The 3/11/02 Aviation Week (not online yet) says the thermobaric bomb creates and explodes a cloud of aluminum powder, not fuel oil. The overpressure from the air kills anyone within “hundreds of yards”, and the blast consumes essentially all of the oxygen out of the vicinity (including from caves and bunkers). Also, the term “daisy cutter” refers to one design of triggering mechanism for the BLU-82 fuel-oil bomb, not the bomb itself, although the name is widely misused in the popular media.
Now …
The “we have 'em, so we oughta use 'em” argument I think I’m seeing here is frighteningly juvenile. There isn’t enough consideration as to who the “bad guys” would be if they were used. It’s related to the old saw “If you have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
Actually, FAE fuel is ethylene oxide, not fuel oil. The “new” thermobaric weapons substitute solid agents (such as PBXIH-135 [one of the Navy’s new insensitive polymer bonded explosives], HAS-13, or SFAE [solid fuel air explosive] ) for liquid agents, but the underlying principle is the same: Vapor/dust cloud explosions. “Thermobaric” is derived from Greek, indicating that the weapons destroy by heat and pressure, and the term accurately applies to both the liquid-fueled and solid-fueled varieties. The international communities were calling the Russian FAEs “thermobaric” back in '95, although truth be told, the Russians had gone to more development effort, and has produced such weapons in great varieties, including handgrenades.
The BLU-82 actually uses a Slurry Explosive that’s halfway between a solid and a liquid.
“Daisey Cutter” is any bomb that employs a stand-off fusing system, which can be as long as a meter. The BLU got slugged with that name also because of it’s effects on the jungle where it was dropped to clear LZs (using stand-off fuses, or course!): All the trees cut down like so many daiseys.
Why develop a dirty bomb or other such nonsense, when a terrorist who is desparate enough can try to hack into the weapons system of a silo, re-target it to a US city and fire it? Or heavily pay a disgruntled nuclear research scientist to do it for them? In keeping with the theme of using the 'infidel’s weapons against them, if I were a master terrorist as they say I am, I most definitely would.
Probably because the dirty bomb would be a hell of a lot easier than hacking into the silo systems, capacitator. Obtaining my own nuke would probably also be easier. And even if you paid off a guy in the silo, there are enough safeguards to prevent that from happening. You need the president to provide the codes, plus the two guys in the silo to turn the keys. I assume Russia and China have similar safeguards, as they are not stupid. India and Pakistan can’t reach us with missiles.
A dirty bomb placed in the hold of a ship would do the trick nicely, and fairly easily since they aren’t all that complicated.