AURORA, Colo. –
As leaders in the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) community, Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division (NSWC IHD) participated in the 2025 National Robot Rodeo (NRR) event in Aurora, Colorado, August 11-15 and were among military, public safety, Department of Defense (DoD) and industry stakeholders showcasing technologies in real-world operational scenarios to determine the best tools to put in the hands of EOD operators.
This year’s event saw 29 industry partners showcasing the latest in EOD technologies and hardware, along with U.S. military EOD, international EOD, public safety and law enforcement bomb disposal teams who put the technology through its paces in nine different operational scenarios.
“In my opinion, this year was probably the best event yet,” said NSWC IHD EOD Systems Division Director Mike Del Signore, who served as the command’s lead for the event. “Given that this is the ninth year of the event, I think the feedback that we've been giving industry is evident from year to year. For example, we've seen consistent upgrades being added to the quadruped robot dogs that directly relates to the feedback that we've given the companies developing those technologies, as well as some of the unmanned aerial platforms and the payloads that are being delivered on those systems.”
Throughout the year, Del Signore and his team met with representatives from other NRR vendors and participants to help design scenarios that best showcase their EOD technologies at the event. NSWC IHD’s role in NRR helps shape research and development efforts at the command. The data collected at the event from scenarios in radiation detection, improvised explosive device identification and clearance, automated threat recognition, robotic aiming and chemical detection will help identify future developments, requirements and capabilities fielded to the EOD community.
“In order for an end state user to normally get the types of technologies that are at [NRR], it already has to be delivered to them and then trained. So, this is one of the rare events where the end state user actually gets to talk to the engineer and the people developing the technologies early on,” NSWC IHD EOD Technology Assessment Technical Analyst Alex Micciche said. “It makes a world of difference.”
The DoD’s EOD Technology Center at NSWC IHD provides cradle-to-grave technology support and testing and evaluation of commercial off-the-shelf and developmental systems to protect the EOD warfighter. The event was hosted by the United States Bomb Technician Association and included other NRR supporters such as the Air Force Civil Engineer Center (AFCEC), the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency Office for Bombing Prevention, the United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
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.