USAF EOD: Explosive Ordnance Disposal
EPISODE 34
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WELCOME TO THE TEAM ROOM! WE HAVE AN EXPLOSIVE EPISODE FOR YOU TO ENJOY THAT INVOVLES USAF EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE DISPOSAL TECHNICIAN, SSGT BRAYDEN KERR.
INTRO
Nikki Silva 00:02
You're listening to the ones ready podcast a team of Airforce Special Operators forged in combat with over 70 years of combined operational experience, as well as a decade of selection instructor experience. If you're tired of settling, and you want to do something you truly believe in, you're in the right place. Now, here's your favorite CCT personality, JTAC extraordinaire, embracer of the ridiculous face and like the shortest operator you'll ever meet, Peaches.
Peaches 00:28
Welcome back to another one's ready podcast. You're in the team room and we appreciate you being here. Thanks for following us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, and Stitcher and anything else you can find your podcasts. We really appreciate it and we're glad that you're joining us again. So, what we've got is Strike Force Energy, veteran owned company is two prior Navy SEALs great dudes. It comes in a little packet, packet of energy on the go. It's great stuff a bunch of those in your rucksack or in your car, I mean, I've got them stashed everywhere. And then if I need some go juice, I just throw that in some water. Or if you're really ballsy, throw it straight in. Just don't dilute it at all just go right in. It works. Okay, and the other one is Hoist. It is an electrolyte IV-level hydration. It comes pre-bottled. You don't have to mix anything, grab and go. If you're about to workout, during a workout, or post workout. It's great for your hydration and we'll get you back on track. So, I drink the hell out of it.
Trent 01:44
Exactly what you need and nothing you don't need. It's not overly syrupy. Or, you know, I have a real problem with all the other sports drinks and toys showed up now. I'm a huge fan now.
Peaches 01:54
Yeah, it's not going to give you diabetes. So Okay, cool about we have we are now venturing someplace that we haven't been before you, SSgt Kerr are our first EOD tech that we've had on so we appreciate you coming. And now that you're here... really quick, if you are going to use those affiliates use the promo codes ONESREADY. Sorry about that. Okay, SSgt Kerr you're an EOD tech. You've been doing it for six years now. You're about to hit your second assignment after school. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
BRAYDEN’S BACKGROUND
Brayden 02:34
First of all, thanks for having me on here. It's great to have the opportunity to kind of like you said, being the first EOD tech on the show, try to give some people some information about the career field because a lot of people know nothing about us. But uh, yeah, so I'm Braden Kerr. I'm from a small town in Pennsylvania called Rockwood and joined the Air Force when I was 19 years old right after high school. I joined because I didn't really try very hard in high school didn't really have a plan. How am I friends got accepted to college and I'm still sitting there like, what do I do? So, I went and talked to an Air Force recruiter. And first I signed an open general contract, which was a bad idea. Thankfully, my recruiter brought up EOD just kind of mentioned it in passing. It was like, Hey, you know, you blow stuff up. And then he also mentioned the nice enlistment bonus was like $18K at the time, I was like, Huh, well, I was kind of a Pyro as a kid. So, you know, the ability to go blow something up and get paid for it sounded pretty legit. But, you know, I knew nothing about it. I didn't never talk to an EOD tech recruiter didn't know anything about EOD. And at the time, there wasn't a whole lot of stuff on the internet either. So just kind of like, whatever let's do it. And so, I left. Well, first of all, I'm you know, I'm married. my beautiful wife got to give her a shout out. She's supporting me this whole time. She was actually in the Air Force two. We were not tech school sweethearts. We were high school sweethearts and she just uh you know we kind of joined together and went down this path she's out now pursuing her college degree but um so yeah anyway went through prelim which is what we call our it's kind of like the selection before we get to actually EOD school went through that was a hard time it was probably the hardest part of the pipeline for me and then once a year at school which is a Navy school in Florida went through there just fine graduated there came here to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and been here since but you know get to one of the great aspects about my job is we get to travel a lot so that's been cool been tons of places we can get into that a little bit later if you want to but um yeah, that's a pretty down and dirty about me.
Trent 04:46
Everything you need to know. All right. I feel like I have to mention though before we jump into the first question is, I think we might have missed something by not saying this is our most explosive episode ever. Ones Ready the most explosive, like, we'll put it Yeah.
Peaches 05:02
Yeah, Aaron would have caught that. I'm not as quick witted
EOD PRELIMINARY COURSE
Trent 05:10
This is the most explosive episode we've ever had. Yeah, buckle up. So, you, your kind of already covered the first question, or the second part of it. What is the selection? Like? What do you know? What's the hardest parts? What do people struggle with? And also, what's it called? I think you mentioned it, because we don't want to be answering questions for anybody. And getting all of our terminology wrong. And then automatically, we don't know anything about anything. So yeah.
Brayden 05:38
Yeah. So preliminary course is the first part of the selection. It's like 26 days of training. Now, it's changed a lot since the time that I went through but luckily, I actually just chatted with the NCOIC over there. So, thanks to him, I have a much better understanding of how things are working nowadays. But basically, yeah, 26 days training and that comes out to 4-6 weeks. And that's you'll go there. And the whole idea with that is to try to figure out if you know, you kind of have what it takes to make it through EOD school because it costs a lot of money to send guys to EOD school and we don't want to send them there for them to just fail out. But at prelim they have about a 45% pass rate. So, it's an it's pretty difficult. The physical training aspect of it is not what it used to be, which in my opinion, is kind of a good thing because we're not you know, you have to be in shape to be in this career field for sure. But, you know, we're not to the level that we need to get smoked every day. They definitely they still do have their you know, gut check days. some days that are extremely well, I don't want to say extremely with are a lot harder on PT. But now as opposed to the time when I went through my generation of guys, we kind of just got beat down the whole time and that was it. We learned that that was just causing issues really, in the long run. It was just people were getting hurt, and we weren't getting enough people through the pipeline that needed to go through. So, the way that you know, is it's described as kind of send us a send us a nerd that is also kind of an athlete. Like that's kind of how I was I'm not saying I'm a nerd, I'm kind of a dumb guy in my opinion. I was no stud by any means. I you know, I played football, but I was pretty out of shape. I barely pass the PAST test just to make it through. So, PreLim was pretty hard for me. But yeah, so nowadays, it's not that difficult. In the PT wise are just more trying to build you up give you good Athletic Foundation for because we've moved to the tier two test, which all you guys have to I think and for those of you that might not know that's kind of a career field specific PT test, but that at PreLim, they just kind of give you a good foundation to start prepping for the operational side of that test.
Trent 07:56
What are the sticking points for most people You know, because every criminal has their thing? And every selection course, is it the weight on your back? Is it the runtimes? Is it pull ups; I mean from what you've seen and what you've heard about what gets most people? So, it's grip strength. If you take a look at our tier two test, there's a ton of grip based things that we have, you know, the deadlift, which they don't take that portion of it in, PreLim just because for safety reasons we want to make sure that because that's probably the most you know, the people can hurt themselves pretty easy on that exercise. So but other than that, you know, we have pull ups we have a grip, like the psi check, I don't remember what it's called, but that you got that you had a hold a bar in front of you like a just a static hold of the bar you got farmers carries. So, it's, you know, it's kind of a lot of grip exercises back to back and from what I've heard from talking to some of the PreLim instructors that that's one of the hardest things that candidates have is, you know, a lot of grip stuff. I still want to make an old man joke right now like you guys just need to be gripping your controllers harder while you play while you play your stupid little games. I'm sorry. Moving forward
Peaches 09:10
Okay, so since we're already talking about selection for you guys are PreLim, what would be the best way that somebody who wants to enter in and be an EOD tech? What is the best way that they can prepare? Is it just doing running and pull ups or any of that?
EOD PREPARATION
Brayden 09:28
So I think in general, they're going to do better off preparing for the academic side of it than the physical side of it, because they don't have you know, they have the occasional person that might fail the, their tier two tests because that's all they get tested on physically, that's the only thing they can fail on is when they first show up, they'll take an abbreviated version of the tier two test, and then they need to pass that before they can start the class and then at the very end, before they can graduate, PreLim, they need to pass, you know, a little bit harder version of that. test. So physically wise I mean it's it can be a little stressful if you're not in shape, but more they're, they're more just trying to build you up and get you into better shape. So academically I think is where the focus would be. And it's kind of hard to say what because you can't a lot of our job is kind of classified and if it's not classified at stuff, we kind of hold close to the chest because we don't want you know, bad guys to know our TTP's. But just, it's, we like to say it's like a firehose of information. Like you show up especially if you're like me and kid straight out of high school, like I knew nothing about anything, any of this ordnance, any explosives, anything military like that. So I was, you know, I thought a bomb just fell out of the sky and hit the ground and exploded. I knew nothing about fusing and the firing chain and so I'll see
Peaches 10:45
That's exactly the way that happens actually, scientifically, yeah.
Trent 10:51
TTPs sorry. What was that for everybody that doesn't know what TTPs?
Brayden 10:56
Oh, yeah. tactics, techniques and procedures. So that's just kind of like our how we operate and do certain things. But yeah, so I think focusing on study techniques, because at PreLim, you can't take anything home with you, it's all in class, you'll get like an hour of study hall before class where you can study your material. But basically, it's like, they give you a classroom instruction, and it's a bunch of brand-new stuff you never heard of. And then the next day, you'll get to study in the morning, and then you'll like test that afternoon on it. And it's like verbatim stuff to at least it was when I went through. I don't know exactly how it is nowadays, but if you if you even like spelled something wrong on a test, it could be wrong. So it was, yeah, it was pretty tough academically, so that's where the majority of the failures come from is academic rather than physical.
Peaches 11:46
So not swimming, then?
Brayden 11:49
No, we don't swim at all in our pipeline.
Peaches 11:52
I just say that because we get a lot of those questions. I know I'm sure you on your Instagram page for EOD get a ton of sweat Questions, we also get the same. So, I wanted to make sure that there's no swimming for you guys.
Brayden 12:05
No, zero swimming in the pipeline. I will say that is when you're working with your developers and your SORs and that sort of thing. If you're able to get in the pool with those guys, you know, obviously they get priority because they're the ones that actually need the swimming. But if they'll you know, your developer or whatever, will let you get in the pool with them, then it's a good idea to do that. Because we all know that swimming is great cardio.
Peaches 12:27
Yeah, why? And that's really what I've seen, whenever I've been to a development session with one of the SORs. They, everybody's in there. They don't, they don't exclude everybody. You're part of the team. You get in there; you're not expected to be able to perform at the same level as everybody else. Because that's not what you're going to have to do. But it's good. Your part of the team you get in the pool.
Trent 12:52
So, you're also like, worldwide deployable. You know what I mean? It's not like on your deployments are like we're going to operate 500 meters or more from Everybody have water that's ever existed, just to make sure that you know, like, it's a good life skill to have the first time that you are in the water. It shouldn't be when you're drowning. I don't want to be dramatic, but you know what I mean?
Brayden 13:12
We like to leave the water the Navy, they're the only guys so that we get, you know, every branch has EOD. So, the Navy guys, that's their thing is the water. They're the only ones that are qualified to, you know, to take care of underwater ordnance and that sort of thing. So, we make jokes sometimes, like if we get called out to something and it's in a puddle, we'll be like, I call the Navy, let them handle it.
Peaches 13:34
And you Okay, so, really quick, you talked about academics and we always tell people because they ask, Hey, should I study air traffic control? Should I study medicine? Should I study anatomy? Should I go be an EMT or anything like that we always tell them just come in as a blank slate that way you have no bad, you know, bad traits or scar tissue that we have to then get rid of and build your backup. We want nice clean slate, that way we can train you how we want you to be. But from what you said, like, it's, and I'm guessing here are trying to figure it out. But it sounds like being a good studier, is probably more beneficial than actually taking calculus or any kind of courses to help with your math and stuff like that. Right?
Brayden 14:25
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's the same thing that we want on our end to is a clean slate. I mean, you, you know, you can go on the internet and try to read about how a bomb works and that sort of thing. But it's if you try to have that mental, if you try to do that, and then coming to the schoolhouse, you're probably going to be wrong, because they teach you a very specific way of how we, you know, we learned it and this is the way that you need to comprehend it. So, if you try to do that studying on your own, you're more than likely going to have bad habits and learn it wrong. But I will say that there are tiny things that you can do that might be able to help you so If you are a guy that hasn't done basic math in a while doing, you know, division by hand, multiplication by hand, that's something you can learn converting from Imperial to Metric back and forth. Because we do a lot of measurements that can help knowing, you know, because there are some guys that might have guys and gals that might have never touched a ruler, and they don't know what the little markings are on it. So, learning that sort of thing. That stuff can help. But mainly, I would say, yeah, just learning how to study how to learn a lot of brand-new information would be the most beneficial.
Peaches 15:30
So, this is just taking me back to the whole lockdown. kids are out of school, and I've got a seventh grader, and she's figuring out surface areas and all this other stuff. And I'm like, oh, and she's looking to me, is like, hey, you're the old man. You're supposed to know this. And YouTube was my friend. Yeah. And then I looked really, really smart. And then even then sometimes YouTube couldn't help me. One more question since we were talking about the past. And this is a question that actually you brought up that you wanted to cover because I imagine you get it a lot. But on the PAST, it says that it says, nothing about doing sit ups or push-ups, does that mean all you guys do is run and pull-ups?
Brayden 16:15
So, to qualify, yes, that's all you need to do is pass the run and the pull ups for the PAST. But you know, the, so ours and the developers from my understanding, you know, I'm just kind of speaking from talking with some guys, they kind of have some leeway of, if you just show up and you only do three pull ups and you can clearly do more and, you know, barely pass the run, and then you just don't do the push-ups and sit-ups, they're going to, you know, that's going to leave a bad taste in their mouth, and they're not going to want to help you and potentially you might not be able to join the career field. So, I would say, to qualify, yeah, that's all you need, but you definitely want to do we want guys that, you know, do the most do the best that they can and everything so definitely try to crush the PAST.
Trent 16:58
When your instructors in the prelim course I drop, the guys don't run to pull-up bars and do pull-ups and push-ups.
Brayden 17:04
Exactly. Now you do everything at the prelim course it's a lot of calisthenics stuff,
Peaches 17:08
So, it would be beneficial to get started on that.
Brayden 17:12
Yep, definitely.
LIFE IN EOD
Trent 17:14
Yeah, that we talked about all the time minimum requirements, the PAST is minimum requirements, there's going to be a whole lot of other stuff thrown your way. Being in good shape all around is going to be your friend. So, I have a next question is a three part. It's my favorite question I've ever asked before. It's where Can y'all be stationed? Basically, is anywhere is that you know, some very specific places. And then what's the day to day life in garrison? Like, you know, average day for you guys? That is actually my favorite question. And then third one is deployments. What are deployments? Like, obviously, nowhere near any bodies of water.
Brayden 17:53
Okay, so the first question Where can we be stationed? Yeah, so it's, it's pretty everywhere that has a flight line, usually we'll have EOD Tech's there. Because almost every aircraft carries some sort of ordnance, whether it's fliers or whatever. So almost every base, I would say that there's EOD there. What's the day to day life like? So, this is one of the questions that a lot of people want to know. Because, you know, there's not bombs all the time. So, what the heck do we do?
Peaches 18:20
This is your chance; this is your chance to just knock it out of the park.
Brayden 18:24
So, every shop is different, but we have minimum requirements. So every technician is required to have 16 hours a week of just pure training, whether that's classroom or hands on training or running a, you know, basically a fake scenario where we get throw a fake bomb in the middle of a field or in a hospital or whatever, and you have to run the full scenario. So that leads us most shops do two days a week, two to three days a week, completely dedicated to training. So, and then the other days, you kind of do sectional work, so we have logistics, you know, so we have our equipment. Guys, we have a lot of specialized equipment. So those guys will basically inventory stuff, make sure it functions properly and do the paperwork side of the equipment stuff. And then you have the guy's supply, he has a bio of our cool guy gear, we got a training section, which they schedule our training. And then they basically just some kind of personnel type positions, basically just doing paperwork and running calendars and that sort of stuff. So, the, you know, usually about two days a week you're just doing straight up desk job, which can you know, kind of be boring, but that's how every job is. And then the other day is you're just straight up training the whole time. So, most shops as well, like from you know, the entire day How it works is usually we're an hour PT is scheduled in a requirement for us to do every day. So, for me personally, from 6:30-7:30, we PT. Usually it's on around. Occasionally we'll do like a group workout. All together just for some motivation, but usually you just do whatever you want. And then start the day like 8:30 and then either doing your section work or training and so about 33;0 or so and then head on home. And then as I mentioned we TDY a ton so that also kind of plays into the to your daily life as well.
Peaches 20:21
Like how many how many days a year you guys gone?
Brayden 20:25
So, I did a, I looked on the VMPF to see my numbers the other day actually and nine out of the five years have been in Barksdale, I was TDY for an entire year. And then another deployed as well. So that's another six months on top of that I've been away so it's pretty often, it seems like at least seems like we're out the door all the time.
Trent 20:48
And the deployment life what's that? Like is just like the movies like that. Really? There's the movie that I don't want to say the name of it, but I'm assuming that's exactly yeah, that's well, you're EOD first, and then you end up in Marvel movies.
Brayden 21:05
Yeah, that's a good movie, but it's not a good representation of the career field. And so right now especially, you know, we kind of made a name for ourselves over OEF/OIF doing the ground war, because the Army you know, that was the biggest war part of the war I you know, it was IEDs and that sort of thing. So, the Army would just be able to fully the Army and the Marine Corps religions weren't able to fully support that mission on their own. So, then they asked for Air Force itself, because that's not really, I mean, it is our one of our mission sets, we are fully capable of running an IED. But the ground war type side of the mission is not necessarily our area. So, they requested for us to help tons of you know, all the bad asses that I got raised by are out there. Almost like The Hurt Locker but wearing the bomb suit doing the cool guy stuff, you know, almost exactly.
Trent 22:06
You guys always have a sniper rifle handy too, right?
Brayden 22:10
We actually kind of do. Not always handy but we do have a sniper rifle that is one of our capabilities. We don't use it for shooting people we're not qualified for that. We use it for shooting ordnance sometimes if that's one of our options if we want to do it, we can shoot it with a 50 Cal from far away and make it go away but uh anyway back to the deployment thing nowadays especially with no war going on. We're just back bases kind of chilling and then if we are wanted for support the request for us and we'll send a team out to wherever like me personally I was deployed to Al Dhafra in the UAE which was like being at home except not at home like is like pretty cush life over there hung out by the pool all the time. Try to get tan but I couldn't because I'm just too pasty for that but we chilled there and then eventually it was right I was there right when we were pulling out of Syria and one of the bases they wanted EOD support because they knew that there was going to be a lot more traffic coming through there so they requested from us and I actually got to was pretty awesome experience I got to forward deploy out to Syria for a few months and live that lifestyle but um yeah and then you can look into a few other positions like we do support ODA we had some slots some guys that were out there just rolling with ODA either helping them with just being their unique tax or helping them teach the local populace the local like EOD guys how to how to EOD and then we also have some guys like in Africa right now I think that they're just straight up just teaching some African, the African military how to how to do God stuff. So that's kind of what deployment life is like, right? Now for us not often for the guys in my generation it's usually like one deployment within six years.
Trent 24:09
So, you guys are fighting each other to get out there?
Brayden 24:11
Yes, we are. Everybody wants to go but we just don't have there's not a lot of slots for us right now because we're at are only at the back bases.
Peaches 24:21
That's just weird to think about. I mean, because we got guys that are fighting to get out the door every deployment to but that's, you know, every 18 months Yeah, getting out there and they're fighting they'll take canes to dudes knees if they need to. Okay, so I'm going to take a small step back really quick and go back to what are what are some of the qualification requirements in order to join EOD? So those kind of like, what's the minimum as ASVAB score or their vision requirements and is there a certain physical that has to be passed.
QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS
Brayden 25:00
Yeah, so for as bad boys, it's a fifth. Actually, I think I wrote it down because I'm awful with numbers. Yeah, 50 Gen/47 mechanical
Trent 25:10
Wait, stop your EOD guy, and you're awful with numbers?
Brayden 25:14
It's not one of my best attributes. That's why I write stuff down. I know I suck at it. So, I just yeah. So, 50, General 47 Mechanical, and then that can actually be waived right now, I think, because we're just hurting so bad for people that they'll just kind of take anybody and then physical wise for the PAST to pass the 1.5 miles under 11 minutes and three pull-ups. And then you have to have the ability to obtain a top-secret clearance. You can Google what the requirements for that are and basically just don't have ever been arrested or go to jail. I mean, you can have been arrested I think but just not in jail for ridiculous stuff.
Peaches 25:53
Yeah, that's a fine line. I mean, there's morality waivers and all that kind of stuff, but like, Yeah, yep, yeah. We can we can determine that so.
Brayden 26:02
No, not at all. And then vision wise, I think it's just a colorblind test right now. I'm not 100% Sure. Don't quote me on that. But I think depth perception, there's no requirement that I think it's just a color vision is the only requirement but that's it.
Peaches 26:24
And you guys don't have to take any kind of class three flight physical like we do or anything like that, right?
Brayden 26:29
Not that I know of. No.
Peaches 26:31
Okay. It's interesting. I you know, it's you guys, at least historically have been really freaking smart. And that, you know, you called yourself a nerd earlier. Maybe we called you a nerd. I don't know. I'm foggy on that. But you guys have always been seen as being pretty freaking intelligent. So awesome.
Brayden 26:58
Yeah, I think that's probably one of the one of the bigger things that for guys listen to this to try to take away is because although we are, you know, kind of SPECWAR adjacent, we get recruited alongside all you guys and all that we're not, it's not a physical game as much for us you got to be in shape. But the biggest thing is more just having the mental capacity and being a problem solver and that sort of thing is are the best attributes of EOD techs?
Trent 27:23
Yeah, just like everything else, right? motivated. Psychologically flexible, maybe not morally flexible as much but yeah. So yeah, moving on to the next question. I want to gloss over a little bit the How long is the pipeline and get into what are all the cool schools and get into all the Gucci equipment you get and the best things about your job type of thing, you know, but yeah, first, we should probably be like, this is how long the pipeline is blah, blah, blah, and then all the all the awesome stuff after that.
Brayden 27:54
Sure. So, yeah, like I said, 26 days of training for the prelim course. If you go to Straight through, of course, you can roll. So usually it's academic, if you get hurt or whatever we have, where they call it, they have like coaches, they're the same thing that you guys have that can help you. If you roll physically, they can help you get in better shape or fix an injury or whatever, but your roll academically, I can touch on that as well how that usually works for us. So, on our tests, you have to have an 85% to pass it's a higher standard than most of the rest of the military. And then if you do something that could hurt you significantly kill you hurt someone else, something like that then the 16-point head, so it's an automatic failure. So, it's pretty easy to fail tests. So if you fail once, you'll get a retest the next day usually, and then if you fail that again, you'll go to an academic Review Board, where you're at prelim, you walk in and it's all the PreLim instructors and they kind of just kind of my belittle you and tell you your dumb and ask you why we should keep you called counseling act. Yeah, and then it's the same thing at EOD school. And so, once you graduate PreLim, you go to Eglin Air Force Base, and you go to NAV School EOD, it's a Navy school. Like I said, it's all four services go through together. And there, it's typically, the total pipeline, if you go straight through, if you're lucky is about nine months, but usually takes the average person about a year to get all the way through. But once you get to the schoolhouse, yeah, that's like 6-7 months, I think on average there. And then the same thing applies for the testing. If you fail twice, you'll go to an ARB except this time, it's like high ranking guys from every branch of the military, which is a little bit more intimidating when you get a Marine Gunny sitting there yelling at you. So, then you make your case there, they might let you back into class. Get back in. And then if you were to double tap again, and have to meet an ARB for the second time, your chances now are very low. They might, if you, you know, if you're a motivated guy and the instructors like you, you got a lot of instructors on your side. And you can make your case pretty well, then they might let you back into class, but otherwise, you might get booted. So then yeah, I mean, that's a really I mean, I can go more in depth on the pipeline if you want to, but you graduate there, and then you go to your base, and then you spend about a year first year, just learning relearning everything. Because I mean, we all know what they teach you in the pipeline is not exactly how things work in the real world. So, you kind of get there and you learn a lot of the basics for about a year. And then as far as extra cool training we do. It's really, we don't have an exact standardized way of doing it. We have a few courses that need to, we'd like are you required to go to so that's ADT I & II is starting to be one of the requirements. So that's basically our weapons of mass destruction School, where you learn about some like nuclear physics and, and that sort of thing. And then you got advanced IEDs where you learn, you know, it's just instead of your basic pressure plate, it's like the movie Hollywood scenario where you got like 30 blinking lights, a million wires and a photo style and you got all this different stuff going on. They teach you how to defeat all that stuff.
Peaches 31:33
Like, you know, cut the red wire cut the blue wire, who knows which wire it is? I don't know. Yeah, you just pick No, no.
Trent 31:41
When we pick wrong once,
Peaches 31:44
You won't know it.
Brayden 31:46
That's why we try to do everything remotely. We try to be far away from it if we can while we're cutting it. That's what the robots are for.
Peaches 31:54
So, since you guys have that, that large of a you know, attrition rate. If you will, or a pass rate, and it is academically challenging when someone does get removed from training completely, are they allowed to come back? Are they kind of told Hey, man, you just don't have what it takes?
Brayden 32:17
Yeah, not there's plenty of cases of people going back. I mean, you have to meet the I mean, you'll get reclassed to something else. And then you'll we have right now for EOD if you're an active duty and you're considering retraining; we have a waiver for us. And all you need is two years to retrain, which is pretty sweet. So, if you are an active duty guy and you're thinking about it, go talk to your career advisor on base and then hit up your UD shop on base and now the hook. Yeah, because there's a certain process we got to go through for that. But either way, yeah, good to get back to your question. There are tons of people that have, you know, tried again, because they fall in love with the job and they're bummed they didn't make it through. So, like I'm just going to do my two years and go right back in.
Peaches 32:59
Do you get a lot of credit trainees them?
COOL SCHOOLS AND GEAR
Brayden 33:01
I mean a pretty decent amount. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't know the exact numbers off the top my head but they have to spend 10 days with their local EOD shop before and we basically just give them a yea or nay because we'll do like a little last a few little tests on them basically and just see if they're worth it. And then for I mean, in the five years that I've been in this shop, I think we've had like four or five trainees come through. As far as like the different qualifications, air assault is pretty easy for us to go through. That's the one that's probably most common for you guys to go through. Airborne as a possibility, but it's hard. We have an airborne unit that the 820th They're the base defense recovery. I can't remember exactly what their acronym is. But they uh yeah, we have a couple years with them that are airborne. But as far as anybody else any other regular guy EOD guy trying to go airborne it's hard but it's not impossible. And then Ranger School anybody can go to Ranger School we have one Ranger EOD tech right now that I know of there might be a couple more but and sniper schools and all that it's few and far between there's occasionally because like I said, we do shoot the sniper rifle the Barrett. I've heard of guys go into like the Barrett factory and learning about the beret. And then maybe getting a little bit more specialized on the on the Barrett like sniper stuff, but usually not. We do. Like I mentioned, every shop is different. So, it's basically the training section in the shop, whatever funding they have, they kind of decide what extracurricular training we go to. So, we'll go to you know t Triple C classes. We'll go to homemade explosive classes. There are definitely you know, shooting courses we go through and stuff like that. So,
Peaches 35:09
And cool gear?
Brayden 35:11
We get tons of cool gear. So, we, uh, the way I like to describe it I don't know I’m probably going to people are not going to agree with this, but I think you know...
Peaches 35:20
Welcome to the club.
Brayden 35:22
Oh, yeah, I'm just waiting for like, the career field is just sharpshooters all the time. So as soon as this gets published, like it's going to be on all the Air Force EOD pages. They're going to be like, man, he said this that was dumb. like, Alright, thanks, guys. So, we the way that since we're, we are under civil engineering, which is kind of a hard thing for some people to grasp. But it's kind of a good spot for us in SPECWAR my opinion. We're like the coolest of the not cool guys like if we were in the same group with all you spec war guys we'd probably be at the lower end of the priority list but because we're not we're kind of at the higher end of their priority list and see so we get a lot of cool good funding and we get a lot of cool guy gear I mean we get all we had fancy watches and tell us our GPS coordinates and all that sort of stuff and we get all of our you know, build up our own little kits. We do you know, I talked about doing stuff remotely so we use like rope and a bunch of different little tiny tools and stuff that we can use for that we just it depends on your shop kind of this stuff that you get but we do get a lot of cool guy gear.
Trent 36:39
Dude, I will always make fun of the SERE guys over you guys. Okay, I'm just I just want to let you know. I just had one more. I'm like get special duty pay or anything like that.
Brayden 36:56
Yeah, so we get $150 of demo pay every month. Just for playing with explosives and then we get special duty assignment pay we get $225 right off the bat now as soon as you graduate EOD school and then it goes up and your skill levels so after you know once you make Staff Sergeant you make 7-level you get $300. And then I think once you make Master Sergeant, you get $375 or something like that now. So, and then we get our signing bonus. And then our reenlistment bonus. We're on par with all you guys. But yet, you know, we just got bumped down to the five multipliers right now, which kind of sucks, but I guess government's hurting for money, so it makes sense yeah, money is pretty good.
Peaches 37:36
That's right. I didn't even consider reenlistment bonuses for you guys.
Brayden 37:40
Yeah, yeah, I got mine tax free. So, I was pretty legit.
Peaches 37:46
Okay, so do EOD tech's, do you guys attach to any kind of ST teams or other special operations force teams?
Brayden 37:57
So, I mentioned it's the 820 base defense route, they're not really special, but I mean, they are airborne. So that that's kind of a cool aspect. We do have guys that support and are attached to the seventh 24th it's kind of, there's not a lot of them. I mean, that is a that is a career path for us to try out for it, essentially. And that's an option. But as far as attaching otherwise, I mean, you get you got ODA, like I said, sometimes we'll attach with the ODA guys. And then it's really wherever we're needed. So, the options always there to attach with, you know, Special Forces and all that stuff. You got to be ready for it. It's not very often, especially right now, but you know, back in the day when there was a lot of stuff going on there tons of dudes that attached to the SOF teams.
Peaches 38:49
That will you know, when you're that operational, it can be stressful. So, since you deal with explosives, what would you say the most stressful part of your job is?
Brayden 39:01
Not the dealing with explosives part. Usually that's, you know, one of the least stressful fights. That's the fun days is when you actually get to get to your job, I guess I would say for me personally, is the balance between I mentioned we have our sectional work. So basically, you know, you have to know, one of the jokes we make sometimes is every other duty, because sometimes we just wind up doing other people's jobs for them because they can't do it like so knowing how to run the equipment section, learning how to be a good EOD tech and then also bouncing TDYs at the same time. You know, kind of the balance of it all is probably the most stressful part.
Peaches 39:43
Yeah, that's fair. I'd buy that. So, what sets you guys apart and then you kind of hit on a little bit, but what sets Airforce EOD apart from army or the Navy or the Marine Corps.
USAF EOD VS SISTER SERVICE EOD
Brayden 40:00
Sure. So, like I'd already mentioned the Navy EOD, those years, they got the underwater side of things. They're, you know, they dive. They're also actually SPECWAR in the Navy community. So, they, they'll attach the Navy SEALs, they go through like, dive school, jump school, all that sort of stuff. So, they're there. They're the special guys. They got cool hair all the time. We're jealous of that aspect of it, but
Peaches 40:26
They are fun. I've been on teams where we've had Navy EOD dudes, and they are fantastic. Yeah, that's cool, too,
Trent 40:33
Just get you some Out of Regs Pomade and you're there.
Brayden 40:38
They tagged me a couple times on the journey. I think there you go. Yeah, and then. So that's kind of the Navy's niche. I mean, we all can do the same mission set except for set apart from the Navy. They got the other side, the underwater side of it. But as far as everything else, we all can do the same thing but we all kind of specialize, I guess in certain areas. So, the Marine Corps They're the ground war and they also have the inerting mission, which is pretty awesome. So, they'll basically take a live ordnance around and then extract the explosives out of it. Using You know, they're they have a bunch of different methods to do that, but they they're the ones that usually do that side of it while Air Force EOD can we have the capability and we're kind of trained to that level. We just don't that's not one of our things that we regularly do. The Army they have the ground mission. That's kind of their whole thing. They're the guys that you know, are mainly over, you know, doing the overseas deployed mission right now that's their biggest thing. Therefore, so are we got nukes, which is pretty cool. Navy has nukes too, but we have more nukes. So that's kind of a cool thing.
Peaches 41:49
Our own little internal cold war going on.
Brayden 41:54
So that's a pretty cool aspect of our job, especially if we had station to Global Strike base. You get a really in-depth knowledge of nukes and you can kind of have that leg up on other people, I guess. Just knowing the internal workings of nukes is pretty cool. And then we also have our main mission is really the airbase is what we're there for is to protect the base so you've been in deployed scenarios that's kind of our main mission over there.
RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS
Trent 42:25
I got my notes here. I have some rapid-fire questions. I think we've covered a few of these already. But you said you're not smart, which doesn't make sense though, because you're like also I know everything about nukes. Okay, I don't know what to think about you. I think you're actually a spy. So here we go. First rapid fire. Why do EOD candidates go through prelim Shepard before EOD school at Eglin?
Brayden 42:47
because going at EOD school costs a good amount of money and before we had PreLim, we're just sending guys, tons of guys through tons of guys were failing. So, they implemented the PreLim course to try to Without those people that would fail when they get there and make sure we're sending the right people to EOD school,
Trent 43:05
right it's a joint course right no one likes sending Air Force students to join course and they fail out Yeah. They don't know that's no bueno. All right next one how does EOD translate to civilian job opportunities?
Brayden 43:19
So, graduating EOD school I might be wrong on this but as far as I know graduating EOD school qualifies you as a UXO One technician so you can apply for UXO One jobs which is basically like clearing bombing ranges on in the civilian world. And then you can also do some stuff overseas as that technician and then you as far as bomb squads local bomb squads like fire departments or local police departments. They usually have a bomb squad and most of the time you can't just directly join the bomb squad you off to do five years or so is just a regular guy before he can apply for the bomb squad. But with the EOD background, you're more qualified and your application will probably go higher on the stack. And then all the letter agencies Well, I won't say all but most of the letter agencies have some sort of EOD position like the FBI has specialized in bomb techs. And it's the same case with them you got to do about five years as a regular guy before you can apply for that. And then you also have the secret service side we work with the Secret Service a lot. And they love you to you guys because we already know what they're doing. That's one of our videos that we do all the time is secret service support so they know that you guys already know what they need to be doing. So, it's pretty easy. should be pretty easy for an EOD Tech to actually get a job with the Secret Service.
Trent 44:41
All right, do you have to speak with a SOR to go EOD?
Brayden 44:46
I'm not 100% on this one either. But I think you do have to speak to SOR usually your regular recruiter will send you to a SOR to sign an EOD contract.
Trent 44:57
Now Thank you, right. Do y'all have it? Officers?
Brayden 45:01
Yeah, we do. So, each, almost every single flight has an officer that runs a flight. And they have to have an engineering degree and be a regular civil engineer officer for like a year or two before they can apply to go to EOD school. Then they'll go to EOD school right alongside us the enlisted guys, which is pretty cool. And then yeah, what's during their flight in the flight, they're not really an operational EOD tech, although they are as qualified as we are. They just don't really you know, they're more of the management side of things. And then the career path for them is kind of crappy. They there's not a lot of slots usually after Captain you're kind of done. You'll go back to regular civil engineering after that.
Trent 45:45
Good things to know. Yeah. And then I guess kind of leads into why is EOD under civil engineering in the Air Force?
Brayden 45:54
So, there's a lot of different aspects to it funding and whatnot but I think the main reason that I like to explain why we are as the airbase recovery side of it. So, say one of our near peers were to bomb a runway. A lot of what is leftover is instead of holes is a lot of unexploded ordnance, and they do that on purpose. They have a large fail, large dud rate on purpose because it takes a long time to clear ordnance. So that the job of clearing the runway is civil engineering, they're the ones that have to go out there and patch the holes and get an operating strip up and running for planes to get off the ground. And air superiority is what we need in a time like that. So that's like the number one thing that needs to be done in that situation is get their field running so you can get birds up in the air. So, EOD plays a huge vital role on that and we have to go out there first and clear all of these ordnates Well, maybe not all of them, but what we need to clear up for them to open up that part of the runway. So just, that's one of the bigger reasons while we're under civil engineering is, they own the airbase recovery and EOD plays a huge part in the airbase recovery.
Trent 47:12
That makes sense. Mm hmm. All right. The next one I think you've already answered is EOD, except cross trainees and prior service and how common is it? You said kind of common.
Brayden 47:23
So, first term, Airman cross trainees is always taken. We don't take any career men at the moment. You know, there might be the exception here there but it's not a thing really. And then prior service, we at the moment are not accepting any prior service unless they are already EOD qualified. So, if they were an army EOD tech and they're trying to come over to the Air Force, it's kind of case by case situation needs to run through our career field manager but that is the only prior service we accepted as if you're already EOD qualified.
Peaches 47:54
I wonder why that's so different for you guys than it is for us because we get prior service. Cross trainee’s sister service all the time.
Brayden 48:04
So, from my understanding, it's mainly because we have that the first few years of your, E-1 thru E-6 is kind of like your foundation of learning as an EOD tech. So, if we bring in guys that are coming in with already at an E-6, you know, career Airman and that sort of thing. They're missing out on a huge, vital part in our career field, because being a team member, is what you are first, you know, you're the guy that puts the tools together, you're the guy that you know, is driving the robot and trying to understand everything that's going on. And then once you get to that E-5/E-6 and above level, you're the team leader. So, you're the guy on the ground. That's like you're making the decision. You're the guy that puts the bomb suit on. So, you kind of need those first few years to be a good EOD technician.
Trent 49:01
Yeah, make sense. And yeah. It's funny though, how most people are trying to get into the Air Force. It's not the other way around. Just want to put it out there for the best. Alright. Last question is what's with the crab thing?
Brayden 49:16
I mean, it's, it's pretty simple, really our badge, that EOD badge kind of looks like a crab from a distance. So, it just that name got brought up many, many, many years ago, and they kind of stuck with the name and with what we call the badge, and there's nothing else to it. I've heard speculation because our school used to be in Maryland originally. And I've heard speculation that it had something to do with like, you know, the blue crabs or softshell crabs in Maryland or whatever, but I don't know. I think it's just because it our batch kind of looks like the crab.
Trent 49:46
It's not liked the bomb suit thing going on or anything? No. But the robot also has a claw.
Peaches 49:59
All right. Well, that's the end of the rapid-fire questions. Is there anything that you wanted to re-attack or that you wanted to address? Since you run the, you know, the EOD page on Instagram? You know, you get inundated with questions. So, is there any last re-attacks that you want to do or you want to cover?
Brayden 50:20
Yeah, I mean, I'll just say that anybody that's interested from what I’ve talked learned from talking to some of the newer guys is that a lot of this the SORs don't know about EOD, really. So, they're not really pushing guys to EOD. And then some of the people that want to join EOD, they're not getting the answers they might need. So, reaching out to the join Air Force EOD page, I think is a good way to go about if you want questions answered, No, I'm there for you. And if I don't know the answer, I got a ton of people in my back pocket that can help me find the answers. My you know, leader, EOD leadership is very supportive of the page and helps me out all the time, which is cool. So yeah, just reach out. If you want to learn more about EOD and I mean it's pivotal that people try to understand that we are you know, the days of The Hurt Locker are gone for us right now and we're you know, everybody's we're our if you read the national defense strategy and that stuff, our focus is on near peers rather than, you know the terrorists over there. So, we play a huge role in the near peer war as well, but it's just not what it's not the sexy stuff that everybody saw EOD in the past. It's not putting on the bomb suit and IEDs all the time. It's more UXOs, and just basic explosive knowledge. So, if you if you want this job, and you come in understanding that, you know, you're not going to be doing IEDs all the time, and you're not even going to be doing UXOs and bombs all the time. You know, you'll be sitting at your desk a lot, and that's a good thing for everybody. But you just got to be willing to come in and just train all the time and be the best EOD tech you can possibly be.
Trent 52:07
And I'm not joking anymore. Like I learned a lot. sit down with you. I've only met you guys a few times. Usually it's overseas. It's like, Hey, we're bringing god guys along. I've always been super cool. And it's always nice to have them around. They are the smart guys. And I think what you guys do is awesome. So, I really appreciate you coming on. It was it was pretty amazing.
Brayden 52:35
Now, I mean, I'm okay with it. That's one of the things and that's one of the things I wanted to mention too about the career field is we got a lot of traditions. And one of them is when you we try to avoid showing on publicize stuff even though people love to take pictures of us. So usually we'll Willow the guy's a couple of rounds of beer for showing up on stuff. So, I know people are going to call me out for this and be like, Alright, where's the beer?
Peaches 53:00
You're going to owe something Yeah, for sure. Okay, well for the audience EOD is a viable option if you are interested in joining the Air Force Special Warfare. Give it some serious thought though, and prepare yourself physically and from the sounds of it mentally as well. We've said it before, contact the Special Operations Recruiter or SOR immediately if you're even considering joining EOD, or any of the Air Force Special Warfare career fields, see if SOR. The regular Air Force recruiters can help you. But you're missing out on a lot of information and a lot of training opportunities by not going to a SOR. So, reach out to them immediately so that they can give you any kind of immediate disqualifiers that you may have. So, gone and if you're worried about like, Hey, I'm going to show up on a Friday to the recruiter and I'm shipping out on a Monday though days are gone. This takes months of processing, medicals, physical physicals and all that kind of stuff. So, it takes time. So, if you're on a timeline or you got to, you know, get in quick, you need to go see them immediately. So, we sincerely appreciate you guys tuning in. If you want, please leave us a review, subscribe, and we will see you next time. Go out and earn each breath.
TLDR: THE LIFE OF AN EOD TECHNICIAN IS AN ACTIVE AND INTERESTING RIDE IN THE USAF, STUDY, TRAIN HARD, AND DON’T FAIL A TEST!
SPECIAL THANKS TO BRAYDEN KERR FOR MAKING THIS EPISODE POSSIBLE.
GUEST BIO:
SSgt Brayden Kerr is an Air Force EOD Team Leader that has been in the Air Force for 6 years. Born in Pennsylvania, he joined the AF after graduating high school. He married his high school sweetheart while they were both serving in the USAF. After going through the EOD pipeline, he is currently stationed at Barksdale AFB, LA. He has one deployment to ADAB, UAE where he forwarded to Syria. He has been TDY all over, including England and Alaska. He is currently slotted to go be an instructor at Silver Flag, a contingency training site. He has his CCAF in Explosive Ordnance Disposal and is currently working on his BSE in Electrical Engineering.
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