There are many kinds of perfect storms. The 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power) rode out a "perfect storm" of missions in September.
"September was a very tough month for us," said Lt. Col. Paul Olsen, the battalion commander. "During one particular week, we were down to a handful of available Soldiers in the entire battalion. Of our eight platoons, we had more than four committed to Iraq, one-and-a-half in Afghanistan, and one in European Command.
"In addition to these operational deployments, we sent a platoon-and-a-half to support Hurricane Gustav recovery operations," Olsen said. "For those keeping score, we had eight platoons and eight missions, with Hurricane Ike still swirling in the Atlantic. To prepare for Ike's landfall we formed an ad hoc unit called Team Spartan."
September was not the first time the 249th Engineer Battalion had experienced severe mission loading. In 1992 the entire battalion deployed for Hurricane Andrew. It happened again during Hurricane Katrina when everyone in the battalion went to New Orleans, except those deployed for other missions.
In addition, the battalion has been continually deployed to Iraq since 2003, and almost annually its Soldiers conduct disaster relief operations including wildfires, ice storms, tsunamis, floods, and hurricanes.
Given these requirements, it is clear why the Army authorized the 249th Engineer Battalion to activate Charlie Company. The company joins the battalion’s Headquarters & Headquarters Company and the Prime Power School at Fort Belvoir; A (Alpha) Company at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; and B (Bravo) Company at Fort Bragg, N.C.
A fourth company, D (Delta) Company, will activate sometime in the next six months. It will be an all-Reserve unit based in Providence, R.I.
The 249th is the only prime power production unit in the Army, and the only active duty Army unit assigned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It provides commercial-level electric power to military units and federal relief organizations during full-spectrum operations, from peacetime military operations to disaster response to war.
It is also the only battalion in the Army that operates its own skill qualifier school. The Prime Power School at Fort Belvoir is a year-long course that trains engineer Soldiers to be prime power specialists.
The battalion’s line companies are equipped with the Deployable Power Generation and Distribution System (DPGDS), a trailer-mounted 920 kilowatt power plant. Each of the four platoons in a company has four generators, for a total of 16. At standard output, each platoon can generate up to 3.2 megawatts of commercial-grade electric power.
At full manning, each company in the 249th has 72 Soldiers; Charlie Company currently has 38. Most companies that just activated would have some time to train and come up to full strength, but the 249th called Charlie Company to duty immediately.
The company was supposed to activate on Sept. 15, but "we had to postpone our activation because the battalion had to support the Hurricane Ike response," said Capt. Francis Pera, commander of C Company. "The 249th was still recovering from Hurricane Gustav, and we just didn’t have enough manpower to go from Gustav to Ike with everything else that was happening.
"So they gave us the warning order to get the guys prepared on a short time-line," Pera said. "We got them trained and equipped on the most essential tasks, and they did more than 340 missions to support the folks in Texas."
"Team Spartan was composed from the troops who were assembling at Fort Belvoir to be assigned to the future Charlie Company," Olsen said. "Many of them had just moved to Fort Belvoir and were literally unpacking boxes in their new homes. But Mother Nature had other plans, so we formed them into an ad hoc force, fielded them equipment using a government credit card and funds from our headquarters, and gave them one week to train for disaster recovery missions. This may seem like a short time to prepare, but given the quality of our noncommissioned officers and the experience they already had, Team Spartan was able to deploy to Texas and restored power to hundreds of thousands of people. I’m enormously proud of them."
With luck, Charlie Company will now have time to take a more conventional route to becoming a fully functioning part of the 249th.
"They’re ready to conduct limited prime power operations today, and they made that point quite clear to me from their splendid performance during Hurricane Ike," Olsen said. "But Command Sgt. Maj. Andrew McKenna and I have written training guidance that gives Capt. Pera and lst Sgt. David Negron one year to train, man, and equip their company before we ask them to conduct a long-term company deployment. As Army leaders, we owe them a year to get their systems in place so they’re combat-ready."
During that year, Pera and Negron plan to "do a lot of training on fundamentals," Pera said. "We’ll make sure these guys stay keen on their school training tasks so that they can take that knowledge, apply it to different pieces of equipment, and produce the same results.
"In addition to technical proficiency, my priority is building tactical proficiency," Pera added. "I was in the battalion S-3 (training) shop for a few months, and that was the one thing that was a little lacking. I think that’s just the result of the operational tempo these guys have. They’re so mission-driven that they’ve focused almost exclusively on technical tasks at the expense of tactical tasks. So I want to make sure that their warrior skill sets are all sound."
Charlie Company will need both technical and warrior skills to meet the unique blend of challenges that face the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power). It is one of the units that routinely perform full spectrum operations.
"No matter what operation our Army plans, Mother Nature has a vote and there will always be a hurricane, earthquake, flood, ice storm, or something requiring the combined USACE response," Olsen said. "And conversely, no matter how much we train for future natural disasters, there will always remain new and emerging threats to our national security. Our Army knows this and recently updated doctrine to ensure that every Army battalion trains across the full spectrum operations, ranging from disaster relief, through irregular warfare, and up to total war. Fortunately for the 249th, this change in doctrine is not a new concept to our leaders.
"Because the Army needs more units like the 249th, which can execute full spectrum operations, it seems logical that the Army would want to grow more units like the 249th," Olsen said.
The growth could not have come at a better time for the battalion.
"The complexity and the frequency of our missions have been increasing since Sept. 11, 2001, and our problem has been that two line companies just weren’t enough," Olsen said. "I recall how happy we were back in 2003 when we heard of our Army's decision to grow the battalion by activating a third prime power line company."
To bring balance and predictability into a battalion’s schedule and to the Soldiers’ lives, the Army uses the Army Force Generation model (ARFORGEN) to control the potential high deployment tempo of full spectrum operations.
"In theory, ARFORGEN gives our Army's brigade combat teams some predictability of when they’re going to deploy, when they’re going to train, and when they’re going to refit for the next fight," Olsen said. "In general, the Army tries to give these brigades at least one year of training, a one-year deployment, and then a one-year recovery period.
"We’ve been trying to mirror this in the 249th with our two line companies, but because we deploy so frequently our deployments had to be shortened to six months to make it work. Our battalion's force generation model is a minimum of six months of training, six months of a combat deployment, and then six months recovery to get ready for training again.
"The problem is, when you have only two line companies, you simply don’t have enough Soldiers to man that six month/six month/six month cycle," Olsen said. "The math doesn’t add up. With the addition of fully-manned Charlie Company, we’ll have sufficient Soldiers to make that rotation model work, and perhaps even increase the time that our Soldiers can spend with their families.
"It will also give them more time to train at home station," Olsen said. "That’s important because our mission is complex and technically difficult. Our NCOs need time to train with their counterparts in industry, to learn from the faculty at our Prime Power School, and to refine their prime power skills in their own units before they begin their next mission. Having three companies will give our Soldiers more time for training, or to spend with their families, before they’re called to the next contingency operation.
"Now, there’s a wild card in all of that, and that’s Mother Nature," Olsen said. "We don’t know when, where, or how severe the next natural or man-made disaster will be. To offset this unknown, we keep one or two ready platoons on alert during hurricane season, and if it’s a big hurricane like Katrina, the whole battalion, everyone who is not deployed, will go help Americans in their time of need.
"Of course, disaster relief is the right thing to do, it’s within our mission scope, but you can imagine how this affects a company's annual training plan," Olsen said. "Having another company will give us more of a reserve to respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters and disrupt less training."
"Charlie Company is ready to do whatever they ask of us," Pera said. "Of course, it will take some time for us to be fully manned, fully trained, and fully equipped. But during Hurricane Ike, Team Spartan proved that we can take a short-fuse mission, train up in a short time, deploy with limited equipment, and do it well under austere conditions. And we’re ready to do it again."