I have no doubt that this will be militarily very effective, but I wonder what kind of safeguards they have in place to keep the bad guys from getting their hands on one, in such a way as to use it?

I'd like to think that at some point these weapons will have security measures, such as temporary codes (good for, say, an hour), to prevent them from being used by the terrorists. I don't know whether it's practical or not, but as our weaponry continues to advance, so will theirs if they can get access to it.

The Russians have been using thermobaric weapons for many years, both as a standalone weapon system (RPO-A Schmel) and as a warhead for the ubiquitous RPG-7. The United States is actually a relative latecomer to the thermobaric bandwagon. Considering the quality of Russia's arms export controls, I think we have to assume the cat is out of the bag by now.

It is - all said and done - simply a SMAW warhead with a bigger bang. Putting a lock on one would probably hinder their employment by legitmate users while adding little to deter use by the black hats.

Is there a real problem with stolen US military hardware? My take is that as long as the US doesn't sell/give a weapon to Middle East allies (eg, the stinger missile), then theft won't be militarily significant.

All the SMAW is is an improved and westernized RPG. The Marines use it and the Israelis designed it.

I like blowing up stuff. Explosions are cool!

A technical comment:

Most of the posts and magazine articles say that the thermobaric weapon "ignites the air" or "burns the air." That's incorrect. Thermobaric weapons use a finely powdered material, typically something like aluminum. It's that material that burns and creates the shockwave.

We've had natural thermobaric weapons for some time. They are called flour storage silos. Look up massive explosions in the past. Many of the were simply flour dust based.

Just one nitpick...

FAE is Fuel-Air Explosive. It involves a fine mist of flammable liquid sprayed out over a large area and then ignited (usually deployed by bomb). The Russians started calling that thermobaric some time ago to get away from the FAE name. FAE is, because of its nature, hard to deploy inside a building.

Our thermobarics are something new; a mix of HE and "other" stuff that stays in solid form, but produces high sustained overpressure when ignited. Thus, it won't produce the large footprint in the open that FAE does, but it will be relatively easy to get inside a building where its effects will be maximized.

As far as the danger of our stuff getting in someone else's hands... the mix used is classified, although the Russians have since figured out something relatively close, I believe. Unless there's a homemade alternative, like ANFO+AlN, I don't know if there's an easy way for terrorists to get ahold of it.

On a side note... there's a reason, I remember now, why I don't read the comments on that site very often. Man, the anti-American vitriol is huge there.