Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
defined here at the Engineer School, in the past couple of years, the real engineers' role on
the AirLand battlefield, and we've done it in a couple of documents that are just about to
come out. FM 9013 is a new field manual on counterobstacle and river crossing operations
that definitely crosses that boundary. FM 90131, which is coming out tomorrow, is going
to redefine counterobstacle operations at the maneuver task force in terms of combined arms.
It's going to have an interactive infantryarmorengineer forward maneuver element with all
the rest of the combined arms included--air defense, aviation, all of them. It's going to
describe how we get through an obstacle in terms of the maneuver commander, that is, in
stride with minimum loss of momentum, and provide the doctrinal basis for that. I think that
is what has been lacking: thinking and putting it in maneuver kind of terms. I think we've
done that.
I think we've done it also by obtaining approval throughout the Army of taking to the NTC a
full brigade engineer slice. When NTC first started they said, "One engineer company is what
a maneuver brigade gets normally and that's what it gets at the NTC and that's all in that
division." That's not what doctrine says is going to fight with that brigade. By doctrine
you're going to give that brigade assets that will probably amount to about one company per
task force. They go out to the NTC with two maneuver task forces in a brigade, so they now
have approval to take out two engineer companies. We also have approval for a permanent
engineer company in the opposing force at the NTC, which is now forming.
Our focus at the NTC is making that training environment very realistic, to simulate as little
as possible to make it fully realistic. I think, in fact, we have really not fully defined the
engineer in the combined arms teams in the AirLand Battle. I think we've put a higher
resolution in that definition, and that resolution has been pitched toward putting it in terms of
the maneuver commander on the AirLand Battlefield and thus it's become a much better
definition.
Q:
Is this going to require some retooling of engineer career patterns to get the kind of
experience that you're talking about into these people so that we remove that segmented
experience?
A:
EForce does that too. Our problem in the engineers, besides our thinking problem, is that
we've never addressed this big sore that prevents us from being truly effective, that sore
being that we have an archaic organizational design that was found lacking in World War II
and has never been fixed and is totally inadequate today--that being this thing that causes us
to say that we're going to move battalions in to join the division as needed. That "flexibility"
from Corps is an "apparent" flexibility only; it's not real in terms of today's battlefield. It
was not real in terms of the World War II battlefield, but people have said it was for years.
Q:
Except engineers.
A:
Except engineers. Now with the NTC experience, maneuver people really recognize that.
What was your question again?
Q:
Career patterns and how they'll change?
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