The Village Voice: Weapon of the Week: The Thermobaric Bomb by George Smith

Only in the land of the free would a woman be given the opportunity to make the newest super-duper weapon—the thermobaric bomb!

Anh Duong, who fled Saigon for the U.S. in 1975, wished to serve her adopted country against tyranny. And in doing so she became the lead bomb-maker at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Maryland, where she is the designer behind the bunker-buster custom-crafted to atomize Osama bin Laden's underground lairs.

The thermobaric bomb's magic ingredient is aluminum dust, also the secret component of another legendary weapon in the arsenal, the behemoth Daisy Cutter. Aluminum, handy foil in your kitchen drawer, is a highly dangerous explosive hazard when powdered. Duong's design duplicates conditions in a mine saturated with the flammable dust—and then strikes a match, unleashing a twisting inferno and metal-shredding concussion.