Oooh Baby

"We have several very large penetrators we're developing," James Tegnelia, head of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) told US defense reporters. "We also have - are you ready for this? - an explosively formed charge that we're going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada ... and that represents to us the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem." The explosive used will be ammonium nitrate soaked in fuel oil - a cheap but potent combination. "I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," Mr Tegnelia said.
Ivan Oelrich, a munitions expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said: "I suspect this is primarily a test of their computer modelling abilities, because I don't know how they could deliver a weapon like this. They are looking at how different rocks respond to shockwaves."
The DTRA later issued a statement saying: "All explosives, given the right thermal characteristics, create a cloud that may resemble a mushroom cloud."