Italian Engineer Command
It has been created in ROME on the 10 September 2010 through the merge of the former Engineer School and the Engineer Brigade located in UDINE.
It has overarching responsibility over all the general support Engr units the specialized personnel of those units, when needed is detached and task organized to take part in all the operational contexts both on the national soil and abroad when deployed on Mission.
The Engineer Command plays several roles on the general support engineer regiments or the direct support engineer regiments, sappers belonging to Maneuver Brigades.
In particular it is:
• Engineer Inspectorate: it carries out studies, doctrine, analysis and lessons learned on all Engineer matters including those related to the Force Protection and the C-IED;
• Training Institute: is responsible for the management and conduct of training courses on engineer as well as EOD, IEDD, C-IED and FP related matters;
• Tactical Command: it can provide C2 of the general support Engineer units (pioneers, pontoneers and railway engineers) as well as Multinational CIMIC Group and C-IED CoE or can detach teams of specialists carrying out support to other military units in both Article 5 Operations and in Crisis Response Operations (CRO).
Worth mentioning the brand new "Engr Support to FP" Center (born in January 2016) which main aim of developing national doctrine and specific qualification courses on Force Protection Engineering. It also provides technical advice to the operational planning on FP and the development of the Armed Forces programs related to FP systems.
Experiences from deployments
Military Engineers have been deployed several times in support of Italian contingents and different coalitions during missions abroad under NATO, ONU, UE umbrella showing the high and sound level of interoperability with other Nations. Worth mentioning from the MILENG point of view are missions in Bosnia – Herczegovina, Pakistan, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon and, Afghanistan.
In this theatres ITA MILENG has incredibly improved its already huge experience in demining, EOD, C-IED, RC Force Protection Engineering. Experience on the fields has been correctly used to drive the process of renovating equipment, deriving new procedures and processes with the final purpose of working making interoperability reality instead of a dream only. This has led to make MILENG becoming the "cutting edge" of the ITA Army.