For this thread, please accept the premise that Trump declares a National Emergency and the military is ordered to begin construction of a border wall.
CNN has explained how the funding will work. DOD estimates 2.5 billion is readily available under Title 10.
I remember from history classes that the Seabees and other Allied construction battalions did amazing work in WWII. The British and US constructed Mulberry Harbours to support the D Day landing. They bridged the Rhine for the invasion of Germany. Absolutely legendary achievements to support the war. Many of these men were professional tradesmen that joined the military to work in construction.
I know the construction battalions built bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. But how much civilian contracting do they rely on? What kind of talent and resources do the construction battalions currently have?
That makes a difference in cost and efficiency in building a border wall. Imho I think they can build the wall significantly better and cheaper than civilian contractors looking to make a juicy profit off the government. The construction battalions won’t be cutting corners to save a buck.
Do you think the current construction battalions are ready for the challenge of a 1000 mile border wall? Can they build it significantly cheaper?
I found this information about the current Seabees. Sounds impressive but the work on repairs at Tyndall AFB (hurricane Michael) are projected to take 5 years?
I know the Navy doesn’t work for our flyboys. But where are the Air Force construction battalions?
They’re not really set up to be cost-efficient or used for this scale of project. the Army Corps of Engineers is, but they’re mostly used to dealing with civilians on things like flood control, etc… The actual construction soldiers are integrated into the various Marine/Army units, and in large part are mostly concerned with blowing stuff up more than building it.
The Navy and Air Force units are more geared toward building the infrastructure needed to support a modern military- they would be able to build a wall, but there just aren’t that many of them to build it in any kind of reasonable time frame without likely causing serious issues with readiness and/or training. The smart way to do it (not that Trump would do this) would be to rotate the battalions in/out as deployments for a few months - if done right, it could be valuable training.
Plus, I suspect that the military pays their Seabees and Red Horse (USAF heavy construction) troops a whole lot more than civilian construction companies will be paying their Mexican laborers.
So I’m saying it’ll cost more and take longer by having the military do it.
And doubled the Time.
AFAIK
The Corps still hasn’t finished reinforcing the levees around New Orleans. They were heavily damaged in 2005 after Katrina.
I agree a border wall could be a great training exercise for the soldiers in the construction battalions. It’s hard to say if the DOD will factor that into the mission.
Or if they’ll just dump this project on the Corps of Engineers.
The Army Corps contracts the work, which means huge labor costs and also overruns because of change orders.
As a retired Seabee, I can tell you that they are more than capable of erecting any sort of wall you care to design. The Seabees have all necessary trades, tools and equipment for the work, are commanded by engineers (the Civil Engineer Corps), are fully equipped for extended bivouac, and do not use civilian manpower, which is a huge savings. The only issue would be that, as with overseas work, the battalions would rotate in and out until the work was completed. In other words, it would be treated as just another deployment rotation.
The US Air Force has the Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineer squadrons (RED HORSE) which perform heavy construction operations, primarily building airfields and temporary advance bases. From the article:
*With an estimated $100 million worth of projects under way at the end of 2002, RED HORSE squadrons are the leading edge of one of the largest military construction programs since Vietnam. “These are awesome accomplishments,” said Col. Fred Wieners, director of Task Force Enduring Look, an Air Force effort to document lessons learned in the war against terrorism. “What other country could go halfway around the world and do that?”
Consider the scale of the ramp project—the biggest single job a RED HORSE unit has ever undertaken.
In this venture, Air Force engineers from the 820th and 823rd RED HORSE units spent five months transforming a scrub-and-sand Gulf desert site into a paved airfield the size of about 20 combined football fields.*
The US Navy of course has the United States Naval Construction Battalions, also known as SEABEES. They build marine structures and land bases, doing much of the actual construction in Viet Nam, a lot in the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan, as well as supporting construction and maintenance on US bases and that of allied nations around the globe.
Building ‘Wall’ would be a pointless exercise in political idiocy which provides little practical ‘training’ for anyone. There are some significant challenges in building a structure along many stretches of the US-Mexico border where the Rio Grande meanders, but the major problem will be the legal and political challenges of grabbing private land via a questionable eminent domain claim, cutting off US-owned land out of practical necessity, and resolving disputes over what is US and what is Mexican territory, all for the purpose of building ‘Wall’ that is not actually going to accomplish anything in terms of abating illegal immigration which is already on a downturn.
If there is some desire to expend public monies to ‘train’ the various DoD construction forces, we have a vast amount of decaying civil infrastructure in need of inspection, maintenance, and replacement, to the tune of costs that are estimated to exceed US$1T. I don’t think this is the best use of these construction forces’ efforts, since they already have a training budget and activities which are devoted to the specific kinds of missions and projects that they work, but it still makes more sense than building ‘Wall’, which is basically a sketch pitch rejected by Monty Python for being too silly.
RED HORSE I like that acronym. They’re probably repairing Tyndall AFB. Hurricane Michael tore it to shreds in Oct.
I guess there’s a certain amount of pride in the US history of construction. A lot of big projects have been completed over the years.
The infrastructure our grandparents and great-grandparents built is decaying and needs repair or replacement. They’ll be a lot of construction in the next few decades.
Hopefully Red Horse has improved since I was in, as they were pretty much considered a joke at that point.
The fly in the ointment for using service members to build anything in the US is that it takes away jobs. Labor unions and contractors would rightly be angered at the unfairness of the competition and loss of income, which is why outfits like the Seabees are rarely used at home, even on military bases. There have been exceptions, such as hurricane cleanup, etc., but it’s been rare.
So when Trump says he would use the military, he’s likely only referring to the COE, which uses civilian contractors for all their work. Having worked for them in the past, I can tell you that their contractors are experts at using weasel words in their contracts, and milking the government for all they can get. A typical ploy for contractors is to provide a list of personnel in their bid who have top qualifications, then to hire much cheaper and marginally qualified personnel to actually run the project. Quite often, the people who they are listing in the bid don’t even work for the company any longer. And don’t get me started on change orders. If it’s not spelled out exactly in the contract, it becomes a very expensive add-on, and can even become grounds for delay claims by the contractor.
According to this USA Today story, the walls would be designed by the US Army Corps of Engineers but then subcontracted out to (I assume) civilian parties.
I went yes and at about the same cost. Don’t know about the current situation but in the past both Federal and state guard/reserves were always looking for projects that would meet the training and readiness requirements. Our one conservation group got them (reservists) a couple times and Army Corp help in planning.
But where are the Air Force construction battalions?
But that’s our government for you. Everything costs 5 times as much on gov contracts.