Quantico, Virginia –
U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Expeditionary Exploitation Unit One (EXU-1) alongside Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division (NSWC IHD) EOD Department and the U.S. Marine Corps 3d Littoral Logistics Battalion (LLB) EOD conducted a Joint Disassembly and Exploitation Training at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown and U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, August 7-18.
This was EXU-1 Advanced Exploitation Company (AXC) and U.S. Marine Corps 3d LLB EOD’s third iteration of the disassembly and exploitation training on Marine Corps Base Quantico. The exercise aimed to increase the Navy and Marine’s proficiency in disassembly and exploitation of ordnance, while improving interoperability among Technical Exploitation Platoon (TXP), AXC, and Marine Corps EOD.
“EXU-1 continues to directly align Unit of Action capability and capacity to Operation Plan intent,” said EXU-1 AXC Leading Chief Petty Officer Devon Bryan, who coordinated the exercise. “EXU-1’s AXC jointly developed, planned and executed the 14-day training event focusing on High Energy Radiography, ordnance disassembly and exploitation with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Mission Partner Marine Corps 3d LLB EOD.”
While at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, EXU-1 AXC and TXP conducted level one technical exploitation and High Energy Radiography of two underwater ordnance items, and subsequently packaged and shipped them to Marine Corps Base Quantico for disassembly and inerting. The following week in Quantico, EXU-1 and U.S. Marine Corps 3d LLB collaborated with U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico EOD Detachment for utilization of demolition ranges and facilities to conduct the training.
“The goal of the exercise is to refine our standard operating procedures as a Navy-Marine Corps team: what the information flow looks like between the Navy and Marine Corps and the higher intelligence echelon agencies or communities. As we do this in more contested space, in competition or in different theatres, we get the idea of what it may look like in a potential real-world scenario,” said U.S. Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jordan Torcello. “Ideally we could do this expeditiously anywhere in the world.”
The JDET served as continued proof of concept for Navy and Marine Corps EOD interoperability when conducting expeditious exploitation.
“Ideally, we would like to communicate and inform decision makers in the Navy that they have this capability, that if somewhere in the world they find ordnance that they do not know how it works, they know that we are a tool in their toolbox and are able to satisfy requirements.” Torcello said.
EXU-1 is an operationally deployable Type II, Echelon V command aligned under NSWC IHD. The unit hosts a variety of platoons designed to collect, process, exploit and analyze conventional and improvised threats in support of Fleet and Joint commanders, the Intelligence Community, interagency, allied and partner nations to prevent technical surprise, develop countermeasures and enable attribution. EXU-1 was commissioned in June 2018 as an Echelon V afloat command and reports to NSWC IHD Commanding Officer Capt. Steve Duba, who serves as the immediate superior in command to EXU-1.
NSWC IHD — a field activity of the Naval Sea Systems Command and part of the Navy’s Science and Engineering Establishment — is the leader in ordnance, energetics, and EOD solutions. The Division focuses on energetics research, development, testing, evaluation, in-service support, manufacturing and disposal; and provides warfighters solutions to detect, locate, access, identify, render safe, recover, exploit and dispose of explosive ordnance threats.
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