This BLAST-TAMER demonstration was conducted at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, VA, in May of 1999 as part of the Force Protection Equipment Demonstration organized and presented by the Department of Defense.

The intent of the demonstration was to show the effectiveness of BLAST-TAMER in reducing the damaging blast-wave effects of the detonation of 40 lbs. of TNT.

Typically, the BLAST-TAMER system is installed inside an earth-covered magazine structure. The typical installation consists of a series of cubicles that isolate different types of explosive materials from each other. BLAST-TAMER prevents the sympathetic detonation of adjacent piles of explosive materials, increasing storage safety. The system allows the storage of several types of explosives in a single space, and can improve the capacity of the earth-covered magazine by up to 800%.

A downsized BLAST-TAMER cubicle was constructed on-site, complete with sand fill, to make the demonstration as accurate as possible. The size of the explosive charge placed inside was scaled to the size of the cubicle, to demonstrate the worst-case scenario.

The blast fully destroyed the BLAST-TAMER cubicle. This was intentional—it is through this controlled destruction that BLAST-TAMER does its job. In the process of destruction, the explosive force of the blast is partially absorbed and then deflected upwards, away from the (theoretical) pile of explosive materials adjacent to the walls of the cubicle. In this way, the BLAST-TAMER system prevented a sympathetic detonation of other explosive materials nearby.

In the demo, a 1-lb block of C-4 plastic explosive was placed next to the cubicle. In 3 different demonstrations of the system with the same 40-lb TNT charge in each, the block of C-4 did not sympathetically detonate, proving the effectiveness of the system.