NYPD Bomb Squad's secret weapon: How little-known Total Containment Vessel was used to haul away CNN pipe bomb (and it's much more impressive than it looks) (3 Pics)

The NYPD busted out its rarely seen Total Containment Vessel to ferry a pipe bomb Wednesday from CNN’s Midtown headquarters to The Bronx.

Members of the department’s elite Bomb Squad carefully loaded the device into the back of the TCV, mounting it onto a suspended net inside the chamber designed to minimize jostling on the tense ride north to the Rodman’s Neck facility, police sources said.

The TCV, which is mounted onto the back of a truck belonging to the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit, is engineered to withstand a blast from within should the device trigger during the trip, minimizing damage to those on the outside, sources said.

Advance department vehicles blocked off a route north from Midtown to the Rodman’s Neck facility, freeing up a path for the TCV to travel both quickly and with minimal risk to civilian motorists.

Escorted by a convoy of emergency vehicles including an ESU truck and an ambulance, the TCV wound its way to the remote firing range and training facility, depositing its volatile cargo in the early afternoon.

Now, technicians from both the NYPD and FBI are figuring out how to safely transport the device to federal labs for further examination, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said in a press briefing.

The process is being hampered by the envelope of an as-yet unidentified powder included in the package with the bomb, Miller said.

Ideally, investigators would like to disarm the bomb without detonating it, allowing them to comb over it for any clues as to the madman maker’s identity, including fingerprints and DNA, sources said.

A TCV was also used to transport one of Chelsea Bomber Ahmad Khan Rahimi’s undetonated pressure cooker explosives to the facility in 2016.