Engineer presents professional information designed to keep U.S. military and civilian engineers informed of current and emerging developments within their areas of expertise for the purpose of enhancing their professional development.
Issue link: https://engineer.epubxp.com/i/145930
fundamental is really the heart of the Regiment's purpose, and it includes assured mobility, protection, force projection, and logistics. The fourth and seventh fundamentals are skill sets that all tactical units, including engineers, must possess. According to Field Manual 3-90.2, successful security operations depend on properly applying fve fundamentals: ■ Provide early and accurate warning. ■ Provide reaction time and maneuver space. ■ Orient on the force or facility to be secured. ■ Perform continuous reconnaissance. ■ Maintain enemy contact.2 You can see that it is not only engineer reconnaissance that fts within security operations, but that our entire family of mobility, countermobility, and survivability tasks; geospatial tasks; and construction tasks also enable security operations to their fullest power. Please make special note of the frst and sixth reconnaissance fundamentals, which overlap two of the security fundamentals—reconnaissance must be continuous, and the purpose of reconnaissance and security operations is to gain and maintain contact with the enemy. We can all think back on the ftful beginnings of our engineer clearance operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and how we violated both of these fundamentals. Thinking in terms of Defeat the Device and Attack the Network lines of operations and separating these tasks were helpful for technological development, but very harmful to our understanding of the reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance battle against our contemporary enemies. This cannot continue. Our engineer missions are seldom done alone; they are almost always part of combined arms reconnaissance and security operations. Like reconnaissance assets, no engineer assets should be held in reserve. We must develop disciplined approaches to analyzing enemy obstacle information and intelligence (including improvised explosive devices) to project the enemy course of action, disposition of forces, and positions. We have not developed this art as well as we must, so engineer company intelligence support teams and enhanced intelligence capabilities in the brigade combat team engineer battalion and echelons above brigade engineer units must be developed, manned, trained, and employed. We must integrate into every mission how we will May–August 2013 maintain contact with the elusive enemy after we make contact. We cannot allow opportunities to locate and defeat our foes to evaporate and allow them to fght another day. This speaks to the combined arms nature of reconnaissance and security operations and to our engineer missions that support them. Do not accept maneuver taskings or mission requests that fail the test of gaining and maintaining contact with the enemy. Instead, propose alternatives that will enable maneuver success; enhance the effectiveness of fres; and develop intelligence (including obstacle intelligence) faster and with greater depth, scope, and understanding. The Army cannot win Phase III decisive operations until it wins Phase II deployment to the joint operating area. I have written about these challenges before, and we are enacting many reforms to better enable our Regiment to open and expand lodgments for the Army in Phase II. We cannot win Phase III decisive operations until we win the reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance battle every day, every day, every day—seizing and holding the initiative from our enemies and forcing them to react to us in ways that expose them to our destructive power and intelligence exploitation. Rapid deployment engineering and engineering to support reconnaissance and security operations (reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance) are the twin operational priorities of our engineer forces today. I am asking that you give them top priority in missionessential task lists, training time on the calendar, professional development programs, self-development, and DOTMLPF innovation. Building and maintaining trust are the highest priorities for our team. They touch upon the serious, wellpublicized challenges that we face today in taking care of our teammates as we want to be taken care of and as we take care of our children. Part of that caring, however, must include priority training and leader development in rapid deployment engineering and engineering to win the reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance battle. Good luck! Endnotes: 1 Field Manual 3-90.2, Reconnaissance, Security, and Tactical Enabling Tasks, Volume 2, 22 March 2013. 2 Ibid. Engineer 3