My son is commissioning next month on the 12th of August in the Corps of Engineers. He is not a degreed engineer as he is Political Science w/a concentration in Security Studies. My question is, what does a 2nd Lt. Engineer officer do? to specify more on his unit, he will be assigned to a Multi-Bridge company out in Ft. Belvoir (he is in the USAR) I have asked a lot of people what engineers do and all people tell me is that he creates bridges and blows it up.
My DS is with the National Guard Multi Role Bridging Unit. He's been with them for 2 yrs now. For most of that time he was a PL for the recon platoon. It was a lot more tactical which he enjoyed. They go out and scout the locations to do the bridging as well as provide security during the bridging operations, they also run up and down the rivers in boats to do scouting. After a while in addition to recon he was the PL for the maintenance and equipment operators platoo
Now he is the units communication officer so all communication from the state to his unit goes thru him.
As far as the bridging operations, they will do fixed bridging as well as the pontoon bridging.
Don't worry about not being an engineer. He will learn the equipment and how it operates. The senior NCO's will help him out. As stated above first and foremost he leads the people under him.
He will be doing paper work like he would with any type of unit.
As with any type of engineering unit, if deployed they could run escorts for other units, do some demolition, or a number of different assignments.