Combat Engineer - Terminology

Terminology

A general combat engineer is often called a pioneer or sapper, terms derived respectively from the French and British armies. In some armies, pioneer and sapper indicate specific military ranks and levels of training.

Combat engineers work under fire and construction engineers also in the condition of winter combat,and in deep sea operations training. In service roles may be are allocated to different corps, such as the former Soviet Army, or they may be organized in the same corps. Geomatics, or surveying and cartography is another area that sometimes is integrated into military engineering corps, and in other cases is a separate responsibility, as was formerly the case in the Australian Army. While the officers of a combat engineering unit will generally be professionally-certified civil or mechanical engineers, the non-commissioned members are generally not.

• Sapper is a term that is used for soldiers in the American, British, Indian, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand armies who have specialized combat engineer training.
  • In the Israeli Defence Forces, Sapper 06 ( פלס 06 ) is a military profession code denoting a combat engineer who has graduated from basic general engineering training.
• Pioneer
  • In the Finnish army, pioneeri is the private equivalent rank in the army for a soldier who has completed the basic combat engineering training. Naval engineers retain the rank matruusi but bear the pioneeri insignia on their sleeves.
• Assault pioneer
  • In the British, Canadian and Australian armies, an assault pioneer is an infantry soldier with some limited combat engineer training in clearing obstacles during assaults and light engineering duties. Until recently, assault pioneers were responsible for the operation of flamethrowers.
• Field engineer is a term used (or formerly used) in many commonwealth armies. In modern usage, it is often synonymous with "combat engineer". However, the term originally identified those military engineers who supported an army operating in the field as opposed to garrison engineers who built and supported permanent fix bases. In its original usage, "field engineering" would have been inclusive of but broader than "combat engineering."
• Miner
• Pontonier