Engineer Operations in Turkey Support Operation Iraqi Freedom
Abstract
In the fall of 2002, U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) was directed to open a northern front into Iraq in support of potential actions against the Hussein regime. The area of operations would include an 800-kilometer line of communications in Turkey with up to 18 different nodes all requiring acquisition of property, careful environmental consideration, and construction or modification to ready them for up to 60,000 soldiers. A hodge-podge of roughly 3,300 Army and Navy engineers had been identified to perform the mission; however, no headquarters structure was available to oversee the planning or execution. As a result, the reactivation of the 18th Engineer Brigade (theater Army), which was scheduled for June 2003, was moved to 21 January 2003. (See article in Engineer, April-June 2003, page 37.) The reactivation of the 18th Engineer Brigade served two major purposes: First, the core of the brigade headquarters serving as theater engineer planners is fully engaged in the development of operations plans and therefore has the advantage of anticipating and planning for engineer requirements in a contingency. Secondly, although the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has enormous capabilities that can be brought to bear as required during contingencies, these assets do not typically come with an overarching headquarters capable of integrating small, specialized units (both Active and Reserve Component) where they can best influence the operation. The 18th Engineer Brigade is fully capable and designed to perform this mission. This became evident in Turkey in February 2003.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA596618
Entities
People
- John Mcclellan
- Raldal Fofi
- Roxanne Nosal
- Shawn Mcginley
Organizations
- United States Army Engineer School