The Nation’s “Solutioneers”

Providing support to combatant commands and U.S. partners

By J.R. Wilson - December 23, 2013

Construction nears completion on a new junior high school building, housing grades four through six, in Grumesa, Ghana, July 22, 2013. The building, designed to accommodate more than 150 students, features three classrooms, a teachers’ room, storage space, and a detached latrine facility. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District is working in partnership with U.S. Africa Command and the local embassy to bring the school to fruition. The new classrooms will enable additional students from the district to attend school in Grumesa. The project, valued at $208,700 dollars, features local building materials – including mahogany doors and decorative cement blocks – hand selected by the school headmaster. In addition, local masons, painters, and other workers were hired as subcontractors. USACE photo by Jennifer Aldridge

Immediately after World War II, USACE was heavily involved in the reconstruction of war-torn Europe and Pacific-Asia, as well as building the facilities and other infrastructure required by the U.S. military in those regions. While the size and number of American bases and the needs of the individual nations have changed dramatically since then, USACE support to DoD’s European Command (EUCOM) and PACOM has remained strong, primarily through USACE’s North Atlantic Division (NAD) and Pacific Ocean Division (POD), respectively. NAD’s Europe District (EUD) also supports AFRICOM.

Immediately after World War II, USACE was heavily involved in the reconstruction of war-torn Europe and Pacific-Asia, as well as building the facilities and other infrastructure required by the U.S. military in those regions.

EUD is the military construction agent for most of EUCOM’S AOR. Its workload is predominantly in western and central Europe, while NAVFAC supports southern Europe and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center supports the United Kingdom. Since the early 1990s, the district also has supported numerous EUCOM-funded initiatives in the former Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe, said Lalit Wadhwa, the agency’s chief of programs. EUD has been involved in Israel since the 1998 Wye River Accords, and worked on AFRICOM-funded initiatives for the past six years.

EUD Combatant Command Air Space Ops Center Ramstein

U.S. Air Force and Army commanders cut a ribbon to commemorate the opening of the new 603rd Air and Space Operations Center (AOC), Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Oct. 7, 2011. The AOC accomplishes the critical mission of monitoring the airspace above Europe and Africa. From left to right, U.S. Army Col. D. Peter Helmlinger, commander of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe; U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh, then-U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander; Col. Peter Davey, then-603rd AOC commander; Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, then-3rd Air Force commander; and Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward, then-17th Air Force commander. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Tyrona Lawson

In Israel, Europe District manages construction of facilities under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The projects are carried out in support of the Israel Ministry of Defense.

The district has a large installation support program to augment the seven Army garrisons and four Air Force bases in the region.

“For the past few years, about 25 percent of our overall workload has been non-MILCON [military construction],” Wadhwa said. “We execute a lot of operations and maintenance [O&M] work, mainly repairing facilities and renovating administrative buildings for garrisons in Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Turkey.”

EUD’s support to AFRICOM is growing – even though it represents a small portion of the district’s overall workload, Wadhwa added. The efforts are strategically important in helping the command accomplish its Theater Security Cooperation objectives on the continent. Programs that have become increasingly relevant include FMS, Global Peace Operations Initiatives, Counter-Narcotics Terrorism, and Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara.

“Right now, we do not see establishment of a district office on the African continent as the dispersed project locations do not support it,” he said.

The drawdown of combat operations in Afghanistan, a smaller U.S. military – and so a smaller global footprint – increased efforts in Africa and a general DoD refocus to the Asia-Pacific region will affect the Europe District, predicted Wayne Uhl, head of the International Engineering Center-Europe District. But probably more in terms of the type of work USACE does for the CCMDs than the volume.

EUD also assists CENTCOM operations by deploying personnel to Southwest Asia. A few remain there, Wadhwa said, but their primary efforts are focused on “reach-back support” – a process in which field project engineers can contact other USACE offices in Europe and the United States when specialized expertise is needed to design or review projects. Some warfighters en route to Iraq and Afghanistan also spent time at EUD for engineering training.

Currently and in the foreseeable future, Europe District’s major projects in EUCOM consist of Missile Defense Agency (MDA) work in Romania, replacement and upgrade of Department of Defense Dependents Schools facilities, and a decade-long project to replace Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest American hospital outside the United States.

“MDA work has commenced and is estimated to continue until 2018,” Wadhwa said. “My foggy crystal ball shows we will be doing a lot of work related to Landstuhl and DoD schools, FMS work in Israel and O&M work, which is an important and, I expect, increasing part of what we will do in absence of large MILCON projects.”

He says the $990 million medical program is forecast to continue through the next nine to 10 years, while O&M funding will be about $90 million annually. The Israel FMS is projected to run about $50 million per year.