How much have the roles of a 25U changed since the 31U days?

Great topic!

I came in in 2002 as a 31U and was integrated into 25U. The concept didnt seem to change over the time I was in, we were the jacks of all trade and masters of none. I think we ultimately adapted with the times of being Universal.

When I came in as 31U, be didn't see Bravos at the BN level. So 31Us held it down as our job intells. I was the automations guy as were transitioning into bigger and better computer systems. But just the same I was required to know COMSEC and Retrans (the only true job our MOS has). How slogan was Universal and not Uniform when asked what our MOS was. I was also part of the transition to making users do there part in keeping the COMS up. We didn't have Limas and so we gave classes from doctorine on how to properly run wire and splice wire (DR-8 and WF-16) or as my COMMO CHIEF always told us, "running wire is a basic 10 level (user) task. We will guide and supervise when need be. We will terminate the connections and plug them into the switches. We will troubleshoot the lines if there are issues. But we will not do their job for them and they will try claiming that you're COMMO and it makes it easier." We did the installation kits on Vehicles. We conducted classes on the equipment since we were the subject matter experts. When we rolled over to 25U was during a shift to get more bodies into the Army and poor leadership started the devide of us being knowledgeable on almost all things communication related. We also had a shot of other Signal MOS's coming down to the BN levels and it farther decided our world until you have what you see now a days. Where instead of one SM not being Computer smart or just Universal. You find more saying I'm tactical and that's what the B's, Q's, ect are for. But I think it was more of war and push for promotion mixed in with more mixing of Signal MOS's at the lower echelons that caused the shift in roles rather than the numerical number changing. I came in under the title Signal Support Systems Specialist as a 31U in 98-99.

There were a lot of mergers over the years, I started out as a tanker and re-classed into MOS 29F which was Fixed Station COMSEC Repair. at the time there were four MOS being reorganized into two. Tactical COMSEC Voice and Tactical COMSEC Data (31S and 31U) were being merged into 29S Tactical COMSEC Repair while the Fixed Station equivalents were being merged into 29F. Bearing mind that this was during the mid 80's, long before the Army went to 2 level Maintenance, most of the equipment was transistor logic and a Crypto repairman really needed to understand all the different kinds of Gates (and, or, nand, nor). It was actually a lot of fun. Eventually they merged the Fixed Station and Tactical COMSEC Maintenance MOS's together and about 5 years later began merging Radio repair with COMSEC Maintenance (35E) which was eventually turned into the 94E MOS.

In the mid 80's the MOS involved circuit card level repair, in the 90's it was mostly just swapping cards, now I suspect it's just testing equipment to make sure equipment is really bad before sending it to TYAD.