SATTAHIP DISTRICT, Thailand — Just like in the movies, sometimes it really does come down to cutting the blue wire or the red wire.

But when they have a choice, say members of the Navy’s Guam-based Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 5, they prefer to blow up explosives and other dangerous objects from a distance.

On Monday, the team shared its expertise with its Royal Thai Navy explosive technician counterparts as part of Cobra Gold 2005.

Some of the EOD team’s equipment is cutting edge; some is available at your local convenience store and understood by a good high school science student.

For example, take the humble bottle of water.

An EOD technician can use it to defeat an improvised explosive device like some of those used in Iraq.

“Water is focused and compressed, and when it comes out of the tube it hits like a sledgehammer,” said Chief Petty Officer David Prasek.

Before they broke out the fuse-laden water bottles for the demonstration, Prasek and his team pulled out a covered shoebox and ran it through a mobile X-ray unit.

Once they determined it was a bomb, they set up the controlled explosion.

Some of the technology and techniques used to destroy the bomb are classified, they said. But basically, here is what happens:

EOD sailors fire a clay slug into the bomb, while detonating the water bottle next to it using a fuse and several feet of wire. The water strikes the bomb with enough force to blow pieces of it several yards backward.

EOD sailors then can follow the debris trail to gain information on the bomb’s components.

The mobile team’s EOD skills have served them over the world, including in Persian Gulf nations and even during the tsunami aftermath, Prasek said.

“No one really knew what it was we did a couple of years ago,” he said, but now that improvised explosive devices have been in the news from Iraq for so many months, EOD has gained some recognition.

The Thai technicians were eager to learn from that experience Monday. Although the Thai and U.S. forces get together every year, each time they learn something new, said Royal Thai Navy Lt. j.g. Somkuan Sungthong through an interpreter.

“The general EOD concept is the same but the equipment is a little different,” Sungthong said. “They have equipment that we don’t have and that we’ve never seen before.”