The aim of the present study is to identify the concrete behavior under severe dynamical loading (explosions or ballistic impacts). This paper presents the effect of both the saturation degree and the water-cement ratio on the concrete behavior under static triaxial loading. The tests are done using a press with high capacities: confining pressure up to 650 MPa and axial stress up to 2.3 GPa. The test results show that the saturation degree has a major influence on the concrete deviatoric behavior. The strength of dried concrete strongly increases with the confining pressure whereas it is a constant for saturated samples beyond a confining pressure of 100 MPa. The results also show that the concrete behaves like a granular stacking under high confinement without any influence of the cement paste strength. © 2007 Taylor & Francis Group.