Template for modern EOD

[cosmicfish]

Hey all,

I am updating some special ops templates I had, and realized that I never made a realistic template for EOD. I know that the US Navy EOD School has a 42 week (200 working days) EOD course with modules in Air, Nuclear, Improvised, and Underwater Ordnance - and apparently they have a shorter 134-day version (minus Underwater?) for non-naval personnel. It is supposed to be pretty intense, in line with the Special Forces Engineering and Weapons training courses, and is focused almost entirely on the explosives themselves - parachute, dive, and tactical training are handled in other courses. That having been said, students do get training in some other areas, including underwater search and nuclear physics. To my understanding, a fair amount of their training focuses on placing demolitions, so that they may better understand what they are up against.

I am trying to figure out what attribute levels and advantages to require, and what skills would be reasonable to include. I prefer to consider these templates school by school - that helps to ensure that everyone who goes to the Basic Airborne School has the same skills. I also prefer to consider only
"new-guy" levels of proficency when making templates - how experience has tempered the character is (I think) a very individual thing not well suited to a template. My templates are meant to reflect trained and combat-ready... but new.

My first stab is along the lines of:

IQ 12, 40pts
DX 12 (14 manual), 40+10pts

Will 14, 10pts
Perception 13, 5pts
Single-Minded or Unfazable (either), 5-15 pts

Electronics Repair (Comm) 11, 1pt
Electronics Repair (Sensors) 11, 1pt
Explosives (Demolition) 13, 4pts
Explosives (EOD) 15, 12pts
Explosives (Nuclear EOD) 14, 6pts
Explosives (Underwater Demolition) 14, 7pts
Mathematics (Applied) 10, 1pt
Physics (Nuclear) 10, 1pt
Search 13, 2pts
Set Trap (Explosives (Demolition)) 12, 2pts

This puts the minimum at 147pts, plus some other points in basic soldiering skills plus things like Parachuting, Swimming, SCUBA, etc. The point total is a little higher than I would like (37 points in 42 weeks of training) but I am loathe to reduce EOD and many skills are at or near minimums.

Does anyone have any suggestions or comments? I am loathe to add new skills, techniques, or specialities, but can do so if they are truly warranted.

[lexington]

I really, really doubt that typical EOD technicians are qualify for working with Nuclear weapons or have even a point in Physics (Nuclear). It just doesn't come up often enough.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by lexington

I really, really doubt that typical EOD technicians are qualify for working with Nuclear weapons or have even a point in Physics (Nuclear). It just doesn't come up often enough.

Bear in mind that I am not talking about an urban bomb squad, but military. Nuclear weapons disposal is listed as a major section of US Navy EOD training - they may not come across it very often (or ever), but they are trained in it and are expected to handle it if they do. I was also a little leary of including the Physics and Math, but they spend weeks reviewing some of the theory and more practical issues - it seemed worth a point.

[cosmicfish]

I am thinking I should also require Fit, ST 11, and HT 12 - they are expected to deploy with special ops, and have higher physical requirements than most infantry.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Bear in mind that I am not talking about an urban bomb squad, but military. Nuclear weapons disposal is listed as a major section of US Navy EOD training - they may not come across it very often (or ever), but they are trained in it and are expected to handle it if they do. I was also a little leary of including the Physics and Math, but they spend weeks reviewing some of the theory and more practical issues - it seemed worth a point.

One way of handling this is to give a Perk: May roll vs Default on Physics and Nuclear Physics for nuke related issues. So given "Takes extra time" worth up to +4 or +5, they'll likely be rolling either at IQ-2 or IQ-1 in many cases. Since these guys ain't dumb (IQ12), this will be a pretty high chance of success given time, but they'll not be solving Physics issues under pressure.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Bear in mind that I am not talking about an urban bomb squad, but military. Nuclear weapons disposal is listed as a major section of US Navy EOD training - they may not come across it very often (or ever), but they are trained in it and are expected to handle it if they do. I was also a little leary of including the Physics and Math, but they spend weeks reviewing some of the theory and more practical issues - it seemed worth a point.

I've worked with Navy EOD guys. There's no way they all have graduate level understanding of general Physics, much less Nuclear Physics.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I've worked with Navy EOD guys. There's no way they all have graduate level understanding of general Physics, much less Nuclear Physics.

I am talking about skill level 10 - hardly "graduate level". I suppose an alternate would be a perk allowing Physics (Nuclear) to default to their Nuclear EOD skill for related issues, or else to declare by fiat that Nuclear EOD includes a certain knowledge of basic nuclear physics.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I am talking about skill level 10 - hardly "graduate level".

They don't have the knowledge of Physics that 200 hours of study would give them. I only have a semester of college physics and I know more general science than those guys. They know about explosives.

I suppose an alternate would be a perk allowing Physics (Nuclear) to default to their Nuclear EOD skill for related issues, or else to declare by fiat that Nuclear EOD includes a certain knowledge of basic nuclear physics.

I'm not really sure how much they actually know about nuclear weapons. I imagine they know the handling procedures for the weapons themselves, I doubt they know all that much about nuclear reactions, or how they work. They couldn't build a nuke. I'd imagine their training involving nukes concentrates on a) physical security (how not to let the bomb into the wrong hands) b)intelligence security (who is allowed to know what) b) how to safely disarm the conventional explosive trigger, and c) how to safely handle radioactive material. Nuclear reactions only take place if the bomb detonates successfully, and if it detonates successfully it's too late for EOD.

[Wolf]

I spent my 3 weeks in airborne school rooming with a couple of guys who just got out of Navy EOD course work. While I agree that there is no way they have anything other than a very basic outline of Nuclear Physics at all, and nothing even nearing a undergraduate level of understanding in any "dynamic" manner, you must also understand from what they told me the school itself is based around some 85% attrition rate. The guys also told me that they started with a class of over 100, and had 18 left for graduation, and that's just EOD, not dive school, airborne, or any of their other training which can, in itself, weed out a small percentage of others due to physical demands alone.

Their website (http://www.eod.navy.mil/training.htm) lists the school as 42 weeks long and that just clears what they told me it was, but it's the most rigorous "mental" school in the military, meaning it requires you to do learning and studying, and not necessarily focused on willpower, or "stick-to-it-ive-ness.

The rest of this is conjecture based on my time in "special units" (nothing really more than time in the 82 Airborne Infantry, so I could very well be wrong) More likely in an active scenario what would happen would be a correspondence course or more that deal with understanding nukes better, this will most likely advance the nco to a leadership position in a unit specially designed for work on a nuke, the Officers involved in said unit would most likely be the ones who have a higher education involved with Physics, specializing with nukes and nuclear Physics. Their training would involve enough interaction with the higher educated personnel that I'm sure that because of operational tempo at the very least they will develop an intimate understanding of the parts of Physics that interact with their job. Though again this still will be significant amount less than your avg grad school graduate.

My 2 copper.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Wolf

Their website (http://www.eod.navy.mil/training.htm) lists the school as 42 weeks long and that just clears what they told me it was, but it's the most rigorous "mental" school in the military, meaning it requires you to do learning and studying, and not necessarily focused on willpower, or "stick-to-it-ive-ness.

Really? I'd guess linguistics or the actual navy nuke school is more rigorous. But then the only EoD guys I knew were Jarheads, and they knew their explosives but weren't necessarily the brightest enlisted guys I ever met. Not that they were dumb. Just my experience is the highest concentration of smart Jarheads were in other occfields.