Did the consolidation of EOD units in garrision affect the way individual units operate?

2016-06-08T09:19:14-04:00

Response by 1stSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 8 at 2016 10:29 AM

2016-06-08T10:29:58-04:00

For us yes. If you had an IED you needed to wait on station for EOD to clear the explosive. This equated to hours of waiting and a waste of our time. The should have been attached to the smaller unit that they supported.

Response by SSG Bethany Viglietta made Jun 8 at 2016 1:36 PM

2016-06-08T13:36:21-04:00

I'd like to be able to respond as maybe?

EOD is such a small MOS that I understand wanting to consolidate them into one unit for their MOS related tasks, but it does segregate them from other units that may provide important rapport building and training prior to a deployment.

I can only speak from my experience, but I found that even in a Military Intelligence Company within an Brigade Combat Team we had to work hard to build relationships with the units we would be supporting in the sandbox. We were attached to the unit for training prior to the deployment and it seemed to make things transition a little smoother in country.

In Garrison, there are likely times EOD is needed to remove UXO during training for the other units, if they were attached to/partnered with these units the reaction time may be shorter. I am a recruiter now so I don't really have a dog in the fight.

Edit: I am sure it changed the way other units prepare for deployment in Garrison. They do not have the SME's for scenarios. Instead of having EOD actually show up, they fake it and say UXO is cleared good job.

Response by SFC Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 8 at 2016 11:58 PM

2016-06-08T23:58:20-04:00

Yes, it absolutely did. EOD has a stateside response mission IAW AR 75-15 that did not go away when we were consolidated. Military EOD must handle any incident involving any military ordnance found on any US grounds, local and civilian bomb squads are not permitted to deal with them. Military EOD also stands available to any civil authority requesting assistance in non-military ordnance, yet explosive, chemical, nuclear or radiological hazards. This responsibility is able to be taken up by all four branches, but only the Army is not permitted to decline to respond (at least on conventional responses). So when EOD units were consolidated, our response areas changed drastically to cover areas from much farther away. This may not seem like a big deal, but when 49 CFR is brought into it, knowing that we are required to carry explosives and placard our response vehicles, the longer we must go to respond and the routes we are allowed and not allowed to take makes our job, and our accessibility, more difficult than it used to be.
All that this consolidation sacrificed was in trade to align EOD companies with BCTs for deployments, so a BCT would have an EOD company (which is 9 teams if it is full) to deploy with. Problem is, there were far more BCTs than there were EOD companies, and EOD could not stand up or fill these companies to meet the needs of the new plan. Not to mention funding and equipping them.
In addition, at divisional posts which previously had only a single EOD company of about 20 EOD technicians, we now had an average of 3 EOD companies of about 40 EOD technicians each. Access to operational explosives (for our response mission only, must be separate from training load) was on a shifting accountability as units changed out responsibility. Previously, EOD was far more spread out, allowing for every EOD unit to have an active response area that was smaller and more accessible (as aforementioned), having a consolidated EOD force meant an EOD tech rotated into response duty far less often than on the old plan, which resulted in EOD techs getting less and less experience on actual stateside responses.
SO to answer the original question, yes, it changed how we operate. Though we tend to see things differently as EOD techs. We don't see a "garrison" frame of operation, we have "deployment operations" and "stateside response" instead. EOD is an emergency response element, much like police, fire, and medical support. We are just not so frequently needed.