EOD Airmen train for the full spectrum of explosive threats
“EOD, this is Godfather, be advised, hostiles approaching your location. How copy?” Inside the mask, every breath feels like drinking air through a straw. Airman 1st Class Levi Womack keys the radio. “Godfather, this is EOD. Good copy.”
Further up the ridgeline, 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.
“EOD, this is Godfather, leave the area. How copy?”
“Good copy, Godfather.”
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 at Field Training Exercise Big Trouble, a week-long exercise at Limestone Hills Training Area near Townsend, Montana. It’s only the morning of the first day, and already Massa and Womack are drenched in sweat as they peel off their protective gear, hot and thirsty under the August sun. Massa has come from the 366th Civil Engineer Squadron (CES) at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho; Womack is assigned to the 341st CES at Malmstrom Air Force Base, and they are here to hone their craft on simulated chemicals and explosive devices.
This is their second problem of the day, and they gather around the instructor for a debrief.
He tells them that the purpose of this specific problem is to teach junior explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technicians what to do when external constraints make it too dangerous to continue conducting disposal operations.
Knowing when to break off a mission rather than push past the point of safety was exactly the lesson Staff Sgt. Lucky Widjaja 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," said Widjaja, a 341st CES EOD technician and the exercise's main organizer. "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 its second year drawing EOD shops from around the country, Big Trouble brought six Air Force EOD teams to Limestone Hills to train in a simulated deployed environment. Over the week, technicians worked scenarios spanning the threats they could meet downrange, such as improvised explosive devices, unexploded ordnance, weapons caches, route denial and chemical agents like Massa and Womack confronted that first morning.
The week’s 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 shops was the method. Planners paired technicians with counterparts from other shops to trade tactics, techniques and procedures, with the Airmen being expected 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 a unmanned ground vehicle, sending the robot to examine a suspected device while the operator stayed outside the blast radius.
At a different problem, careful prior planning made success possible. Staff Sgt. Hartvig Homberg, a 341st CES EOD technician, and Airman 1st Class Jacob Miller-Lujan, a 28th CES EOD technician from Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, mapped out a plan before tackling a problem seeded with multiple devices, settling who did what and in what order. After each scenario, teams circled up to debrief, learning new lessons before moving to the next problem.
The week’s 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 Widjaja, he’s also been learning what it takes to organize such a large project.
"This is my first time planning this entire FTX, and I've had a lot of help from the guys at my shop,” he said. “That's been really rewarding."
For the Airmen learning at 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," he said. "But by the end of it, we see teams and players coming together, learning from other shops and exchanging knowledge.”
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