Business is Booming: Engineers Assemble at North Dakota's 164th RTI to Receive Exempla

By <i>By Sgt. Eric W. Jensen, Joint Force Headquarters<i>January 7, 2011

National Guard combat engineers from across the nation stood in a graveyard of obliterated doors and wooden panels at the Camp Grafton South training area Dec. 14. Despite their best efforts to heat up the 164th Regional Training Institute's (RTI) live explosive breach range with detonators and impulse charges, North Dakota's winter fury had already set in at a brisk 12 degrees. An entire inventory of military winter weather garments were on display as the Guardsmen packed their gloves with handwarmers and rigged various configurations of explosives to their targets as part of an Advanced Leadership Course (ALC, formerly called Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course).

The ALC urban breaching module, led by North Dakota instructors from the 164th RTI, is unique to the National Guard. The active-duty Army and Marine Corps provide the same training, but "interestingly enough, we are the only National Guard RTI teaching live breach charges right now," said Sgt. 1st Class Paul Deegan, RTI course manager.

National Guard engineer units couldn't be more pleased, either. The RTI offers a sensible, convenient training forum. Command Sgt. Maj. Orville Wang, 164th RTI commandant, said the schoolhouse attracts Guard engineers from all 50 states and U.S. territories.

"If we didn't have this place, I think the only other alternative would be a much longer course where they would have to train with 'Big Army' at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.," he said. "I think we've got the right recipe here."

The ALC's breach range is just one of the ingredients in the RTI's military education program. The Institute provides 25 fully-accredited engineer courses each year, including training for U.S. Army Engineer Military Occupation Specialties, Noncommissioned Officer Education System classes and the North Dakota National Guard Officer Candidate School.

More Bang for the Buck

Wang said that, as a whole, engineers receive the best training money can buy at the schoolhouse and they have the materials with which to do it. In regard to the breaching course, he said, "the materials are all pretty much reusable. We have a stack of doors to no end."

Students at the ALC are more than enthusiastic to annihilate that back stock. After assessing the damage made on one of the targets by a charge configuration, an instructor explains to his students, "This is why we love our jobs."

It's an applicable aspect of the job, too. Engineers currently use the same breaching techniques in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wang said Soldiers use the explosives to get inside buildings and clear them while causing a minimal amount of damage.

"The combat engineer, a lot of times, will be integrated with infantry squads because we have explosive backgrounds," said Staff Sgt. Bradley Bergeron, RTI instructor.

Deegan explains, "What we're taught in breach school is to use the minimum amount of explosives to affect 100 percent of the target, so what you calculate for is the smallest amount that will successfully get through the target."

The instructors consider every detonation a "test shot." This allows their students to learn what is going to work if they ever have to use the techniques in a combat theater. Results between the different explosive configurations can vary.

"For instance, I know what a water impulse charge on a light, metal door will do," Deegan said. "I know because we've done it so many times."

Old School to New School

That type of repetition in training has translated into a staff of knowledgeable instructors who round out a full-time force of nearly 90 personnel at the RTI. The team saw the unveiling of a new 185,000-square-foot building in August and relocated into the facility at the end of September. The first of a two-phased project, the building serves as a schoolhouse and billeting location for military engineers and officer candidates from across the country.

The new building boasts 60 rooms for housing students, plumbing and electrical labs, an assembly hall with volleyball courts and basketball hoops, a 25,000-square-foot storage space to house carpentry, electrical, masonry and plumbing materials and an indoor running track incorporated into the corridor system - a feature that visitors from warmer states can appreciate during the North Dakota winters.

"We've got people from Louisiana, South Carolina and even Puerto Rico that come up here a lot," Bergeron said. "Their cold is putting on a jacket and our cold is putting on another four or five layers of jackets. It's definitely an experience for them."

Nearly 2,500 students are projected to attend courses at the RTI in 2011. With the influx of students to the school, a second phase for the building construction project is scheduled to begin in 2017, which will add 68,000 square feet for two additional billeting wings. That space is vital considering that the 164th RTI trains nearly 60 percent of all Reserve Component U.S. Army Engineers.

Equally vital has been the RTI's solid relationship with the active-duty Army at Fort Leonard Wood and National Guard Bureau. Wang said that the support received by their peers has helped the RTI in coordinating their curriculum, determining funding processes and developing methods for training their Soldiers.

"Fort Leonard Wood puts their arm around us," he said. "They don't say, 'follow me.' They say, 'How can we do this.' This relationship is priceless and it's taken years to achieve."

You can add it to the list of notable achievements for the RTI. In 2008, the 164th received a "Fully Accredited" rating during an accreditation review by the U.S. Army Engineer School at Fort Leonard Wood by achieving success in all evaluated areas and scoring in the highest percentile for U.S. Army training standards.

In 2005, the RTI became the first engineer school to achieve an "Institute of Excellence" status from the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.

Wang is optimistic that even better things are yet to come.

"We're just starting to touch our capabilities and where we're going in the future," he said.