Across the country, bomb squads face potential threats daily. Raven’s Challenge brings those squads together to help them prepare for the worst.

“Raven’s Challenge is an inter-operability exercise between public safety bomb technicians and the military EOD community,” said Brice McCracken, special agent in charge for the National Center for Explosives Training and Research (NCETR), an entity within the ATF.

Bomb technicians from across the world are gathering at the New York State Preparedness Center in upstate New York. They went through different exercises on countering the threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

“It’s important that our teams are able to come out in an environment like Raven’s Challenge and practice in a more live-fire scenario, where they can actually do the techniques that they would normally do on an actual call," McCracken said. "They're actually shooting shots, as opposed to just simulating and saying, 'I took this shot.'"

The exercises include addressing drones as a potential threat, and protecting houses and schools.

“So, we’ve got 24 different training lanes this time. The highlights this year are focusing on critical infrastructure, different pipelines or electrical facilities,” McCracken said.

Raven’s Challenge travels across the country to bring together as many bomb technicians as it can. With every meeting, comes growth.

"Everybody's got different experiences, a diversity of experiences during the course of their careers. So, bringing all that knowledge together and allowing the participants to kind of figure out the best way to handle a certain scenario," McCracken explained.

It's about ensuring the safety of all.

"What we're doing is giving them the realism and training to prepare them for events that may happen in the future," McCracken said. "But it's all about, at the end of the day, protecting the public and protecting our military and our public safety bomb technicians as they carry out their mission as well.