British and American sappers build runway together, Exercise Pegasus Gaul, 19 May 2015.

British and American airborne engineers have worked together to develop their key skills of building and repairing runways.

Exercise Pegasus Gaul has seen 23 Parachute Engineer Regiment training with the US Army’s 37th Brigade Engineer Battalion and 173rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion. The soldiers familiarised themselves with each other’s equipment and techniques, before working together to build a temporary landing strip at Rock Barracks in Woodbridge.

The week-long training is part of improving the ability of 16 Air Assault Brigade and the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which both serve as their respective armies’ rapid reaction forces, to deploy as a joint force in response to international crises.

23 Para Engr Regt’s Major Dave Stead said: “The US is among our closest allies and learning to work together with their airborne engineers is a key objective for the Regiment. The focus of this exercise is developing our common skills of constructing semi-improved surfaces for transport aircraft to operate from. There are three elements to that – training to use each other’s equipment; understanding the different criteria we work to and merging them so a US aircraft could fly from a UK-built airstrip and vice versa; and then building trust and understanding between us by getting out and doing the job together.

“It’s going really well. Under close supervision, US operators are finding it remarkably easy to use our equipment and we’re sharing experiences and learning from each other.”

Airfield construction is a key skill for the rapid reaction role, enabling further troops and equipment to be brought in to develop a force’s capabilities. Building a landing strip from scratch involves clearing vegetation and topsoil away with diggers and bulldozers; levelling it with a grader to stringent length, width and gradient standards to enable aircraft to take off and land; and then compacting it with a roller.

Sapper Martin Bell, 24 from Pontyclun in South Wales, said: “To do a full runway is a long job, but I like having a big task to get on with. We cleared and prepared a full landing strip in Kenya last year and it’s rewarding to see a Hercules land and know that you made that happen. It’s been a good experience to work alongside the Americans who really are the same soldiers as us, just wearing a different uniform.”

23 Para Engr Regt and 37 BEB have already worked together this year on the Combined Joint Operational Exercise at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The two-month long exercise culminated in a simulated mission in which 1,900 British and American troops and their equipment parachuted into a troubled region to work side-by-side to restore stability.

37 BEB’s Sergeant First Class Patrick Stundahl, 36 from Mississipi, said: “We’ve bonded together really well across the two exercises. CJOAX was about the British coming over to operate on our terms, and this is us working with British equipment and procedures. It’s all about building a relationship now so that if we go on operations together we already know all about each other.”