Army Europe to retain Coleman Barracks as interim site

By U.S. Army Europe Public AffairsFebruary 6, 2015

WIESBADEN, Germany - The United States will retain Coleman Barracks, Mannheim, as an interim site to store and maintain vehicles and equipment of the European Activity Set. Coleman Barracks was previously scheduled to be returned to the German government this year.

The European Activity Set is an Armored Brigade Combat (ABCT) Team-sized group of vehicles and equipment that is pre-positioned in Europe to outfit U.S. Army Regionally Aligned Forces when they rotate into theater for training, exercises or contingency operations. The EAS includes a full array of nearly 800 tracked and wheeled vehicles plus all associated equipment in an ABCT, such as Abrams Main Battle Tanks and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, howitzers, assault breaching vehicles, and the standard array of tracked and wheeled support systems.

The plan does not call for storage and maintenance of any aviation equipment, nor do we anticipate operating the airfield in association with this plan.

Our current plan is to use Coleman as a temporary solution until suitable facilities are established with our NATO partners further east. The actual timeline for reutilization of Coleman Barracks is unknown at this point, but international agreements within NATO are expected to be the driving factor.

The Army Material Command is tasked with receiving, maintaining, and issuing the equipment. We do not yet know how they will execute the mission. Nor do we know how many employees or what kind of employees will work at the site. U.S. Forces are committed to following all applicable labor laws, rules, and regulations.

As with all of our Host Nation consigned properties, when we no longer have a requirement for the facilities, they will be returned to the federal government in accordance with BImA operating procedures.

We do not anticipate any new construction, although we anticipate some minor renovations, primarily to administrative spaces and to return the communications systems to full working order.

Armored vehicle storage and maintenance will occur on the site, we do not currently plan to conduct any off-road or off-post testing of these vehicles.

We anticipate moving the majority of the incoming and outgoing equipment by rail, although daily work traffic, spare parts and associated deliveries will enter Coleman Barracks as we have done in the past.

Although the site has been mostly vacant the last few months, we don't expect any major increase in noise or traffic compared to our historical use of the site and we will continue to ensure our well established environment protection plans and procedures remain in place in future use of Coleman Barracks.

---

About us: U.S. Army Europe is uniquely positioned in its 51 country area of responsibility to advance American strategic interests in Europe and Eurasia. The relationships we build during more than 1,000 theater security cooperation events in more than 40 countries each year lead directly to support for multinational contingency operations around the world, strengthen regional partnerships and enhance global security.

Related Links:

View this release in German