________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
future. Second, the fact that my two bosses said, "Take charge. It's broken. Go fix it and do it
in terms of integrated combined arms." Third, my own background experience and very
recent experience in Europe where I could see that during REFORGER training exercises
that we just were falling farther behind and couldn't keep pace. All of those ideas blended to
fit the agenda that I came in with and the feeling that we had to get it fixed. Now I was being
given a position whereby I had the responsibility to get it fixed. I couldn't watch or send
letters to somebody else; I now had that responsibility.
That, then, was accompanied by the massive lessons learned that were coming out of the
National Training Center [NTC] with each rotation. There the simulations went by the board.
The value of the engineer to the combined arms team was really being represented at the
NTC most often by units failing because the engineers were the broken part of the team. We
were finding all these ways the maneuver units and engineers were trying to create band-aid
solutions to the problems out there. That became a fourth catalyst, and all that came together
and met very nicely my inkling and desire to fix it--the combat engineer system.
Consequently, I then established a game plan, a strategy for analysis, assessed the parts, and
developed a strategy to approach how we could go about fixing it.
I didn't set, in answer to your question, specific goals and objectives. I recognized that we
had to address the engineer system across the entire spectrum of proponency--that is,
doctrine, organization design, equipment, training, and personnel. You couldn't do just any
one or the other, although some of them are easier to work on than others. That is, doctrine,
training, and personnel are soft things that you can tend to work on within resources. The
problems with force structure and materiel solutions are that you are now having to work
within the whole Army and you now compete for approvals and time and bucks and so they
become more difficult.
Q:
So, what was your strategy, then? Obviously your two bosses were supportive of your efforts.
A:
The strategy really came about to address combat engineers across all of those functions. We
began to put together an analysis and coalesce maneuver opinion and maneuver commander
support for the recognition of the engineers' role and capability--realistically. See, I've
maintained for some time that very often engineers have been their own worst enemies
because we tell people things are great when, in fact, they aren't great.
Our maneuver folks know, however, in the realistic situations we provide them on the
realistic battlefield environment, like at the NTC, that we engineers don't provide the combat
support they need--in their terms. We may provide what we engineers talk about as great
support, but it's in our terms, like with a five-ton dump truck, like breaching with bayonets,
but it's not in the terms of guys who talk mobility and maneuver, like General Saint or
General Bob RisCassi. When they talk maneuver, they talk about moving out.
Maybe my background, starting off in the 3d Armored Division's 23d Engineers years ago,
gave me a feeling for the thinking of the armor maneuver commander and today's battlefield.
Even tailored by my subsequent time in the 82d Airborne with can-do folks down there, it
was apparent to me that we weren't talking the same language. Some engineers think we're
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