15 minute read
The Nation’s Problem Solvers: The U.S. Army Engineer Regiment and Corps of Engineers
from America's Engineers: The People, Programs, and Projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers '24-'25
BY CRAIG COLLINS, AMERICA'S ENGINEERS
In hindsight – considering the remarkable range of expertise found in the U.S. Army Engineer Regiment and the Corps of Engineers today – the problems confronted 250 years ago by the Army’s first Chief Engineer, Col. Richard Gridley, might seem relatively simple. To defend against British troops advancing on Bunker Hill, north of Boston, Gridley laid out a redoubt and breastworks, and supervised their hurried construction. A true Engineer Soldier, he stayed and fought in the ensuing battle, and was wounded and carried from the field.
The job of the Army’s Engineer Soldiers didn’t get easier. Throughout the War of Independence, Engineers scouted for routes and crossing sites, sited and oversaw camp construction, and built fortifications. ”Sappers” were key to the successful siege of British defenses and the ultimate surrender of Lord Cornwallis’ Army at Yorktown in 1781. The Engineer Regiment was created, first and foremost, to solve a young nation’s greatest military problems.
There was a growing recognition that the Army and the nation needed well trained professional officers and engineers. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation that established the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point. It was the first engineering school in the United States. The curriculum emphasized military and civil engineering, along with history, tactics, and other subjects. USMA reported to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers until after the Civil War.
The defense of the ports of New York and Baltimore during the War of 1812 reinforced that the military’s problems and the nation’s problems were not separate concerns. British blockades and disruptions demonstrated a critical need for a more mature and reliable transportation network, to move goods and troops efficiently. Better interior transport would both strengthen national defense and protect the westward expansion of settlement and commerce.
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Between conflicts, Army Engineers planned and built coastal fortifications; mapped the frontier; transformed the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers into navigable waterways; and laid out trails, roads, canals, and railroad routes. As a natural consequence of this work, the Chief of Engineers became – and USACE remains –responsible for maintaining navigable U.S. waterways and ports. During wartime, Army Engineers conducted reconnaissance, built defensive positions, breached obstacles, opened roads and railroads, installed float and fixed bridging, constructed needed facilities, and completed many other combat, general, and geospatial engineering missions for the U.S. military at home and abroad.
Many sophisticated solutions employed by today’s Corps of Engineers can be traced through history to problems confronted by the Army. In March 1864, for example, when low flows on Louisiana’s Red River stranded ten Union warships deep in Confederate territory, Lt. Col. Joseph Bailey, senior engineer for the Union Army’s Nineteen (XIX) Corps – and a former Wisconsin lumberman who learned to float logs downstream in similar circumstances –devised a solution. He built a strategically-placed dam on the river, raising the water level and funneling the river’s weak flow into a sluiceway that the warships rode over the rapids to safer waters.
Today, USACE owns and operates more than 600 dams, and its Civil Works program is home to the leading federal experts in building, maintaining, and operating dams. It’s something Col. Jesse Curry, director of the U.S. Army Office of the Chief of Engineers (OCE), likes to point out to anyone who will listen: “The Engineer Regiment began as the nation’s premier problem solvers, and has remained there to solve the nation’s toughest problems throughout our entire history. It’s in our DNA.”
Skills You Won’t Find Anywhere Else
For 250 years, the Corps of Engineers has been an Army organization, led by the Chiefof Engineers who is “chief of branch” for more than 84,000 Active, National Guard, and Reserve personnel assigned to Army Engineer units, often referred to as the Engineer Regiment. The chief also is the Army Staff Engineer and commanding general for USACE, a direct reporting unit to Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA). Until 1979, when Headquarters USACE was established, the Corps of Engineers divisions, districts and other field organizations were HQDA field operating activities under the Office of the Chief of Engineers. Most of the 40,000 USACE military and civilian personnel are now attached one of the Corps’ nine divisions and 46 districts or supporting centers and laboratories. The two organizations share a common heritage and still report to the Chief of Engineers. They are mutually supporting, and the blend of military and civilian expertise is combined and deployed to optimize overall effectiveness.
Today, USACE owns and operates more than 600 dams, and its Civil Works program is home to the leading federal experts in building, maintaining, and operating dams.
The Commandant of the U.S. Army Engineer School (USAES) provides doctrine, organizational, training, leader development, equipment prioritization, and personnel development for units of the Engineer Regiment. The Engineer School, along with the Military Police and Chemical Schools, is part of the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence, headquartered at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Engineer Soldiers and leaders are trained at USAES before reporting to units across the United States and around the world, assigned to Army Forces Command, theater armies, and other commands. The only battalion directly under USACE command is the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power), which provides medium voltage power to military units and in support of civil authorities in time of need.
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The role of the Chief of Engineers, Curry explained, has evolved far beyond Gen. George Washington’s original assignment. “Across all the services, he is the senior uniformed engineer, and plays key roles within joint planning and inter-service coordination,” he said. This includes oversight of joint construction planning tools, engineer education, and engineer capability development. “The chief also has responsibilities within the Army’s nuclear program and carries the title of “Topographer of the Army.” Historically, as different problems have arisen for the nation, many responsibilities were assigned to the Chief of Engineers and continue to this day.”
The chief also, explained Jim Shumway, OCE deputy director, oversees force management, force development and other functions, working very closely with the USAES Commandant, who is the force development proponent for Training and Doctrine Command and the proponent for engineer personnel training and leader development. OCE helps the Chief of Engineers execute his Army staff roles and his chief of branch roles, working very closely with the U.S. Army Engineer School and the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence.”
The range of expertise contained within the Engineer Regiment today – some of it literally found nowhere else in the world –remains focused on supporting the armed forces. Engineer units provide mobility, maneuverability, and protection to U.S. armed forces, to apply and project combat power to seize and hold operational initiative, and to maintain a position of relative advantage. Engineer capabilities help partners and allies to do the same, while denying the enemy. “The Army has the depth and the breadth to provide a host of different capabilities that the other services are not equipped, organized, trained, or ready to do,” Shumway said.
The list of capabilities provided by combat engineers is long, including such duties as breaching obstacles, building fixed and floating bridges, establishing obstacles and defensive positions, placing and detonating explosives, clearing routes – and fighting as infantry when required. Engineer units directly supporting maneuver battalions and brigade combat teams (BCTs) include combat engineer companies in armored, light infantry, airborne, and Stryker variants, plus heavy and light engineer construction companies. Multi-role bridge units and companies that clear routes and areas of explosive hazards support BCTs, divisions, and corps. Other units operating at corps, theater, and strategic port echelons include additional construction units, utilities, facilities engineering, firefighting, asphalt, concrete, quarry, and well-drilling detachments. Many of these specialized technical units are resident in the Army Reserve and National Guard, which provides about 75% of Army Engineer units. The Active Army also includes engineer diving and mine/explosive hazard-detecting dog detachments.
Curry further describes the multiple types of “connective tissue” between USACE and Engineer leaders and units serving in the operational force. USACE planners are located within regional combatant commands or Army service component commands – for example, in the European and Pacific theaters. These commands are often supported by the Corps’ Field Force Engineering (FFE) program, which deploys expeditionary teams of military and civilian specialists. These Forward Engineer Support Teams (FESTs) enable warfighters by bringing engineering expertise and reachback capabilities to remote contingency locations. In 2008, Curry was assigned leadership of a FEST. “I took a team – myself and six of our best civilian engineers – to Iraq, and we provided engineering services to a Task Force responsible for building detention facilities throughout the country.”
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The largest of the six FFE teams is the Forward Engineer Support Team-Main (FEST-M), which averages about 36-38 personnel with expertise in electrical, mechanical, civil, and environmental engineering, as well as in logistics, contracting, and resource management. Forward Engineer Support Teams-Advance (FEST-A) provide engineering planning/design support and limited infrastructure assessment. Other FFE components provide expertise in real estate, contracting, environmental support, logistics support, and base camp development.
The world is changing so quickly. And innovation is moving so fast that our challenge as an Army, and an Engineer Regiment, is to lead that innovation, rather than simply catch up to it. …
–Col. Jesse Curry, director of the U.S. Army Office of the Chief of Engineers (OCE)
These and other activities are supported by a range of stateside experts. Army Geospatial Planning Cells and support teams work closely with the Army Geospatial Center, a USACE subordinate command, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., to acquire and process the digital data to support terrain analysis, and use that data to support mission planning and execution.
“A host of different reachback capabilities go through the USACE Reachback Operations Center, the UROC, in Vicksburg, Mississippi,” said Shumway. The UROC connects deployed military engineers and FFE teams with experts in geotechnical, environmental, and structural engineering, plus many other capabilities to support warfighters. Reconnaissance, anywhere in the world, can be supported through UROC delivered tele-engineering capabilities. The Joint Construction Management System (JCMS) provides more than 950 standardized designs and aids in site selection and base master planning. “You have all these different capabilities that USACE can provide in support of military units that are working forward,” Shumway said. “Those capabilities can be flexed forward in support of tactical commanders and their units.”
Today’s – and Tomorrow’s – Army Transformation
The U.S. Army is employing a concept of Continuous Transformation – mandated, said Curry, by the shifting geopolitical landscape of the 21st century. “The world is changing so quickly,” he said. “And innovation is moving so fast that our challenge as an Army and an Engineer Regiment, is to lead that innovation, rather than simply try to catch up to it. Army Futures Command and many supporting organizations are doing amazing work to enable the Army to lead this transformation.”
The modular Army, suited to asymmetrical warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, must rapidly transform into a force ready for peer-to-peer engagement in an increasingly dynamic and high-tech battlespace. In the near term, in line with Army Senior Leaders “Transforming in Contact” (TiC) initiative, Army engineers are helping deployed troops test new equipment – mainly off-the-shelf gear and technology – that could enable units to be more responsive to the rapid changes shaping today’s battlefields. The goal of TiC is to create units that are lethal, survivable, tactically mobile, and strategically deployable, and the Army hopes to use feedback from units to determine what new capabilities and configurations their forces will need.
Over the mid- to long term, a dynamic peer-to-peer environment will require the Engineer Regiment to restructure how it is integrated with the Army’s fighting units to multiply the combat capabilities that enable them to dominate on the battlefield, said Curry. In adapting to the needs of the Global War on Terror, the regiment concentrated much of its active-duty capability at Brigade Combat Team (BCT) level, to support rapid expeditionary warfighting and counter-insurgency. What’s happening now, said Curry, is a concentration of engineer units at division level, while still providing the necessary close support to the BCTs. There is a reduction of active-duty battalions and companies, which further increases the reliance on engineer units in the Army Reserve and National Guard.
“We’re still focused on providing support to Brigade Combat Teams,” said Shumway. “However, in large-scale combat operations, the division is the unit of action. This restructuring is providing the division commander and his staff the ability to reinforce the main effort and move enablers around to a greater extent than if the Brigade Engineer Battalions are embedded in the BCTs.”
The “TiC” initiative’s focus on cutting edge, off-the-shelf technology is aimed at optimizing the effectiveness of forward elements while holding down costs. “A popular phrase in innovation development circles is ‘human-machine integration,’” said Curry. “How do we make use of the newest technologies being developed today by private industry and commercial developers, while extending our imagination for what could be or needs to be developed in the future? How do we build our formations to receive and leverage future technologies to maximum effect, to give us that advantage on the battlefield and protect our most valuable resource, our troops?”
A transformation in contact can keep Soldiers out of the line of direct fire by using robotic and autonomous systems to help breach contested areas, river crossings, or other dangerous situations.
A top priority in the dynamic future battlespace is force protection. It’s always been dangerous for a Soldier in the breach, of course – but Shumway believes it is even more so today. “As we’re seeing in Ukraine, the proliferation of small unmanned aerial systems and loitering munitions is added to other direct and indirect fire weapons that engage personnel while they’re in the breach. Both Ukrainians and Russians have taken a lot of casualties as they conducted breaching operations through dense obstacles.”
Robotic and autonomous systems can help breach obstacles, cross contested areas, conduct river crossings, or perform other dangerous missions. “If we can keep Engineer Soldiers out of those particular environments, we can reduce our casualties,” Shumway said. “Another aspect of human-machine integration is increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of our formations by enabling, for example, a construction equipment operator to control multiple pieces of equipment through automation. If we can leverage some of those capabilities . . . we can reduce risk to our forces, be more efficient and effective on the battlefield, and are better able to support our forces in contact.”
It’s a future fraught with uncertainty, but Curry isn’t sweating it. “The Engineer Regiment is strong and has a bright future,” he said. “The things we’re doing, even though change is hard, are absolutely aligned with Army priorities and efforts to defend our nation today, tomorrow, and years from now. I’m proud and excited for the future of our force.” AE
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