledged allegiance to ISIS, and had apparently been radicalized catapulted the case from a major story to the top law enforcement focus in America, something that remained unabated days later.

So how did an administratively trained soldier who worked IT and Human Resources issues in the U.S. Army, with no discernable explosives training, engineer some of the most potentially lethal devices used in an attack on U.S. soil in over a decade, when taking into consideration the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013?

Explosives Technology

It is common in mass casualty incidents for law enforcement public safety bomb squads to respond to and render safe suspicious/unattended items left behind in the chaos of incidents that do not even involve explosives, such as mass shootings and even kinetic attacks using vehicles. This is a prudent precaution, especially when a suspect leaves behind bags or belongings, and a need exists to clear them and reopen public spaces. In the case of Jabbar, it was reported almost immediately there were multiple suspected IEDs located in the area. These devices were initially reported to be pipe bombs, which makes sense insofar as the U.S. Bomb Data Center (administered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – ATF) has long reported pipe bombs are the most common IED recovered nationally.

The agency puts out an annual Explosives Incident Report in concert with the Department of Homeland  Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the latest of which is dated 2023. The story soon changed, however, when law enforcement revealed the devices were radio-controlled and thus able to be remotely detonated, a type of system commonly referred to as command-initiated. This type of device is both rare and concerning since it implies a much greater level of sophistication than the average IED encountered in the U.S. In fact, according to this same report, of 770 explosion incidents logged in 2023, 320 were conclusively recognized as bombings, but of those, only four (4) devices were identified as being command-radio controlled, versus some form of pyrotechnic delay, where 73 were so identified.

Going back to 2019, the explosive filler most commonly used in U.S. explosives incidents is overwhelmingly derived from fireworks and other pyrotechnic devices, which is understandable given how easy it is to harvest the energetic material from fireworks commonly available in so many states. One of the more recent well-known IED incidents using such materials was the 2018 spree bombing attack perpetrated by Cesar Sayoc, who mailed 16 IEDs to targets across the U.S.

In early press conferences covering the New Orleans attack, law enforcement officials from ATF and the FBI revealed two different high explosives were detected during search warrants executed at Jabbar’s residences; R-Salt and RDX. R-Salt is a high explosive in its own right, albeit a very uncommon one. In thinking back over a thirty-year explosives career, and discussing this unusual explosive with fellow experts, I can only recall a single incident in the U.S. where R-Salt may have been used, with actual synthesized RDX usage equally rare.

This is not the case in Israel, where Palestinian terror groups used the material in a series of attacks. Possessing an explosive power (“relative effectiveness”) roughly 1.25 times that of TNT, it has an excellent velocity of detonation, and good brisance, a French-derived term that roughly equates to shattering power. RDX is a more powerful cousin to R-Salt, as the latter is lacking some oxygen molecules, and while it can be synthesized on its own, it may also be made in the process of creating R-Salt, with R-Salt basically an interim step. Whether or not the explosives are determined to be R-Salt or RDX through conclusive laboratory testing, versus using sophisticated field detection equipment such as Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Gemini employed by both ATF and FBI is really a difference without a distinction, as both are very effective high explosives.

RDX, for example, is the primary ingredient in Composition C-4 plastic explosive and the M-112 demo blocks so familiar to many of SOFREP’s readers. Following federal search warrants served on Jabbar-linked properties in Houston and New Orleans, agents located and seized numerous items consistent with the manufacture of homemade explosives (HME), including labware, sulfuric acid, acetone, Potassium Nitrate, and filter paper containing white-colored residue.

Based on leaked crime scene photos obtained by multiple U.S. news outlets, at least one of Jabbar’s IEDs consisted of an explosive-filled cylindrical metal pipe nipple, approximately 1 ½ to 2 inches in diameter with end caps, numerous rolls of metal nails, a receiver bearing the label “D1” and white wire leads apparently going to an electric match inside the pipe. Given the power of R-Salt or RDX, a high explosive-filled pipe with several hundred nails would have
yielded the lethality of an M18A1 Claymore antipersonnel mine, set off into massive crowds gathered for the New Year’s celebration.

Middle East Tactics on American Soil?

The use of vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIED) to initiate attacks is hardly new in the Middle East, as anyone who ever served in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan can attest, and multiple attempts or successful efforts have been made in the U.S. as well. The discovery Jabbar had multiple command-detonated IEDs and a suppressed semi-automatic rifle opens the intriguing possibility he intended to initiate the attack with multiple IEDs and subsequently aimed fire at surviving passersby.

This is compounded by the fact Jabbar is known to have visited Egypt in June and July 2023 and then onward to Ontario, Canada, shortly after returning to the U.S. from Egypt, despite what are reported to have been substantial financial difficulties around the same time. While in this case he used his rented pickup as a kinetic weapon, we will never know if this was his primary attack vector, with intended subsequent use of the IEDs and firearms he had in his truck, or if he improvised using the truck after the IEDs failed to initiate.

What we do know is that according to the ATF Special Agent in Charge of the New Orleans Field Division, Jabbar’s IEDs failed to function because of his use of an electric match instead of a blasting cap. Given the otherwise relatively sophisticated nature of Jabbar’s IEDs, the failure to manufacture an improvised TATP or HMTD electric detonator (using techniques well-known in terrorist circles) remains a curious question for investigators.

It is, however, possible to know whether Jabbar “pressed the button” on his transmitter if the bomb technicians who recovered the devices were able to render them safe in such a manner so as to recover the contents for forensic exploitation. Insofar as the devices were sent to my old command at the FBI Laboratory’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the hazardous device examiners who would have undertaken the exploitation (specially trained supervisory special agent bomb technicians) would have noted if the electric match(es) functioned, and thus ignited.

While this does not answer the question of whether Jabbar initiated them before or after the vehicle ramming portion of his attack, it would still fill in gaps for federal investigators, who are trying to ascertain how Jabbar learned his tradecraft. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation however, the use of ISIS or Al Qa’ida style complex attack tactics represents a concerning escalation in the capabilities of lone homegrown violent extremists (HVEs).

Aberration or Prelude?

There are many directions in which the FBI is being pulled through its dual hat role in both law enforcement and the intelligence community, but few would argue the disruption of terrorist attacks, whether by lone HVEs, small cells, or state sponsors, should rank anywhere but the top of Bureau priorities, and the FBI’s own Counterterrorism Division believes HVEs currently present the greatest terrorist threat to the United States.

Recent foreign terrorist-inspired bombers behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the 2015 San Bernardino attacks learned their tradecraft from Inspire, the English-language propaganda magazine made famous by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Issue 5 of Inspire contained an article entitled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” and its slick production values and ready availability made it problematic for counterterrorism investigators.

Terrorism is one of those things where even low-frequency events can have high consequences, and solo actors are notoriously difficult to disrupt or prevent because their actions are, by nature, known only to themselves or a tiny number of people. Should it come to pass that Jabbar can be documented to have received training or inspiration from ISIS or other terrorist actors, the events of January 1, 2025, will become another in a long list of post 9/11 attacks on American soil.

A post-mortem on this investigation and subsequent lessons learned need to wait until the question of Jabbar’s accomplices becomes known. Similarly, a clear-eyed assessment of whether Jabbar was able to evade detection by the FBI’s current HVE assessment process seems both desirable and necessary. The sophistication of this attack, following a prolonged period without any successful terrorist explosives incidents, represents a cautionary tale that can hopefully be avoided in the future and not the start of a period where such attacks are becoming more common.