Royal Engineers map out a path to victory in specialised new contest run by US Army

Two soldiers from the Royal Engineers have beaten 13 other teams to win a competition run by the US Army which involved a series of technical and physical challenges to test their specialist mapping skills.

Lance Corporal Jonathan Ward and Sapper George Gibbons won the Engineer School's very first Regimental Best Mapper Competition, which took place at Fort Leonard Wood in the Ozark mountains in Missouri.

The competitors were judged on their ability to perform time-constrained physical and mental challenges that tested their geospatial and communication skills and they were also tested on their general soldiering skills, such as navigation and fitness.

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LCpl Ward and Spr Gibbons are members of 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic), which carries out various duties including raw data collection from surveys, terrain analysis and ground visualisation.

The regiment is based at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, home to the National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence, which provides intelligence support to the Armed Forces on operations around the world.

LCpl Ward said of the competition: "It makes you want to out-compete all the other competitors. It's good to see how everyone else works as well.

"It's not every day you get to come out to a different country and operate with different equipment and people."

The time constraints on the various tests added to the realism.

"When we're working in real-life situations... we've had minutes to make maps occasionally, and this simulates the real deal," he explained.

Engineer School Command Sergeant Major Zachary Plummer thanked the British pair for taking part and emphasised how valuable geospatial engineers are to the modern military.

"Their skills are especially critical in large-scale combat operations," said CSM Plummer. "As the Army is striving to be data-centric, geo-engineers have been data masters for decades.

"And though a small community – only 5% of the Engineer Regiment – your value and contributions are amazing."