EOD Airmen Train on Full Spectrum of Explosive Threats

The call comes in from headquarters.

"[Explosive ordnance disposal], this is Godfather. Be advised hostiles approaching your location. How copy?"

Inside the gas mask, every breath feels like drinking air through a straw. Air Force Airman 1st Class Levi Womack keys the radio and responds.

"Godfather, this is EOD. Good copy."

Further up the ridgeline, Air Force Senior Airman Mitchell Massa hears the radio chatter and knows time is running out. He is working against the clock to disarm and decontaminate a chemical explosive device found in the woods near a forward operating base.

With the seconds slipping by, his entire world narrows down to the problem in front of him, visible only through the fogged lenses of his gas mask. Then the call comes in from headquarters to leave the area.

Massa works his way down the ridge, moving slowly in his chemical protective gear and drops the device in a decontamination tub.

"End of scenario," yells the instructor during Exercise Big Trouble, a weeklong field training exercise at Limestone Hills Training Area near Townsend, Montana. It's only the morning of the first day and Massa and Womack are already drenched in sweat as they peel off their protective gear, hot and thirsty under the August sun.

Massa, assigned to the 366th Civil Engineer Squadron at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, and Womack, assigned to the 341st Civil Engineer Squadron at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, are there to hone their craft on simulated chemicals and explosive devices.

They gather around the instructor for a debrief after finishing their second problem of the day.

He tells them this scenario is meant to teach junior explosive ordnance disposal technicians what to do when external constraints make it too dangerous to continue disposal operations.

Knowing when to break off a mission rather than push past the point of safety was exactly the lesson Air Force Staff Sgt. Lucky Widjaja, the exercise's main organizer and a 341st Civil Engineer Squadron EOD technician, wanted every technician to carry off the range.

"The end goal is for them to realize their limitations and capabilities - the miles they're able to travel and how they function under less-than-ideal conditions," Widjaja said. "So that if that were to ever happen in a deployed environment, they have that experience to fall back on."

Now in its fourth iteration and second year bringing in EOD airmen from around the country, this year's exercise featured six Air Force EOD teams training in a simulated deployed environment. Over the week, technicians worked though scenarios that spanned a range of threats they could see downrange, such as improvised explosive devices, unexploded ordnance, weapons caches, route denial and chemical agents, like what Massa and Womack confronted that first morning.

The training plan was built for airmen early in their careers, many of them working through these high-pressure, decision-making processes for the first time. The aim was to develop technicians who understood what team leadership demanded and could transfer their skills to real-world deployed environments.

If judgment, leadership and technical skill were the lessons, communication between EOD shops was the method. Planners paired technicians with counterparts from other shops to trade tactics, techniques and procedures, allowing airmen to sharpen not just their own units but the shops they trained alongside.

"My favorite part is getting EOD members from different shops out here to train," Widjaja said. "It allows us to communicate and exchange learning points so that we are, as a whole EOD enterprise, more ready and capable to face our next emerging threat."

Throughout the week, teams gained experience with the career field's full toolkit. Massa traded his chemical protective gear for the controls of an unmanned ground vehicle, sending the robot to examine a suspected device while the operator stayed outside the blast radius.

In another case, careful planning made success possible. Air Force Staff Sgt. Hartvig Homberg, a 341st Civil Engineer Squadron EOD technician, and Air Force Airman 1st Class Jacob Miller-Lujan, a 28th Civil Engineer Squadron EOD technician from Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, mapped out a plan before tackling a problem with multiple devices, deciding who did what and in what order. After each scenario, teams gathered to debrief, learning new lessons before moving to the next problem.

The training tempo left technicians with limited recovery time. Teams woke up early to prep their gear and were on the range by 8 a.m. Once there, they rotated through problems, trading team leader and team member roles and switching between mounted and dismounted work. After a short rest at the end of the afternoon, they started a night mission brief around 9 p.m. and conducted training while using night-vision devices until at least midnight.

For the airmen learning during Big Trouble, the purposeful grind of the exercise teaches not just explosives, but teamwork and endurance.

"The hardest part is being tired, and keeping a good attitude and staying motivated throughout," Widjaja said. "But by the end of it, we see teams and players coming together, learning from other shops and exchanging knowledge."