Combat engineer


A combat engineer in many armies is a soldier who performs a variety of construction and demolition tasks under combat conditions.
The combat engineer's goals involve facilitating movement and support of friendly forces while impeding those of the enemy. Combat engineers build fighting positions, fortifications, and roads. They conduct demolitions missions and clear minefields manually or through use of specialized vehicles. Typical combat engineer missions include construction and breaching of trenches, tank traps and other obstacles and fortifications; obstacle emplacement and bunker construction; bridge and road construction or destruction; emplacement and clearance of land mines; and combined arms breaching. Typically, a combat engineer is also trained as an infantryman, and combat engineer units frequently fight alongside the infantry or fight as infantry as a secondary mission.

Terminology

A general combat engineer is often called a pioneer or sapper, terms derived respectively from the French and British armies. In some armies, pioneer and sapper indicate specific military ranks and levels of combat engineers, who work under fire in all seasons and may be allocated to different corps, as they were in the former Soviet Army, or they may be organized in the same corps. Geomatics is another area of military engineering but is often performed by the combat engineers of some nations and in other cases is a separate responsibility, as was formerly the case in the Australian Army. While the officers of a combat engineer unit may be professionally certified civil or mechanical engineers, the non-commissioned members are generally not.
Combat engineers are force multipliers and enhance the survival of other troops through the use and practice of camouflage, reconnaissance, communications and other services. These include the construction of roads, bridges, field fortifications, obstacles and the construction and running of water points. In these roles, combat engineers use a wide variety of hand and power tools. They are also responsible for construction rigging, the use of explosives, and the carrying out of demolitions, obstacle clearance, and obstacle construction, assault of fortifications, use of assault boats in water obstacle crossings, helipad construction, general construction, route reconnaissance and road reconnaissance, and erecting communication installations. Combat engineers build and run water distribution points, carrying out water filtration, and NBC decontamination when necessary, and storage prior to distribution.
All these role activities and technologies are divided into several areas of combat engineering:
Mobility
Improving the ability of one's own force to move around the battlefield. Combat engineers typically support this role through reduction of enemy obstacles which include point and row minefields, anti-tank ditches, wire obstacles, concrete and metal anti-vehicle barriers, and Improvised Explosive Devices and wall and door breaching in urban terrain. Mechanized combat engineer units also have armored vehicles capable of laying short bridges for limited gap-crossing.
Countermobility
Building obstacles to prevent the enemy from moving around the battlefield. Destroying bridges, blocking roads, creating airstrips, digging trenches, etc. Can also include planting land mines and anti-handling devices when authorized and directed to do so.
When the defender must retreat it is often desirable to destroy anything that may be of use to the enemy, particularly bridges, as their destruction can slow the advance of the attackers. The retreating forces may also leave booby traps for enemy soldiers, even though these often wreak their havoc upon non-combatant civilians.
Explosive material handling
The placement of land mines to create minefields and their maintenance and removal.
armored bulldozer is used for a variety of combat engineering tasks including opening routes and demolishing enemy structures.
Assault
Defense structures
Building structures which enable one's own soldiers to survive on the battlefield. Examples include trenches, bunkers, shelters, and armored vehicle fighting positions.
Defensive fortifications are designed to prevent intrusion into the inner works by infantry. For minor defensive locations these may only consist of simple walls and ditches. The design principle is to slow down the advance of attackers to where they can be destroyed by defenders from sheltered positions. Most large fortifications are not a single structure but rather a concentric series of fortifications of increasing strength.
Combat engineers employ a wide range of transportation vehicles and equipment, and uses weapons unique to the engineers, including those used in land mine warfare.
;Equipment used by combat engineers
Basic combat engineering tools include safe use of:
;Vehicles
combat engineer vehicle Dachs
as for a variety of missions
;Obstacle breaching
For obstacle breaching, including minefields, the combat engineers use a variety of vehicles, explosive devices and plastic explosives including:
Combat engineers are a key role in all armed forces of the world, and invariably found either closely integrated into the force structure, or even into the combat units of the national troops. In many countries, combat engineers are members of broader military engineering corps or branches. However, some nations have distinct combat engineering corps or branches which are separate from other types of military engineers. The Danish military engineers corps is almost entirely organized into one regiment of combat engineers, simply named Ingeniørregimentet. During the War in Afghanistan and the 2003–2011 Iraq War the US Army tasked its combat engineers with route clearance missions designed to counter rising threats of IEDs. To increase the effectiveness of these units EOD and mechanic teams are typically embedded with the combat engineer platoon. Due to rising IED threats US Army sends some combat engineers rank specialist or higher to complete Explosive Ordnance Clearance Agent training to familiarize themselves with types of unexploded ordnance.

Historical publications

The Basic Field Manual, Engineer Soldier's Handbook, 2 June 1943 was written to provide guidance to a new combat engineer in the United States.