Executive Director John Tierney spoke with ABC News about thermobaric weapons.
“It’s a particularly nasty weapon. It’s a terrible way to die. It has a really broad effect and is probably most useful against hardened facilities,” John Tierney, executive director at the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C., told ABC News.
Tierney said the purported use of the bomb by Russia could be a sign of how desperate Russian President Vladimir Putin is to break the will of the Ukrainian people.
“You can’t say what’s going on in his mind, but it would seem to indicate that he’s getting a little desperate, that things aren’t going the way he planned,” Tierney said.
The United States and Russia have reportedly been in a race to perfect the thermobaric weapon, billed as a substitute to nuclear weapons.
Tierney said Russia’s largest thermobaric weapon, tested in 2007, is believed to have packed the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT. By comparison, U.S. strategic nuclear weapons yield the equivalent of 50,000 tons to 1.2 megatons of TNT. Read more
