Air Force Specialty Code 3E9 (Emergency Management) has been known By other names over the years. For example, when I was a kid, I remember they were called Disaster Preparedness. Interestingly, they are kind of like EOD in that they are part of Civil Engineering even though it isn’t a good fit and this is recognized with a special careerfield badge that reveals their true focus, bugs and gas. They are the CBRNE specialists of the USAF.
Specifically the careerfield, “Prepares, plans, trains, educates, and equips Air Force personnel to respond to, maintain mission capability, and recover from the full spectrum of physical threat events including major accidents, natural disasters, weapons of mass destruction, and wartime chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosive (CBRNE) attacks. Provides technical expertise to commanders during full spectrum threat response operations. Performs detection, monitoring, warning, and reporting of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN) events.”
If you were in the Air Force prior to the current conflict you were probably pretty familiar with them. We regularly trained in MOPP 4 conditions (even in SOF) and Ability to Survive and Operate (ATSO) was an important part of Operational Readiness Inspections. Maybe it was all institutional momentum from the Cold War, but it was drilled into Airmen enough that they could do it.
Now, NRA’s Life of Duty has prepared a report focusing on this small community of specialists and why they are more relevant now than ever. Here is a teaser.
Tags: Life of Duty, NRA, NRA Life of Duty
I get that your just trying to create some attention for this unknown career field, but please don’t compare them to AF EOD. EOD has made far too many sacrifices to be used to gain attention, or compared to CE Readiness or any other AFSC for that matter. AF EOD have been trained for actually solving CBRNE situations. There is a world of difference in what readiness is supposed to be able to do, and what EOD actually does on a daily basis. I mean no disrespect, but I dont think the EOD operator community would appreciate the comparison.
RIF…”Interestingly, they are kind of like EOD in that they are part of Civil Engineering even though it isn’t a good fit” I don’t see how that would upset anyone in EOD. Facts is facts.
At this point who gives a shit about EOD. “oh, we’re upset becuase you mentioned us.” Thank God we dont actually need these CBRNE guys.
CE is actually the perfect fit for EM. All it takes to figure that out is looking at the construct of the EOC (Emergency Operations Center). EM plays a major role in the recovery of base assets in a BRAAT scenario. The EOC manager position is held by a Civil Engineer officer (usually an EM troop if it isn’t the BCE) with a small cadre of EM folks supplying info to the EOCM. Since EM runs exclusively on the NIMS construct and the base Emergency Manager is the base focal point for NIMS I don’t think there is any other place in the AF for EM. SSD, I don’t know if you’re active duty AF or not, but if you get the opportunity to sit in the EOC during an ORI or ORE, you’ll quickly see why EM is in CE.
CE’s primary function in a wartime environment is recovery of the base/airfield to resume normal operations. EM’s primary function in a wartime environment is to assist CE in the recovery of the base/airfield after a chemical attack so they can resume operations. Chem zone establishment, split MOPPs, CCAs and chemical defense education is supposed to be their bread and butter. Never will you see an EM troop saving the day by rendering safe a CBRNE WMD or IED. It’s not their mission set. It’s only an EOD mission set in a deployed environment. FBI has jurisdiction over all CONUS WMD responses involving CBRN materials. So if you see an EM troop walking down range on a CONUS WMD, someone is about to lose their job, if not their life.
EM plays an advisory role and is a back pocket asset in all but a very few emergency responses. I wouldn’t be surprised that if in the next few years their mission set is reduced to training and advising exclusively within the NIMS construct. BioEnvironmental can detect and monitor radiological hazards, the fire department can detect and monitor TIC/TIM and rad hazards and EOD can do both of the above plus chemical and biological hazards.
And yes, EOD guys are all assholes with big egos because we have to be. Some are just bigger assholes than others.
Great feedback. It’s refreshing to see some professionalism here. I am retired AF but never served in traditional units with a Wing structure.
I don’t know the exact timeline of their name changes, but if you look at the history of it you can see the evolution in their mission. Disaster Preparedness, Readiness and now Emergency Management. The name alone implies a support function to the base emergency response force whether it be a tornado, flood, HAZMAT incident or WMD. It’s evolved from peacetime disaster response SME’s and overall peacetime/wartime skills training to a mangement function. They also don’t function like a traditional Army Technical Escort Unit with a primary mission set of attacking and mitigating a problem. There’s more of a focus on supporting initial responders with information to aid in the development of a response plan (plume tracking/chem identification) and then supporting those responders through personnel decontamination and maybe even site remediation following incident termination.
It would be a smart move on the rest of the EOD guys on here to really learn what each supporting organization has to offer during an emergency response, so you know what additional tools are available to you. I’m not a fan of EM, but I know what I can and cannot ask them to do for me. Same goes with BioEnvironmental. I don’t like them either, but they can alleviate some of my workload so I can concentrate on solving the problem from a strictly EOD standpoint. My two cents…
Well put. Good info
Facts is facts. It is upsetting to EOD guys. Have you lost any friends in EM? I didn’t think so.
Just what did I say that upset EOD? I mean you did read the article right?
I knew this was gonna happen as soon as I started reading the article. SSD, don’t take this the wrong way, but EOD guys are gonna get pissy when you compare them to ANYONE in ANY WAY. This is because we’re arrogant elitest assholes. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
I understand what your point was and I wasn’t offended. But if you know the 3E9 career field like we do, you’d be completely underwhelmed buy what they actually do. Which isn’t much besides getting in EOD’s way and pushing paper.
FYI: USAF EOD are now officially 25% of ALL AF KIA and 1/3 of all AF WIA. And we make up only .046% of the force. Maybe that’s why we’re cranky.
I knew this was gonna happen as soon as I started reading the article. SSD, don’t take this the wrong way, but EOD guys are gonna get pissy when you compare them to ANYONE in ANY WAY. This is because we’re arrogant elitest assholes. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
I understand what your point was and I wasn’t offended. But if you know the 3E9 career field like we do, you’d be completely underwhelmed by what they actually do. Which isn’t much besides getting in EOD’s way and pushing paper.
FYI: USAF EOD are now officially 25% of ALL AF KIA and 1/3 of all AF WIA. And we make up only .046% of the force. Maybe that’s why we’re cranky.
EOD actually makes up 0.023 % of the total force and we account for 26% of the Air Forces’ KIA’s. 10% of our career field is a Purple Heart recipient. readiness is a bunch of retards. We kicked a guy out of our shop and sent his ass to readiness to work because that’s where all the retards go. What has readiness or EM or whatever they’re called this week ever done? The readiness badge is just like every other stupid AFSC badge. It has no meaning and it’s given just because. The Air Force came up with this whole AFSC badge thing so everyone could feel “special”. EOD was the AFSC in the Air Force to have an occupational badge. EOD is the only career field that wears the same occupational badge across all four branches of the Military. What on an Army Post or Navy base and ask anyone if they recognize your stupid readiness badge. I guarantee they won’t. EOD is the only career field in the Military with it’s own holiday designated by congress. What has readiness done again? Don’t ever compare readiness to EOD, that’s like calling a Navy Seal a boy scout. Now I’m going to go to work tomorrow, look for a readiness puke, and punch them in the face.
And YES, I am an “elitest asshole” and I’m damn proud of it. My EOD brother’s and sister’s have earned that title.
Hey USAF EOD guys. You are starting to look like a bunch of attention whores. This article isn’t about you. I ran article awhile back on your bid for a beret. That was about you. This isn’t. Get over it.
You are correct. That is why whenever you see an article about EOD, you’ll never see mention of readiness because we’re better than readiness. This article wouldn’t anger us if it didn’t mention us. Do something and stop trying to be us.
No wonder you guys have such a crappy reputation. You come on here and run your mouth giving everyone the impression that Air Force EOD is a bunch of prima donas. I hope someone you work with takes you aside and slaps some sense into you. stop making you and yours look bad.
Seewhatimean? No matter what happens, we become the bad guy. We express our opinion, and suddenly we’re “attention whores”. We speak up for ourselves, and we’re “running our mouths”.
And we do have a crappy reputation amongst Pogue’s like Wtf? who don’t understand what they’re talking about. I’m pretty sure the guys on the line who we’re dying to protect like us ok. And that’s all that matters. We’re assholes and “prima donna’s” to you because we don’t give a fuck about you.
Maybe you can slap some sense into yourself?
Much of a victim complex? I’d say the only thing you guys are a victim of is bad judgement.
So you’re saying AF EOD Techs all die because of bad judgement? You need to check yourself.
No, I’d say “The Dude” is pointing out that the “we are all victims” song and dance isn’t going to play well and that the decision to play it that way was a poor one. You are coming off as bad guys because you are dishonoring yourselves.
There’s very plain English being written here but I notice a trend amongst the guys claiming to be EOD on this thread. You have some serious reading comprehension issues.
It’s Pree-muh don-uhs…It’s an EOD thing, you wouldn’t understand. So I brought this story up in our morning meeting today and we all decided to list all the things that readiness has done in Iraq and Afghanistan and we came up with nothing. Then we tried to think of all the times that we saw readiness outside the wire and came up with zero. Then we tried to think of all the times that we had recieved any type of training from readiness that proved usefull on any of our deployments and once again, nothing. Then we tried to figure out exactly what it is that readiness does besides issue out chem suits and gas masks and we couldn’t think of anything again. I can’t even say that readiness schedules us for anything like weapons qualification or anything because they don’t! They use to but they screwed that up too so now we have our training guy do it. Readiness = retards.
I think you guys are retards and I don’t even know what readiness is. You have to be pretty small people to belittle someone else’s job. Professionals don’t do that. Now I see why you guys didn’t get that beret you were begging for. Your heads are too big.
What losers.
wow, did you bother sharing with your Superintendent your coolguy comments? I’m sure he’s impressed. I see a serious maturity problem here.
I personally think the readiness badge is very fitting for the career field. A hexagon shaped vagina and a pair of ovaries. MEO, here I come!!!
Nothing like making a whole careerfield look bad. You know what the problem with this website is? It lets shitbirds like you post things with a degree of anonymity. Too bad the owner doesn’t post your email and IP addresses so everyone would know who you are.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Aww. The dude is angry. It must be shark week.
EOD has a WHOLE DAY as a holiday? Holy shit. Ever heard of National Police Week?
Yeah, that’s for the POLICE! The Air Force doesn’t have Police, we have mall security guards.
Endless hours guarding the flightline does not deserve a holiday. Do SecFor credentials get you a waiver from an acreddited police academy? Answer is NO.
Well, next time I need help getting my cat out of my tree, I’ll be sure to call you eomFD.
Sorry brother, I only handle real emergencies.
Actually, it’s just come to my attention that all of the posters claiming to be EOD are the same person, using the same IP and are not actually EOD. Feel free to ignore this guy. He’s just a poseur.
This got way off point. There is no need to be disrespectful towards other career fields. Everyone has their part. I love doing my job but that’s easy. Some people don’t have glorious “hero” work but the are content doing their regular job the best they can.
This started because the writer of the article had no idea that there is bad blood between EOD and most readiness units. It was an honest mistake and I’m sure they know that now.
That isn’t going to fix some of the rude and unprofessional comments made here. I think everyone just needs to cool off.
Bri-Man, you are right, and I do apologize for my rude comments and for my immaturity in this forum. However, I do find it offensive when any Air Force Career field compares themselves to EOD. I’m very passionate about my career field and the sacrifices that my brothers and sisters have made. I say “sacrifices that my brothers and sisters have made†because though I have a few combat deployments, I do not feel that I’ve sacrificed nearly as much as many of them have. SSD said it right early on when he stated, “facts are factsâ€. This is true. I’ve already given a few facts and figures and I assure you that anyone can investigate these and find them to be true. Here are some more facts, the IED is the number one weapon used against all coalition forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. EOD is the only weapon used to defeat that IED. These two wars have given us a lot of publicity (some good, some bad), but in all reality, it is an EOD war. The EOD career field is doing great things, which probably explains why people retrain into EOD from career fields like readiness and security forces and don’t get me wrong, most of those retrainees have become excellent EOD techs. However, you will never find an ex-EOD tech that retrained into readiness or security forces. I hope that the author of this article realizes how that little comment that might seem trivial could get tempers flaring and again I apologize for my rude comments. But there is no career field in the Air Force that “is like EODâ€.
And for the record, ElitestAsshole is hilarious!