HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- From Sept. 8 to Sept. 19, 2025, four Airmen with the 419th Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal Flight integrated with EOD teams from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland for exercise MiniGATOR 2025, held near Bechyně, Czech Republic.
Training opportunities like MiniGATOR 2025 allow junior enlisted Airmen to gain hands-on experience and more senior members to share their knowledge with Airmen and allied partners
Junior enlisted Airmen participated as team members and team leaders alongside their allied counterparts. The teams navigated difficult terrain, swept for mines and unexploded ordnance, and worked together to ensure each mission’s success under the watchful eyes of senior EOD experts.
Staff Sgt. Alec Dyer, 419th Civil Engineer Squadron EOD technician worked within a Slovak Military Forces EOD team. Dyer cross trained into the career field and only recently earned his 5-level as an EOD technician. The allied team brought decades of combined experience working with explosives in central Europe.
“It’s really interesting to see how they do things and to learn from them,” said Dyer. “Especially in a career field like this, any little bit of knowledge you gain could save lives.”
Each new scenario, whether in training or in real-life situations, is like a complex puzzle that an EOD technician must solve. To work through those puzzles and successfully complete their missions, technicians across the career field are encouraged to share their experiences and the tools that they have used with each other.
As the teams got to know each other over the two weeks, the Airmen compared and practiced tools, tactics, and techniques with their allied team members, sharing their own expertise in return.
Another 419th Reservist who attended the exercise, Master Sgt. Christopher Key, 419th Civil Engineer Squadron EOD technician, brought years of experience as an EOD technician in multiple branches of the military to the exercise.
Rather than integrating into a team, Key designed missions for the attending EOD teams and observed their performance as they navigated the challenges he had designed for them.
After each training iteration, Key and allied experts debriefed the EOD teams, analyzing their performance and identifying weaknesses or mistakes in their processes. In this way, team members learned from both the practical hands-on experience and the expertise of trainers like Key.
The unfamiliar terrain and environment provided opportunities for training that would not have been available at home station, and allied nation support, including manpower and infrastructure, allowed for more intensive training than would normally be possible.
“We usually train in a desert environment, but here we are in the forest. We usually train for air ordnance, but here we are training for land-based explosives,” Key said. “We really believe in the value of this exercise for our Airmen and our allies.”
This is the second year that the 419th has sent a team of Airmen to MiniGATOR as part of their annual tour training. Despite spending only one weekend a month and two weeks a year in military status, Reserve Airmen maintain the same level of readiness and lethality as their active-duty counterparts. 419th EOD technicians are called to serve across the globe during deployments but also assist and supplement local law enforcement when needed.