DENVER - A former air traffic controller accused of planting homemade bombs outside the houses of former co-workers and a government official was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday after pleading guilty to damaging a building.

Robert Burke, 55, was also ordered to pay $11,865 in restitution for damage caused by another bomb to a building in Murfreesburo, Tenn., that belonged to his former employer, Serco Group PLC, a contractor that supplies traffic controllers to airports.

Prosecutors said Burke, a decorated Vietnam veteran, left five bombs outside homes in the western Colorado city of Grand Junction in March 2006, including one where a Federal Aviation Administration official lived. Three bombs exploded, but no one was hurt and only minor damage was reported. Two bombs were defused.

Burke was arrested in Utah in April and charged with six counts including possession of a dangerous weapon and explosives.

In October, he pleaded guilty to a single count of malicious damage to a building used in interstate commerce after accepting a deal from prosecutors. He faced up to 20 years in prison but prosecutors recommended 10 years and agreed to drop the other charges.

Prosecutors said the deal took into account bombs Burke was accused of planting at the Serco building in Tennessee and at a home in Derby, Kan.

Authorities said Burke intended to bomb the home of a Derby couple involved in a failed deal to sell him a used ambulance. Prosecutors said Burke accidentally left the bomb at the home of the couple's neighbors, where it caused a fire.

On Friday, Burke apologized and told U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn he accepts responsibility.

"What I did wasn't right in any way, shape or form," Burke said. "But occasionally - and you read about it in the newspaper every day - people hit their limit, come across something they don't know how to handle."

Some of the former co-workers whose homes were targeted told the judge that 10 years was too short a term. They called Burke a coward and a terrorist and said they feared he would seek revenge against them.

"It's unconscionable that he was charged with destruction of a building," said Richard Smith, whose home was targeted. "He attacked and attempted to murder 16 people."

Steve Sherwood, the FAA employee whose home was targeted, told the judge the unease Burke cause his former co-workers in Grand Junction would be permanent.

"He needs to be 75, 80 or 90 years old, physically incapable of threatening us (when he's released from prison)," said Sherwood, who ran technical operations at the Grand Junction airport tower. "We're willing to take the risk of going to trial. We would like him to stay in prison a much longer time."

Blackburn called the bombings "good old-fashioned, undisguised revenge and retribution, a vendetta targeting his personal objectives." But he said under federal sentencing rules, 10 years was sufficient to punish Burke and deter him from committing other crimes.

Blackburn said he didn't buy Burke's claim that he had snapped because officials ignored his warnings about safety problems at the Grand Junction tower.

"This had been brooding and stewing in the defendant for a substantial period of time," Blackburn said.

Blackburn said the bombs were not meant "to sound a social alarm; instead they were designed to terrify and terrorize, and oh, my, they did."

Serco, a British company that staffs air traffic control towers at airports, fired Burke in 2004.