Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
looked at 35 applicants and we hired 17, only one of which had a bachelor's degree; the
others were higher degrees than bachelor's degree. That says we're getting a pretty good cut
of folks. So, we think the people who will come to us out there will probably be pretty
talented, and we may well be able to keep them better in the long term because here in the
Washington area, where jobs are plentiful, there's considerable mobility. Because we are a
very junior agency under the Department of the Army, we fall down so far on the position
classification scale that most people start with us and move up.
Q:
I know what you mean. We've got the same problem. We have the same, exact situation for
our field. Lots more higher grades at other places.
A:
Very close by.
Q:
Very close by. Right. They don't even have to move. So, that's the greatest challenge you see
facing General Reno, this one in combat developments, or is there something else that you
think is more critical, such as maintaining the contacts and the progress that you have made?
A:
I think his greatest challenge--let me put it, his greatest opportunity--I believe, is EForce.
Now, whether that becomes a great challenge because it's difficult to push it through, or he's
going to be able to build on this wealth of support out among the maneuver commanders as
he goes up into the tough arena of the Army Staff, remains to be seen. That's the great
opportunity.
Q:
We were talking about how General Reno's going to face the challenges.
A:
I think that's the opportunity. Why I use the word "opportunity" instead of "challenge" is that
EForce solves so very much. It's an organizational thing that puts the right organizational
framework, plus command and control, and the right engineer combat systems to ensure the
right place for employing the new systems to best support the maneuver commander. So, it's
going to help force modernization. It helps doctrine writing because it sorts out all these ad
hoc relationships we've had in the past, so you can write doctrine easier. You write it so it's
more understandable to the maneuver guy. Instead of his going out there and not
understanding, he will understand, so he'll use his engineers better. He gets a higher level
engineer leader to advise him, so the engineer support gets better from that standpoint.
It puts engineers at the right place on the battlefield. Plus, it helps training in peacetime
because it reduces the mission-essential task list, where the reserves have such a, speaking
total force, such a hard time and the engineers do so many different things. Right now that
Corps battalion's got to work from the covering force all the way to the Corps' rear
boundary. Now we're going to let the EForce divisional battalions work from the covering
force to the brigade's rear boundary; and then the Corps engineer battalions will be having a
simplified mission and will be doing line of communication work, berming, survivability
work, reserve targets, and that sort of thing. Because of that, the reserve components, which
have that kind of battalion mostly, will be able to focus their training and not have to do
things for combined arms integration, which they rarely see and rarely have the opportunity
378
Previous Page
