CAMP DAWSON AIR FORCE RESERVE STATION, W.Va. – Members of the New York Army National Guard’s 501st Ordnance Battalion, an explosive ordnance disposal, or EOD, headquarters, recently ran a training event for 142 Soldiers from four different states at Camp Dawson.
The Glenville, New York-based battalion designed the two-week exercise to create demanding environments to test the training of the EOD platoons from four different companies.
While the battalion has five EOD companies assigned to it and aligned for training, four are in three other states and Puerto Rico. Only the 1108th Ordnance Company shares the Glenville location with the 501st headquarters.
That makes it difficult to pull all the units together in one place for training, explained Maj. Alexandra Collier, the battalion executive officer.
Getting Soldiers from the four EOD companies all in one place is a special event, said the battalion’s Command Sgt. Major Micah Bowman.
“There’s synergy in having such a broad depth of experience,” Bowman said, noting that uniting the four EOD companies for the exercise brought together some of the most knowledgeable EOD personnel from the East Coast.
The 387th EOD Company from Massachusetts, the 430th EOD Company based in North Carolina and the 753rd EOD from West Virginia participated in the annual training from July 31 to Aug. 4.
The Puerto Rico-based company aligned for training with the 501st is the 1600th EOD Company.
Like many Army National Guard elements, training proficiency begins with individuals and sections before progressing to squads, platoons, companies and battalions, Bowman explained.
This annual training focused on platoon validations, Bowman said.
“We don’t have squads, we have EOD teams,” he said, “and our objective was to tackle platoon level tasks, employing teams in different training scenarios.”
An EOD platoon operates with eight to 11 Soldiers, divided into teams of three Soldiers.
The scenarios included an ammunition holding area disaster, where an attack led to secondary explosions and fires with scattered munitions.
A second training lane reflected EOD response to unexploded ordnance following a chemical agent attack. A third scenario involved securing an enemy weapon system for technical analysis, involving captured enemy vehicles with unexploded munitions around the site requiring EOD assessments for recovery, shipment and future intelligence analysis.
“They’re doing a real-world mission that has impacts,” Bowman said, and honing EOD proficiency comes from demanding and realistic training scenarios.
The battalion worked hard to ensure there were enough training aids to make the scenarios realistic, Bowman said.
Bowman led an effort to include actual vehicles recovered from battlefields in Ukraine as part of the training. Inert ordnance and vehicles were borrowed from Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.
Aberdeen Proving Grounds is the home of the Army’s 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosive (CBRNE) Command and other major EOD units.
Aberdeen loaned the 501st Russian wheeled and tracked vehicles, along with a variety of foreign munitions that most Army Guard EOD technicians would be unfamiliar with, Bowman said.
“We typically train on vehicles and weapons of the U.S. arsenal, contributing to the recovery of systems for battlefield recovery,” Bowman said.
“But here, we added complexity to the training by having Soldiers train for recovering a red [enemy] vehicle to turn over for analysis,” he added.
“It’s pretty novel for our Soldiers to walk into a scenario and see Russian equipment,” he said.
The logistics challenge of obtaining the units, coordinating with supporting elements such as the National Ground Intelligence Center for equipment and relocating training aids to West Virginia required a significant planning and coordination effort, Bowman said.
“There were so many different aspects of resourcing we hadn’t thought of,” he said, “especially for all the rolling stock and training aids.”
Supporting the 501st EOD’s effort were Soldiers assigned to the New York Army Guard’s 1427th Transportation Company and the 466th Area Support Medical Company. Both are based in Queensbury, New York.
“This was one of the best resourced events I’ve seen in the Army National Guard,” Bowman said.
The annual training period concluded with a change of command for the 501st Ordnance Battalion, with Maj. Kimberly McCarty taking command. McCarty, a veteran of the Afghan War and recipient of a Master Explosive Ordnance Disposal Badge, replaced Lt. Col. Justin Couts in a ceremony Aug. 9 in Glenville, New York.
“Everyone walked away with their objectives met,” Bowman said. “For our Soldiers, it was pretty euphoric at the end, with a real sense of accomplishment.”