WASHINGTON — Part of a corridor in the Pentagon was dedicated to the joint explosive ordnance disposal mission April 23, 2024.
“It’s truly an honor to officially open the Pentagon’s first and only explosive ordnance disposal exhibit,” said Melissa Dalton, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
Over the course of 17 months, conceptual ideas became reality, items were donated from the services, photos and commentary were recorded for use, and hundreds of hours of planning and efforts have gone into the exhibit and grand opening, said retired Maj. Tom Vail, Army EOD policy and interagency subject matter expert, Pentagon.
Dalton and Vail spoke about the exhibit to guests and officially opened the exhibit with a ribbon cutting. EOD technicians who work at the Pentagon toured the exhibit that honors fallen EOD technicians, shares the history of the career field, the meaning of its patches and specialty badge and information about its weaponry.
“I was humbled to take part in today’s historic event,” said Lt. Col. BK Kibitlewski, EOD branch chief, Pentagon, who has served as an EOD technician for 16 years. “Just as the Multiservice EOD Memorial at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida keeps the memories of our fallen comrades alive, this exhibit will increase the awareness of the dedication, skill, selfless service and sacrifice military EOD technicians volunteer every day to execute.”
“Seeing the display gave me a strong sense of pride that people will get to learn a little something about EOD as they walk by,” said Col. Stephen Kavanaugh, G-38 division chief, Pentagon. He graduated from EOD school in 1999.
Every Day of the Year
The overarching motto for the exhibit is “Every Day of the Year.”
Vail said every day of the year, EOD technicians of the DoD are performing their work somewhere in the world on several continents and dozens of countries simultaneously.
“The brave men and women who volunteer for this dangerous special duty are out there in our communities, on our military installations, traveling with the president and deployed across the world every day of the year,” said Dalton. “EOD forces from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps stand ready and capable to defeat those threats every day of the year.”
Vail said EOD could be performing Defense Department missions in the Middle East; security cooperation missions in Asia, Europe or Africa; a protection mission for the president and other officials; and responding to explosive threats found by state and local law enforcement many times a day across the U.S.
“EOD technicians perform an extremely dangerous set of tasks as a profession,” he said. “There is little they do that doesn’t involve some level of life-threatening danger to the average servicemember or civilian. From the protective sweeps they do in advance of a visit by the president to the calls for discovered unexploded ordnance or improvised explosive devices or recovered chemical weapons, everything they do involves a calculated risk.
“This risk is informed by training, judgement, maturity and experience,” he added. “There is no other career field in the military where the smallest unit makes unilateral decisions based on these factors alone.”
“EOD does a job many fear and very few are trained to do,” Dalton said. “They represent the very best that the nation has to offer. They first volunteer to join the armed forces, and then they volunteer again for a mentally and physically rigorous pipeline, followed by a career of continuous learning, not for accolades, but so they can better protect people and property from explosive threats.”
West Virginia National Guard Soldier Capt. Evan Simpson said the exhibit shows the rich history, professionalism and close-knit community that is the EOD career field.
“It’s very rewarding to have the career field recognized in this way,” said Simpson, an operations officer for the Army’s G-38 Adaptive Counter-IED/EOD Solutions Division based at the Pentagon. “The EOD career field is full of professionals that selflessly serve and are willing to sacrifice everything in a moment’s notice. It’s important to those individuals who aren’t with us here today to know that we continue to honor their sacrifices and the astronomical impact they’ve had in this world.”
The exhibition is divided into four distinct sections highlighting the EOD mission, its history, a diorama of IEDs and a remembrance of fallen EOD technicians.
Mission
The mission section of the exhibit highlights how EOD locates, identifies, renders safe, recovers, exploits and disposes of foreign and domestic explosive ordnance both on land and underwater using specialized disruption, detonation and burning techniques.
EOD deploys and integrates with geographic combatant commanders, special operations forces and other units within the joint force. They are also called upon daily to support military and civilian, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of State.
Simpson said working with active duty at the Pentagon has been extremely rewarding, and EOD technicians regularly share knowledge and skills to increase proficiency.
“It’s been extremely rewarding and informative because we all have skill sets from different areas of our lives we can tie together,” he said. “Guardsmen often have civilian jobs that expand their skill sets and makes the unit they serve with much more adaptable.”
The active component trains with allies and partners, expanding their understanding of joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational missions and how the U.S. EOD force helps on the world stage.
“We strengthen alliances and partnerships around the globe building their capability,” said Kibitlewski. “We neutralize explosive ordnance and IEDs during crisis in the homeland and abroad and fight side by side with our units as an integrated part of the joint force to ensure freedom of maneuver, preserve critical infrastructure and enable collection of technical intelligence to ensure the security of our nation.”
“At the end of the day, we’re all EOD technicians trained to do our job if the country needs us,” Simpson said. “Having close communications between the different components allows us to share knowledge and skills to help make the EOD community an adaptable force ready to meet future challenges.”
The mission of EOD goes beyond disarming IEDs.
EOD technicians gather and process evidence for forensics investigations; perform intelligence reporting on new weapon systems and ordnance items; respond to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents; and provide initial site characterization.
“The capability an EOD team provides a supported unit or commander far surpasses the common expectations of what EOD can do,” Simpson said.
“Every day, every year since 1941, U.S. military EOD technicians play a critical role, in the homeland and across the globe to keep our citizens safe to enable the strategic objectives of our government, to defend our nation, without fail, living up to our motto of, ‘Initial Success of Total Failure,’” said Kibitlewski.
History
There was unexploded ordnance left in the United Kingdom and Europe from World Wars I and II. Casualty rates climbed as untrained volunteers encountered the precursors to IEDs. In order to address the advanced weapon designs including long-delay and anti-tamper fuses, British Army and Navy forces began training specialized units.
During World War II, U.S. Soldiers, Sailors and Marines began training at the British bomb disposal school until each service branch created their own bomb disposal schools. The Army ordnance department set up their first school at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in 1942.
The history of the EOD service schools, some of their pioneers, the EOD badge and patches are part of the EOD display along with historical highlights for each service branch.
The Army EOD formations grew from eight-Soldier squads in WWII to 12-Soldier detachments by the early 1990s. Operation Desert Storm further emphasized the need for EOD for critical missions of mass demolition operations and exploiting captured enemy weapons.
The Army EOD mission continued to expand throughout the Korean and Vietnam wars. In 1954, they took on the chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological, or CBRN, and IED render-safe and disposal missions. Nearly all Army EOD units fall under the 20th CBRNE Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
“Weapon that waits”
In the IED diorama section, the exhibit highlights how IEDs posed a lethal threat to the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Vail.
IEDs contained conventional explosives but could also include biological and radiological agents. Sometimes made from ordinary materials, they proved difficult to detect for Soldiers on foot patrols and in transport convoys.
EOD teams located and secured hundreds of thousands of IEDs during Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, but some of these homemade booby traps still accounted for more than 70 percent of U.S. military casualties during OIF and OEF, said Vail.
IEDs consist of a power source, firing system, initiator and main charge. Throughout the exhibit, visitors can see IED illustrations and tools EOD specialists use to locate, disarm and remove them.
Remembrance
Vail said the importance of the exhibit will not only be to educate those not familiar with what EOD specialists bring to the joint and interagency mission, but it will also provide a place for EOD technicians across the service branches to remember their fallen.
“It’s a very small career field continually spread around the globe. Coming back together for a remembrance of our lost members also serves as a cathartic exercise for this field,” he said. “The exhibit is a place that will be available for all EOD technicians to come and see, have ceremonies like retirements or re-enlistments in the Defense Department headquarters. This is an important landmark for all EOD technicians since very few exist for the field.”
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