You either hack it, or you don’t.
Becoming a member of the United States Air Force’s explosive ordnance disposal unit is a single-sum game. This is not high school football — sheer heart and want-to are not enough to make this team. Like other branches of the military, the Air Force reveres self-motivation and grit, and there are plenty of military career paths where a gutful of courage can lift a person through the ranks.
For explosive ordnance disposal work, simply having motivation alone can get an airman killed.
“For the Air Force, we go through military basic training for eight weeks,” said Staff Sgt. Anthony Pezzulli. “After that, we go to the explosive ordnance preliminary course. That is a two-month program over there. After that, we go to the Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal. We do about a year of training up there.”
Anthony Pezzulli
“Training” is a comfortable term for something that is anything but. True, necessary time is spent learning the ins and outs of explosives and how to dispose of them, but sprinkled amid all that are some of the most intense and demanding physical requirements in the entire Air Force. On its website, the USAF helpfully suggests that those interested in EOD should be able to complete 40 situps in two minutes, 40 pushups in two minutes and a 1.5 mile run in less than 11 minutes.
“I would say the hardest part of that training is learning to quickly gain all the information they put at you and then being able to apply it quickly,” Senior Airman Elijah Youngblood said. “You have to figure out what the bomb is, and you have to figure out what safeties apply to the bomb so you can get rid of it safely.”
What Youngblood is leaving out is that the process is very often handled while wearing ultrathick protective blast suits designed to protect the EOD technician in the event of a sudden explosion. Imagine the heaviest you have ever been bundled up, add to that, and throw in a long list of tools and gadgets that must be carried along at all times.
Elijah Youngblood
If it all sounds like too much, there is something else behind the training and the demands. While typically not the first thing that pops in the mind of the average civilian, the EOD unit is one of the USAF’s most public-facing jobs. Sure, there is the Hollywood version most civilians see when it comes to bombs and explosives — a high-pressure situation, the hero cuts a wire (and it is always the red one, except when it is not), and everyone is saved — but not every call to the EOD unit is steeped in drama. Imagine someone in a small Arkansas town going through a late grandfather’s wartime possessions and finding a grenade kept as a souvenir.
Those situations are sometimes handled by local authorities, but very often, a call gets made to Jacksonville. Therefore, EOD technicians must be in a constant state of readiness and must project USAF-style professionalism to the public at all times.
There are, to be sure, easier ways to make a career in the Air Force, but not everybody wants an easy job.
“What was eye-opening to me was to see the impact that we have, keeping the local populace safe,” Youngblood said. “I would say the biggest impact we have is our responsibility in taking care of explosive items.”
SEE THE FEATURE BELOW AND IN OUR JULY 2026 ISSUE OF AMP
READ ALSO: U.S. Air Force Honor Guard Embraces the Small Details
