Posted on Apr 3, 2018
SGT Squad Leader
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I'm in the process of leaving the Army Reserves to go to active duty. I've found the basic MOS description, but nothing of the day-to-day life of a 29E. Any information would be appreciated. Right now its a toss up between 29E and 19D.
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2LT Sbolc Student
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It will vary heavily depending on what unit you go to and how motivated your 29E leadership is. When you're going through the school house make sure you pay full attention to the doctrine that explains where an EWO is supposed to work. A lot of units have NO clue what an EW NCO does and assume EW stands for extra work, do not let that be you. If you can coherently speak doctrine to the staff officers and NCOs, they will generally support your cause.

As for the duties (worst-case): As an E5 you will be placed in the BN S3 generally working additional duties such as Schools, Land and Ammo, Armorer, Tasking NCO etc. Basically whatever extra work they can pin you with.

The best case, your leadership has had some experience as EW NCOs and understand what the job is. 1 BDE 82nd ABN DIV has consolidated all of the EW NCOs at the BDE which gives us much more leverage to support each of the units within the brigade, allows for professional development from senior 29E leadership (you'll be rated and trained by another 29E) and you're able to train on skills that are specific to your MOS whether it be one of the three pillars that is ES/EA/EP. You'll learn that you're a finite resource, with <2,000 29Es across the military, there aren't many of us. Each BN is MTOE'd an E5/E6 and an E-7 so that makes for 6-12 29E's depending on the size of your unit.

Some interesting things I've done as an EW NCO include DFing and collecting on enemy FOIs working side by side with the intel shop, denied enemy communications and countered suspected enemy UAV/UAS using EW specific equipment.

Lastly, 29E's are enablers but are not currently treated as such. If you decide to go forward with this MOS, understand that there is currently a fight to re-focus our job across the Army. This includes how we're slotted MTOE wise. Things I haven't mentioned are CREW (Counter - Radio*** IED - Electronic - Warfare) and managing 1K certified personnel because I have yet to see this happen. We are merging with cyber and are also currently transitioning to 17E.

Some references for our job include 3-36, 3-39 and reading some of the basic doctrine such as 6-0 can help you understand where we belong and how to function.
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