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From: malloy@nprdc.navy.mil (Sean Malloy)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Size of Fuel Air Munitions
Message-ID: <1991Jan18.003342.8441@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 18 Jan 91 00:33:42 GMT
References: <1991Jan14.011347.6684@cbnews.att.com> <1991Jan15.021714.23645@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: Navy Personnel R&D Center, San Diego
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From: malloy@nprdc.navy.mil (Sean Malloy)
In article <1991Jan16.013146.9945@cbnews.att.com> elturner@phoenix.princeton.edu (Edwin L Turner) writes:
>Anyway, since Fuel Air weapons release their energy in an *already* large
>volume, they may well be far more destructive per unit energy than
>conventional explosives.  To be more specific, they might well produce
>a given blast wave over-pressure over a much larger volume than the same
>energy released in a conventional explosion.  In this sense, they might
>indeed be "equivalent" to a small tactical nuclear weapon; in other words,
>they might be equally destructive.

In a book on explosives I flipped through a couple of years ago, there
was a statement that one pint of gasoline, vaporized and ignited, had
the same blast effect as (I'm unsure of the exact number) something on
the close order of twenty _pounds_ of TNT. 

Note that this is blast effect, _not_ energy yield; FAEs are much more
effective in generating a blast wave, because the shockwave is
continually being augmented by the detonation of the vaporized fuel at
the surface of the combustion front, whereas a conventional explosive
starts losing blast energy immediately upon expansion after
detonation.


 Sean Malloy                                  | Democracy is four wolves and a
 Navy Personnel Research & Development Center | lamb voting on what to have for
 San Diego, CA 92152-6800                     | lunch.
 malloy@nprdc.navy.mil                        |