Using technology, Army moves combat engineers from the breach to save lives

Source Domain: www.stripes.com

A smoke machine attached to a TRV-150 unmanned aircraft is tested during a training scenario March 5, 2026, at Fort Hood, Texas. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)

FORT HOOD, Texas — Clearing the path to the front lines of combat only has about a 50% survivability rate for Army combat engineers.

Challenged to improve that, Fort Hood’s 36th Engineer Brigade trained Thursday in breaching operations using more than a dozen pieces of new technology to find the right mix that will make sure all soldiers survive.

“We are executing in concert with a maneuver formation to remove soldiers from the breach and get the armored formation through,” said Maj. Michael Caddigan, operations officer for the 36th Engineer Brigade. “One of the most complex things we do is breaching a complex obstacle.”

The efforts of the engineer brigade began last year on the periphery of the Army’s Transformation in Contact initiative that pushes the service to rapidly field new technology, Caddigan said. It’s all about saving lives and being ready for what the next war will look like.

“We would put 150 soldiers against this problem set behind us. We would expect to lose about 75 of them with the old ways of doing things,” he said. “Now, using our [machine assisted] capability, our expectation is that we keep those 150 soldiers alive for the next fight.”

Pfc. Marquel Jenkins, a combat engineer with the 36th Engineer Brigade, flies a TRV-150 unmanned aircraft capable of moving up to 150 pounds during a training scenario March 5, 2026, at Fort Hood, Texas. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)