.I need advice- I'd like to be a Navy EOD Officer
- Thread starter AWOP
- Start date
It’s a great career field and very unique. It’s the only EOD field where you can perform your duties on land and underwater. You can also command mobile dive salvage units as well as EOD units.
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policemedic
Verified SWAT
@racing_kitty can offer an informed opinion on Navy EOD training and capabilities.
For my part, you’re absolutely wrong about going straight to a police EOD unit because of military EOD training/experience. Frankly, while we do care...we don’t care. You’d swear in as a regular cop, and earn your way from there over time.
For my part, you’re absolutely wrong about going straight to a police EOD unit because of military EOD training/experience. Frankly, while we do care...we don’t care. You’d swear in as a regular cop, and earn your way from there over time.
I’ve been following this thread with some degree of interest. I’ve been out of the game for a little bit, but some things about the schoolhouse are timeless.
Physically speaking, yes, the Navy will be the more physically challenging route, as you’ll have to complete dive school before you arrive at Elgin. Last I checked, underwater ordnance division was right at a month. Time it right, and that’s a lot of time out on a boat in the gulf during the summer; not a bad gig if you can get it.
Otherwise, your training will be the same as my training, except I graduated a year or so before WMD’s division stood up. Physically and mentally, it’s gonna suck. It’s not the kind of suck that you can just train up for, as if being the fittest MFSOB in the valley can pull it off for you. It’s meant to be a gut check. It’s testing how much heart you have, and you can’t train for that.
The early mornings at study hall means PT is pushed off until the evenings. As Navy, you’ll pt harder to stay in dive shape, but being in dive shape doesn’t stave off your first time you get “suit stupid,” and you’ve sweated so much that even your socks and jocks have salt stains. In late January. While trying to remember did that projo have a tiny little propeller or not. Is the one with the propeller the one with more kill-me features? Didn’t I just check for an anti-lift device? Fuck this thing is heavy. *tink* I hope he didn’t hear me graze the calipers when I measured it (where’s the ogive on this thing?), ‘cuz that’s a 16-point hit (the 16-point hits may fail you at school, but it’s because they kill you dead in real time). Shit you learned inside and out in Core 1 just ran out of your ears in that bomb suit helmet. It sucks.
The information comes at you fast. It’s like drinking water from a fire hose. Your study guides cannot, WILL NOT go home with you because they’re classified; hence study hall beginning around 0530. That’s the time to read, the time to compare notes, the time to go practice on the demilled and inert training aids out in the yard. It makes the brain hurt. You build camaraderie that way, not just with your Navy class, but all of your joint service peers.
If you want to go be an officer, fine. Knock yourself out. Just remember that once you get past LTj.g., your demo days are numbered. Get to LCDR, and the only thing you’re blowing up is the toilet after that late night, booze-fueled trip to Taco Bell after leaving the bar.
If you truly live and breathe it, go enlisted. You’ll do exponentially more demo that way. You’ll meet more experienced techs when you go TDY or deploy. You’ll pick their brains, acquire their knowledge, and use it to keep you and your men alive.
Once you hit CPO, if not PO1, and you still want to go the O route, do it. You’ll be a better leader of techs for it. The officer side is political, especially in the Navy. For it being a joint service school, it’s called NAVSCOLEOD for a reason. That means the Navy takes lead when approaching Congress and that gaggle of collar constellations at the Five Sided Rat Maze for funding and whatnot. Going straight O is also what gave us cocksuckers like that fucking herpatic assmaggot Tillotson and his campaign to eradicate “ISOTF.”
Take what I’ve said for what it’s worth. Hopefully it gives you some things to ponder.
RK (Class 06-360S)
Physically speaking, yes, the Navy will be the more physically challenging route, as you’ll have to complete dive school before you arrive at Elgin. Last I checked, underwater ordnance division was right at a month. Time it right, and that’s a lot of time out on a boat in the gulf during the summer; not a bad gig if you can get it.
Otherwise, your training will be the same as my training, except I graduated a year or so before WMD’s division stood up. Physically and mentally, it’s gonna suck. It’s not the kind of suck that you can just train up for, as if being the fittest MFSOB in the valley can pull it off for you. It’s meant to be a gut check. It’s testing how much heart you have, and you can’t train for that.
The early mornings at study hall means PT is pushed off until the evenings. As Navy, you’ll pt harder to stay in dive shape, but being in dive shape doesn’t stave off your first time you get “suit stupid,” and you’ve sweated so much that even your socks and jocks have salt stains. In late January. While trying to remember did that projo have a tiny little propeller or not. Is the one with the propeller the one with more kill-me features? Didn’t I just check for an anti-lift device? Fuck this thing is heavy. *tink* I hope he didn’t hear me graze the calipers when I measured it (where’s the ogive on this thing?), ‘cuz that’s a 16-point hit (the 16-point hits may fail you at school, but it’s because they kill you dead in real time). Shit you learned inside and out in Core 1 just ran out of your ears in that bomb suit helmet. It sucks.
The information comes at you fast. It’s like drinking water from a fire hose. Your study guides cannot, WILL NOT go home with you because they’re classified; hence study hall beginning around 0530. That’s the time to read, the time to compare notes, the time to go practice on the demilled and inert training aids out in the yard. It makes the brain hurt. You build camaraderie that way, not just with your Navy class, but all of your joint service peers.
If you want to go be an officer, fine. Knock yourself out. Just remember that once you get past LTj.g., your demo days are numbered. Get to LCDR, and the only thing you’re blowing up is the toilet after that late night, booze-fueled trip to Taco Bell after leaving the bar.
If you truly live and breathe it, go enlisted. You’ll do exponentially more demo that way. You’ll meet more experienced techs when you go TDY or deploy. You’ll pick their brains, acquire their knowledge, and use it to keep you and your men alive.
Once you hit CPO, if not PO1, and you still want to go the O route, do it. You’ll be a better leader of techs for it. The officer side is political, especially in the Navy. For it being a joint service school, it’s called NAVSCOLEOD for a reason. That means the Navy takes lead when approaching Congress and that gaggle of collar constellations at the Five Sided Rat Maze for funding and whatnot. Going straight O is also what gave us cocksuckers like that fucking herpatic assmaggot Tillotson and his campaign to eradicate “ISOTF.”
Take what I’ve said for what it’s worth. Hopefully it gives you some things to ponder.
RK (Class 06-360S)
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2012
- Messages
- 12,465
@racing_kitty -
Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you for sharing that.
You’re quite welcome
My favorite gendarme is correct. I know quite a few that have left the military to ply their wares as a city/state bomb jockey. You don’t go straight in unless your department is desperate. You’ll go to the academy, and do your time as a beat cop before they choose to invest the money in sending you to the FBI’s Hazardous Device School. Without that course, you’re not doing any civil EOD type work.
Grunt
Verified Military
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2010
- Messages
- 4,937
My agency is one of the few that allows people to enter into service as EOD without having to attend our academy and going straight into service as a Bomb Tech. We hired a 20 year Army EOD retiree and put him straight to work with us. We may be one of the few. He has been with us for 15 years now and still loving it. He had previously been to a POST Academy, but did not have to attend ours.
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policemedic
Verified SWAT
Interesting. FBI HRT has a similar program to recruit operators from SMUs, but even that program requires them to serve as Special Agents in a field office before going to HRT Selection.
When I first got out, West Palm PD was seriously looking for bomb jockeys. If you had just ETS’d, and been in the sandbox in the recent past, they would put you on their squad straight out of the academy. That was several years ago, though. I can guarantee that’s no longer the case.
End of hijack
End of hijack
Doesn’t the Navy have primacy on EOD matters? Like how the Army has primacy on airborne matters.I’ve been following this thread with some degree of interest. I’ve been out of the game for a little bit, but some things about the schoolhouse are timeless.
Physically speaking, yes, the Navy will be the more physically challenging route, as you’ll have to complete dive school before you arrive at Elgin. Last I checked, underwater ordnance division was right at a month. Time it right, and that’s a lot of time out on a boat in the gulf during the summer; not a bad gig if you can get it.
Otherwise, your training will be the same as my training, except I graduated a year or so before WMD’s division stood up. Physically and mentally, it’s gonna suck. It’s not the kind of suck that you can just train up for, as if being the fittest MFSOB in the valley can pull it off for you. It’s meant to be a gut check. It’s testing how much heart you have, and you can’t train for that.
The early mornings at study hall means PT is pushed off until the evenings. As Navy, you’ll pt harder to stay in dive shape, but being in dive shape doesn’t stave off your first time you get “suit stupid,” and you’ve sweated so much that even your socks and jocks have salt stains. In late January. While trying to remember did that projo have a tiny little propeller or not. Is the one with the propeller the one with more kill-me features? Didn’t I just check for an anti-lift device? Fuck this thing is heavy. *tink* I hope he didn’t hear me graze the calipers when I measured it (where’s the ogive on this thing?), ‘cuz that’s a 16-point hit (the 16-point hits may fail you at school, but it’s because they kill you dead in real time). Shit you learned inside and out in Core 1 just ran out of your ears in that bomb suit helmet. It sucks.
The information comes at you fast. It’s like drinking water from a fire hose. Your study guides cannot, WILL NOT go home with you because they’re classified; hence study hall beginning around 0530. That’s the time to read, the time to compare notes, the time to go practice on the demilled and inert training aids out in the yard. It makes the brain hurt. You build camaraderie that way, not just with your Navy class, but all of your joint service peers.
If you want to go be an officer, fine. Knock yourself out. Just remember that once you get past LTj.g., your demo days are numbered. Get to LCDR, and the only thing you’re blowing up is the toilet after that late night, booze-fueled trip to Taco Bell after leaving the bar.
If you truly live and breathe it, go enlisted. You’ll do exponentially more demo that way. You’ll meet more experienced techs when you go TDY or deploy. You’ll pick their brains, acquire their knowledge, and use it to keep you and your men alive.
Once you hit CPO, if not PO1, and you still want to go the O route, do it. You’ll be a better leader of techs for it. The officer side is political, especially in the Navy. For it being a joint service school, it’s called NAVSCOLEOD for a reason. That means the Navy takes lead when approaching Congress and that gaggle of collar constellations at the Five Sided Rat Maze for funding and whatnot. Going straight O is also what gave us cocksuckers like that fucking herpatic assmaggot Tillotson and his campaign to eradicate “ISOTF.”
Take what I’ve said for what it’s worth. Hopefully it gives you some things to ponder.
RK (Class 06-360S)
It appears that way. http://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodd/516062p.pdf
I think it’s the only service with unrestricted line EOD officers. I know all the EOD officers in the Marine Corps are limited duty officers.
They most certainly do. Guess I could have made that more clear in my post.
You heavily implied it but i wanted to confirm.
@racing_kitty
Thank you a ton for the first hand information. This forum has definitely changed my mind on going in as an officer. I will likely wait until after college, and if I'm still passionate about it I will enlist. If you don't mind, can I ask you more questions about your experience?
Thank you a ton for the first hand information. This forum has definitely changed my mind on going in as an officer. I will likely wait until after college, and if I'm still passionate about it I will enlist. If you don't mind, can I ask you more questions about your experience?
Feel free. I got out seven years ago, so my info may be a bit dated, but I’ll help where I can.
How does primacy work? Navy set SOPs and doctrine, that sort of thing?
Yes and they set training standards. The Navy also has primacy for military diving and the Army has primacy for parachuting. The Marine Corps has primacy for amphibious operations but we are putting in a bid for primacy of SPACE FORCE!
Air Force has dominance in chow hall SOP's.
