Engineer Brigade - 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized)
The Engineer Restructure Initiative (ERI) in the late 1980s created an engineer brigade headquarters with three mechanized combat engineer battalions in a heavy division. This was a return to a concept that had been battle tested many times. Engineers fought in engineer brigades during World War II, Korea and the Persian Gulf War, where the ERI was validated. Mobility is the key word, and the maneuver commander gets mobility two ways: from the engineer battalion habitually associated with the brigade combat team (BCT); and by augmentation from engineers at division, corps and echelons above corps, which are normally under the control of the division engineer brigade headquarters.
As the Army moved toward Force XXI, the division redesign proposed to eliminate the engineer brigade headquarters from the heavy division. This concept was tested November 1997 in a 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) (ID[M]) Advanced Warfighting Experiment (AWE). The proposed "F" table of organization and equipment (TOE) for engineers in heavy divisions drastically changed the C2 arrangements by removing the 57-soldier engineer brigade headquarters and replacing it with a 29-soldier element, that is essentially an augmented cell at division level.
In June 1998 senior Army officials unveiled the new division design for the Army's combat divisions. The first division to convert under this new system will be the Fort Hood-based units of the 4th Infantry Division. The 4ID is also knows as the Army's Experimental Force or EXFOR. The new division design is a major step in the Army's Force XXI initiative. The Engineer Brigade HHC was replaced by a planning section at the division level. An Engineer battalion will be habitually associated with each of the three maneuver brigades.
