EOD teams upend training and focus from IEDs on the ground to drones in the air
After becoming expert in improvised explosive devices during 20 years of war, today's EODs are embracing a world with drones.
Patty Nieberg
Posted on Aug 16, 2024 6:37 PM EDT
The job of ordnance disposal technicians is changing from the Afghanistan and Iraq-era of improvised explosive devices to a threat more commonly seen in the last few years: exploding drones. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Mikaela Smith)
The job of ordnance disposal technicians is rapidly changing. After decades of handling prevasive ground-level threats of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq, disposal techs are reinventing their jobs for a new threat: drones with explosives. As they adjust, they are adding drones to their own arsenals for dealing with explosives.
Over the last two decades, Army ordnance disposal technicians were tasked with rendering more than 100,000 improvised explosive devices “safe” in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as the face of warfare changes, the threat of one-way attack unmanned aerial systems and drones strapped with munitions and explosives are becoming a topic that ordnance disposal technicians are being increasingly trained on. The Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps all have specific career fields dedicated to the job, often called explosives ordnance disposal or EOD.
The Army’s 707th Ordnance Company, “Thunderbirds” and 787th Ordnance Company, “Sasquatches” recently came together for an interagency exercise at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington to “defeat explosive Unmanned Aerial Systems.” They trained alongside bomb and ordnance disposal experts from the FBI, Air Force, JBLM emergency services and I Corps Protection Cell.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/ordnance-disposal-techs-training-explosive-drones/
