Practices and techniques
Combat engineers use practices and techniques of camouflage, reconnaissance, communication methods and enhancement of survival by other troops. Combat engineering also includes construction of roads, bridges, field fortifications, and obstacles. 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 carrying out demolitions, camouflage erection, field fortification construction, obstacle clearance, and obstacle construction, assault of fortifications, bridge erection, use of assault boats in water obstacle crossings, expedient road and helipad construction, general construction, route reconnaissance and road reconnaissance, and erecting communication installations.
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 wall and door breaching in urban terrain. Mechanized combat engineer units also have armored vehicles capable of laying short bridges for limited gap-crossing. * Clearing terrain obstacles * Overcoming trenches and ditches * Opening routes for armored fighting vehicles * Constructing roads and bridges
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. * Planting land mines * Digging trenches and ditches * Demolishing roads and bridges
Explosive material handling
The placement of land mines to create minefields and their maintenance and removal. * Clearing fields of land mines * Demolition
Assault
* Opening routes during assault * Demolishing enemy structures (using bulldozers or explosive charges).
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. General engineering sustains military forces in the theater through the performance of facility construction and repair, and through acquisition, maintenance, and disposal of real property.
Defensive fortifications are designed to prevent intrusion into the inner works by assault 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. * Building fortifications * Building outposts * Building fences * Defense against NBC weapon threats
Equipment and vehicles
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
Basic combat engineering tools include safe use of: driving tools and chopping tools (hammers, mauls, sledges, screwdriver, and bits); cutting tools and smoothing tools (saws, chisels, planes, files and rasps, brush-cutting tools, miscellaneous cutting tools); drilling tools, boring tools, and countersinking tools; measuring tools, leveling tools and layout tools (rules, tapes, marking tools, levels, plumb bobs, squares); gripping tools, prying tools and twisting tools (pliers, wrenches, bars); holding tools, raising tools and grinding tools (vises, clamps, jacks, grinders, and oilstones); timber handling tools and climbing tools; digging tools (shovels, posthole diggers, picks, and mattocks); portable power tools and trailer-mounted tools (electric tool trailer and generator, portable power tools); miscellaneous tools.
Obstacle breaching
For obstacle breaching, including minefields, the combat engineers use a variety of vehicles, explosive devices and plastic explosives including: * Minefield breaching devices * Dozer blade * Mine rollers * Bangalore torpedo * Antipersonnel Obstacle Breaching System * Mine-clearing line charge (MICLIC) * Bomb disposal robots * Explosives, mines and bombs * Field-deployable bridges