416th THEATER ENGINEER COMMAND

Modernizing tomorrow’s Reserve engineers today

BY SGT. 1st CLASS JASON R. PROSEUS

Every organization must look to how it will be shaped in the future in order to stay relevant. With companies, it’s how they will maintain increased profits; for charitable organizations, it’s how they can better help those in need; for military organizations, it’s how they will fight future battles, how they will defend against foes that are becoming more advanced.

The 416th Theater Engineer Command (TEC), with vision from its higher up – “the most capable combat-ready, and lethal federal Reserve force in the history of the nation,” said Lt. Gen. Charles D. Luckey, chief, U.S. Army Reserve and commanding general, U.S. Army Reserve Headquarters, “must move forward in a modern direction.”

Located in Darien, Illinois, the 416th TEC is a unique unit, with only one other like it in the U.S. Army, the 412th TEC in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Both commands are continuously evolving to best prepare themselves to fight in the next conflict.

The 416th, as a headquarters, trains continuously to improve its decision-making and planning capabilities. Because, when called upon, the 416th will deploy, provide theaterwide engineer support, and serve as the senior engineer headquarters for the theater Army. Their job is to set the theater; to take a constant flow of situations, and provide engineer plans, solutions, and courses of action for each.

The 416th, as a command including more than 12,000 Soldiers from the western United States and Washington, D.C., must “provide trained, equipped, and ready Soldiers and cohesive units to meet the nation’s requirements at home and abroad,” said Luckey.

The Force Management (FM) cell and 416th TEC operations work diligently in order to take this mission and vision focus, and develop the 416th toward the future, and how it will be accomplished then. They answer how the 416th TEC will be trained, equipped, and ready tomorrow.

TRAINED

The 416th and its units must be able to work with and fight alongside their active-duty counterparts. The operations team (G3) plans and coordinates exercises that enable units to integrate with active-duty brigade combat teams. This allows them to train at the pace of active-duty units, and allows both the ability to understand how each other operates.

Training with activity-duty units drives an understanding that there is one Army with three components, and that these components work in unison with each other.

The 416th TEC is also taking its Deployable Command Post (DCP), and creating two contingency command posts (CCPs). Each will mirror the other, and provide specific theater support to a combatant command (COCOM), like European Command. The intent of the CCP is to deploy into a theater, and provide engineer planning support until the 416th TEC integrates in fully, and sets the theater as a whole.

The 416th Theater Engineer Command and 647th Regional Support Group command teams pause for a photo March 1, 2019, in Wichita, Kansas.

Photo by Maj. Scott Ingalsbe

In order to create a relationship with the combatant commands, the now DCP, along with other technical engineers, are integrated into planning exercises, and projects in support of Army service component commands (ASCCs) and COCOMs. This training is designed to not only provide engineer support, but to create a rapport with the COCOMs and ASCCs.

EQUIPPED

The force modernization section of FM ensures that all of the units throughout the 416th TEC are equipped with the latest technology and equipment available to the force. They work with project managers and contractors to set up new equipment fielding and new equipment training.

“Force modernization program and the military has the ability to adapt to new obstacles on the battlefield through new enablers, and systems,” said Scott Hein, a 416th TEC force integration analyst. “The key is to put these enablers, as they become available, in the hands of the Soldier, so they will be better equipped.”

The aim here is to either bring the Soldiers to subject-matter experts, or bring the subject-matter experts to the Soldiers (whichever is financial beneficial to the taxpayer), and train them up on how to use the new equipment. Once these Soldiers are validated, the units receive the equipment in their inventory.

Soldiers from the 416th TEC fire the M249B machine gun during the 416th TEC’s annual training at Camp Atterbury, Indiana.

Photo by Maj. Dan Marchik

READY

The 416th TEC and its units constantly evolve in order to best fit their capabilities into the big picture. FM, with direction from force design updates, develops the personnel and equipment to best meet the requirements of the big picture, as it pertains to possible future conflicts.

“The TEC is transitioning back to general engineering,” said Master Sgt. Jeffery Jackson, the force management noncommissioned officer. “A lot of the units have gone from being a jack-of-all-trades to specialized units. It’s hard to fill gaps when units are trained to specific jobs.”

This need to transition back to general engineers caused a need to take mobility augmentation companies and Sapper companies, and change them to combat engineer companies (CECs). They will comprise of CEC-A (Armor) and CEC-I (Infantry), with one supporting armor, and the other infantry, through mobility, counter-mobility, and survivability.

Combat engineers are your jack-of-all-trades; and with the current legacy formation, the Soldiers become specialized to specific tasks and functions of a combat engineer. With the CEC-A and CEC-I, sections can be peeled off to support a specified mission. But the units all together can support general and combat engineer operations.

The TEC itself will also regain general engineering capability, with the reintegration of engineer-specific geospatial capabilities, and a general engineering operations cell (GENOC). Geospatial will be able to take this form of intelligence and provide information specific to engineer needs, as opposed to general geospatial information that supports general intelligence needs. The GENOC will be able to provide the 416th TEC with the expertise needed to provide technical engineer professionalism to theaterwide strategic engineer planning, facility (basing) engineering management, program/project management, survey, design, and geospatial work.

All of these efforts are to allow the 416th TEC leadership a snapshot of what the TEC will be capable of almost a decade in the future. n