With a flash and a roar, the fireball erupted dozens of feet in the air. A nearby building was incinerated and pieces of metal spewed hundreds of feet away.
If this explosion had been part of a terrorist attack in downtown London, who knows how many innocent people would have been killed, burned or wounded. Fortunately, this blast was part of a test we commissioned by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech. Experts here built a car bomb using the same materials investigators say the UK terrorists used in their failed attacks on London and the Glasgow airport.
As I watched the Jeep Cherokee used in this test get blown to bits, two very important points became clear:
1) almost anyone can assemble this kind of car bomb as it uses gasoline and tanks of propane
2) fortunately for the people of London, these bombs are not easy to detonate.
We learned from our test that the UK terrorists probably lacked the training and knowledge to properly set off the liquid gasses. If their plot had succeeded, the damage and loss of life from this kind of bomb would have been localized, but the terror it inflicted would have spread across the United Kingdom and around the world with the ensuing video beamed via international TV networks and the Internet.
As we surveyed the blast sight, I couldn't believe how far some of the debris had scattered -- 150 yards away, a ruptured propane tank (the same kind you would attach to your backyard grill) had come to rest in the desert dirt. As I looked at it, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened to the unlucky person who might have been standing there.
-- By David Mattingly, CNN Correspondent
