Blackwater is back, but not in its former glory, of being the most feared private military contractor in the world. The security services of Blackwater is now called Xe Services, given that Blackwater had to rebrand itself with all the litigation, scandals, murder investigations, and arms smuggling issues that surround the company, and its highly controversial founder, Erik Prince.

Xe Services was sold to USTC holdings which is a private investment group, and it is said that Erik Prince has now stake in this new company. Though we wonder where he took his money as he is said to be spending most of his time in the Middle East training and training people for anti-piracy operations in the area. It is another wonder how this man manages to get sponsorship from this region whilst he is also known as christianist.

Anyway, Blackwater now is more of a retail company, especialising in selling tactical gear and outdoor fashion. Thumpy might speculate that this retail operation is under Cybergun as Cybergun has rights to the Blackwater trademarks and is selling airsoft guns and tactical gear under the Blackwater brand.

There's already that Blackwater video game that we wrote about and now the Firearms Blog also reports about a Mossberg shotguns that carry the Blackwater brand. There must still be money that can squeezed out of this brand.

The Blackwater USA shop is still under development, but the screenshot below will show you what they intend to sell. No airsoft stuff yet, but it sure has paintball in mind. Clicking on the section links do not lead you to some content or the "Lorem Ipsum..." filler which any web developer uses to see how t he layout of a website will look like when finally launched.

There are no training services nor is this "Blackwater" working on military and general security contracts. This is a pure retail operation, which are shades of Cybergun, whose actualy business is more an intellectual property operation, rather than actual brand building and product development, since they do not have much original products or product brand in recent memory, working more on buying companies or licencing trademarks.

If indeed they launch, would you still be buying products with the "Blackwater" brand? Optimus Prime says he won't, and he never bought a product that contains a "Blackwater" as a matter of principle. I agree with him, but we're not stopping anyone from buying from them, it's a free world after all.