USACE and the Army Engineer Regiment

Setting the theater

By Eric Tegler - April 2, 2013

A Best Sapper competitor makes his way toward shore after helocasting on day one of the Best Sapper challenge during ENFORCE held April 19-21, 2012, at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. On April 18, the U.S. Army Engineer School launched ENFORCE, its annual regimental conference, bringing together more than 300 military engineers to focus on future operations, capabilities, threats, and how the regiment will engineer in future conflicts into 2020. The Best Sapper competition is a centerpiece of the conference, where Soldiers use their physical, mental, and creative abilities to compete on a rigorous 50-mile course in 50 hours. U.S. Army photo by J.D. Leipold

Information sharing takes on another dimension at Fort Leonard Wood with the annual ENFORCE conference. The conference brings together all senior engineer leaders, civilian and military, to participate in a variety of working groups. USACE has its own set of meetings during the conference and merges with the larger group to discuss threats, response to threats (man-made and natural), and global strategy. DeLuca pointed out that the USACE’s global engagement overseas means that it uses ENFORCE and other information exchanges as a way to assess the work done by troop labor versus work done by contractors in support of combatant commanders. The conference incorporates other ceremonial and participatory aspects, including the Memorial Wall for Fallen Engineers, Best Sapper competition, a ball, and various awards. Industry is also on hand to display its latest equipment and software offerings to the Army and USACE.

The nature of the education and training engineers receive at USAES has changed significantly in the past few years, and new emphases have been factored in this year, according to DeLuca. Oversight and supervision training are more important than ever given both the more expeditionary footing on which the Army will find itself in the future and the need to work with a variety of actors in battlefield and civil works scenarios.

“The reason is, we are going to become an Army that is based almost entirely in the United States in a couple years,” he said. “We’ll have few combat forces deployed in overseas bases. That means we’re out of the business of reinforcing a theater or potential theater of war that has pre-positioned forces, equipment, supplies, developed airports, and ports of entry. So in a year or two, wherever we deploy, the first thing we’re going to have to do is open the lodgement, open a port or a beachhead, or an airport to receive large quantities of military combat and supply cargo very rapidly. That’s an engineering-intensive role that requires a limited number of engineers initially on the ground executing every kind of engineering there is.”

Though there will be fewer permanent overseas installations, the military will still need intermediate staging areas to shorten the distance to the fight and to aid in opening lodgements as quickly as possible. As in the past in far-flung places from the Philippines to Vietnam, USACE will play a pivotal role in preparing such staging areas.

“Kuwait is still an intermediate staging base,” DeLuca explained. “We used it prior to the invasion of Iraq. All the work that was going on there prior to the invasion was managed by the Corps of Engineers. In potential theaters of war, there are not just combat actions that the Corps responds to. There’s also what we call ‘setting the theater’ activities that go forward in peacetime. There may be airfields developed and we may add fuel storage to them in certain situations. We do that in partnership with the host nation for their benefit and ours. We might increase the amount of taxiway space and parking so we can position more aircraft. Those sorts of activities are happening all the time and the Corps is involved with them every day.”

The Obama administration’s strategic “pivot” to the Pacific announced in early 2012 is already sending ripples through the Army Engineer Regiment with discussion of the potential intermittent use of previously developed facilities like Clark Air Base in the Philippines and Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand.

The need to re-establish strategic military staging areas ties in with the need to refurbish American civil works infrastructure for the uniformed and civilian members of the Engineer Regiment. Both must accomplish these missions with greater consciousness of cost and resource efficiency as well as the need to work with multiple partners, DeLuca stated.

“If you’re going to emphasize project management and [best] business practice, which the Corps of Engineers is committed to, the art of managing expectations and divergent interests is key. Developing your negotiating skills with people that don’t have to listen to you or managing things that have not traditionally been seen as uniformed Army tasks are a couple of new challenges.

“Even in the Corps of Engineers there was a lot of decision-making based on old programmatic practices. They no longer suffice. In today’s war zones, we are trying to get the cooperation of a huge proportion of the population, with host-nation governments and other factions. The business of negotiating requirements and solutions is critical and we’re embedding practical exercises and scenarios into the curriculum for our Soldiers. This has to become part of the education of young engineers. All construction is risk management – who is assuming risk and who is being rewarded for the assumption of that risk. Given all the stakeholders in any project, whether civil works, military construction, or a project supporting another federal agency or outside client, the process of developing a mutually agreed plan and executing is a central skill that 10 or 15 years ago would not have been as highly valued by the Army or the Corps of Engineers.”

This article originally appeared in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Building Strong®, Serving the Nation and the Armed Forces 2012-2013 Edition.