CHAPTER 2 Fundamentals of Engineer Operations

BATTLE COMMAND/C2

Command is truly an art and a science. Commanders are challenged to inspire soldiers in the most difficult of situations. Combat leadership requires a special blend of discipline, courage, and skill. Battle command¯

Is the art of battle decision making and leading and motivating soldiers and their organizations into action to accomplish missions at the least cost to soldiers.
Includes visualizing the current state and desired future states and then deciding on how to get from one to the other.
Demands that leaders position themselves where they can best command without depriving themselves of the ability to respond to changing situations. The commander must be able to go where he can best assess the operation and risks and make the necessary adjustments. Command¯the art of motivating and directing soldiers¯must be supported by the means needed to regulate the forces to achieve the commander's intent. However, commanding, decision making, and problem solving that come with it are not done in isolation. The commander's staff and subordinates assist in developing, modifying, and improving COAs and in developing future COAs for events that are not totally clear. Commanders make estimates of future operations and assessments of the current situation to determine their own intent and formulate the concept of operation. Prioritizing actions and considerations for the acceptable degree of risk guides the commander in determining the amount of control he can, and should, delegate to others to synchronize actions across the AO.
Control is inherent in battle command. It is monitoring the status of organizational activities, identifying deviations from the commander's intent, and regulating the forces and means toward an intended aim. Commanders apply means to accomplish their intent. Ultimately, commanders provide methods to measure, report, and correct performance. Control serves its purpose by allowing the commander the freedom to operate, delegate authority, and lead from any critical point on the battlefield while synchronizing actions throughout his AO.
The process of controlling an organization is directed towards ensuring that all of the pieces pull together, adjusting as the situation dictates but never losing sight of the intended end state and purpose of the mission¯the commander's intent. Battle-command systems must support the ability of the commander to adjust plans for future operations, even while focusing on the current fight. Skilled staffs work within the commander's intent to direct and control units and allocate the means to support the intent.

COMMAND AND SUPPORT RELATIONSHIPS

As a significant part of the tactical-planning process, the staff recommends the appropriate command or support relationship between engineer and maneuver units to the commander. Each situation is unique and requires its own solution. Whatever the relationship, engineer commanders are always responsible for the technical correctness of all tasks accomplished by their subordinate elements.

PERSPECTIVE:

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Riggs, 81st Engineer Combat Battalion, received orders from the 106th Infantry Division to establish a line east of St Vith and hold off the Germans. He rounded up all available men of the 81st and 168th Engineer Combat Battalions and managed to hold off the Germans until 21 December when they broke up into small groups and attempted to make their way back to St Vith. Colonel Riggs was captured, but he escaped to Poland and fought with the Russians until he returned to his unit in April 1945.

CONTROL

A commander maintains control of subordinate elements directly by his presence at critical events and indirectly through his HQ. The first is an exercise in leadership, as described in FM 22-100. The second depends heavily on the commander's staff and organization, while also relying on his leadership.

The maneuver commander at each echelon uses his HQ to control combat operations, but he relies on engineer C2 elements to ensure that engineer units successfully execute the tasks that he assigns to them. Engineer C2 elements consist of the engineer member of the maneuver commander's battle staff, subordinate engineer unit commanders, and the staffs of those subordinate units.

USE OF ENGINEER HQ

Maneuver commanders assign the AOs for their subordinate units. Those same boundaries are also the basis for assigning AOs to engineers. When developing COAs in the tactical-planning process, the engineer planner allocates an available subordinate HQ to control engineer units. Whenever possible, the engineer planner aligns his operational boundaries with those of the maneuver forces, which is very important at the division level.

Commanders task-organize engineer units based on their estimate of the situation. An engineer company can command up to two additional engineer platoons. An engineer battalion can command up to five engineer companies. These can be a mixture of corps and divisional elements operating under either a corps or a divisional engineer HQ.

An engineer HQ often functions as a combined-arms HQ. An engineer platoon can incorporate tanks with mine plows for a breaching mission. An engineer company might be the breach force for a TF deliberate breach and have an attached tank platoon and attached mechanized infantry platoon. An engineer battalion might be the breach force for a brigade deliberate breach and have an attached tank/mechanized company/team plus air-defense assets. A division engineer brigade may have a special role in a major river-crossing operation and have attached to it a large number of military police, chemical, and intelligence units, as well as engineer units.

The engineer command (ENCOM) uses the theater contract construction agency (CCA) elements to provide contract construction and real estate operations. The CCA has area familiarity and habitual relationships within the theater and often maintains a forward presence in the area before contingency operations. USACE forward's (Fwd's) structure and capability are provided in theater. USACE may have a small HQ staff for controlling of one or more area offices and other dispersed teams while also maintaining communications to the parent HQ for technical and administrative support purposes.

The ENCOM is a major subordinate command of the Army service component commander (ASCC) and provides C2 and a central organization framework for the operational-level engineer effort in theater. (Figure 2-1 shows a notional ASCC engineer theater laydown.) The ENCOM focuses on reinforcing and augmenting corps engineer efforts and developing the theater-support base. This focus involves planning, ensuring operational mobility, and coordinating all operational-engineering assets. It also involves command direction of topographic operations, construction, real-property maintenance activities (RPMA), LOC sustainment, engineer logistics management, and base development.

Theater-construction management often spans multiservice requirements. The unified or specified commander (commander in chief [CINC]) may direct establishing a regional contingency-engineering manager (RCEM) to control all theater-level engineering. The ENCOM can perform this role if the CINC designates the ASCC as the RCEM and the ASCC designates the ENCOM as its agent. An ENCOM may deploy by increments to meet highly variable work loads and situations.