Crushing of composite tubes under impact loading has been studied very intensively over the last few decades. On the contrary, the energy absorption of composite tubes under blast loading is much less studied, and very limited public literature is available. This paper presents the experimental testing of a sacrificial cladding structure, composed of glass/polyester tubes, under blast loading. The composite tubes show stable and progressive crushing and the peak force transferred to the non-sacrificial structure is compared for different configurations of the composite tubes. The results also show that the diffraction of the pressure wave and the skin panel that distributes the blast pressure are critical issues in the set-up of the experiments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.