Clear the Way
Brigadier General Peter A. (Duke) DeLuca
Commandant, U.S. Army Engineer School
"Whoever wins the reconnaissancecounterreconnaissance aspect of the battle
wins the overall battle."
—94th Engineer Regiment Commandant
(me) and a lot of other military
professionals
S
adly, this is my last Clear the
Way article. The Army has placed
another challenge and opportunity
for professional and personal growth in
my path. I will be replaced at the end of
July 2013 by Brigadier General Anthony
C. Funkhouser; and he will be a magnifcent commandant, coach, leader, and role
model for our great Regiment. I am honored to replace
Major General John W. Peabody in September as the commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Valley Division and the chairman of the Mississippi River Commission.
This column will not be a litany of achievements over
the past 20 months of my very precious, all too brief, but
enjoyable time as the 94th commandant of the Engineer
Regiment. However, I do believe that we have made great
strides in adapting and refning every area of doctrine,
organization, training, materiel, leader development, personnel, and facilities (DOTMLPF) for our Regiment. We
have things moving in the right direction in all areas, with
some extra work needed on facilities here at the home of the
Regiment and at home stations around the Army. Please
view my 19 April 2013 address to the Regiment at to hear a
relatively current update on developments across the
DOTMLPF. Also pay close attention to the 25 June 2013
announcement of Army plans at . These plans and actions may be enabled
or hindered by Department of Defense and Army budgeting
decisions that will be made over the next 3 to 12 months.
For my last formal, offcial words, I will return to a topic
that somewhat obsesses my mind—the matter of how we
reorganize, reequip, and retrain our Army and engineer
forces to routinely win the reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance battle (something we have not done well in the
past two wars) facing the kind of enemies that we have
faced and will continue to face for another generation.
We have a lot of new tools and some new experiences to
help us see and fnd enemies hiding among the population;
2 Engineer
sheltering and defending in compartmented terrain (urban, mountain, and/
or jungle); and employing modern and
improvised weaponry and intelligence,
surveillance, reconnaissance, and communications capabilities in clever ways
that deny advantages of our standoff
sensors and long-range fres/strikes.
Our inability to routinely win the
reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance
battle was one reason (in my opinion, the
main reason) that we did not achieve more
decisive results in Iraq and Afghanistan
much sooner.
Let's state it again: Whoever wins the
reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance
aspect of the battle wins the overall battle. I'm a very amateur historian and have searched hard for examples from
history in which this was not the case—because every
rule must have an exception or two. But I cannot fnd the
exception. Not yet. If anyone in the feld has examples of
exceptions, please send them to me at . Even better, submit your examples and lessons
learned to Engineer at for all of us to discuss and debate (see
the writer's guide on page 33.)
Engineers are central to the reconnaissancecounterreconnaissance battle. Our forces conduct reconnaissance and security operations to fght this battle. To
better analyze how engineers ft within these operations,
let's consult some very sound, recently updated doctrine.
Field Manual 3-90.2, Reconnaissance, Security, and Tactical Enabling Tasks, Volume 2, identifes seven fundamentals of successful reconnaissance:
■ Ensure continuous reconnaissance.
■ Do not keep reconnaissance assets in reserve.
■ Orient on the reconnaissance objective.
■ Report information rapidly and accurately.
■ Retain freedom of maneuver.
■ Gain and maintain enemy contact.
■ Develop the situation rapidly.1
You can see that engineer reconnaissance, which
includes route clearance operations (singly or as combined arms operations) and technical engineer reconnaissance, fts within the frst three fundamentals. The ffth
May–August 2013