42 Survey Engineer Group

Based at Denison Barracks in Hermitage, near Newbury, 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic) is a Joint Force Command specialist Royal Engineer unit that provides geographic support to all elements of UK Defence; particularly to Army headquarters, formations and units.

The Regiment consists of the following units:

• 13 Geographic Squadron
• 14 Geographic Squadron
• 16 Geographic Support Squadron

• 135 Independent Geographic Squadron RE(V) routinely reinforces the Regiment with TA personnel as Individual Augmentees.

Capabilities

The role of 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic) is to provide field deployable geographic support to Defence. As well as supporting Current Operations, it maintains sub-units and individuals at readiness for deployment and support to exercises.

The capabilities provided by the Regiment range from raw data collection (including geodetic surveys) and information management; through information exploitation, terrain analysis and visualisation; to geospatial information dissemination (electronically across networks, by bulk reproduction and supply of hard copy mapping, or on a digital media).

Deployments
 
The Regiment’s current main effort is support to Op HERRICK in Afghanistan; providing additional specialist officers and soldiers to augment and reinforce existing embedded geographic personnel on the deployed staffs. The current requirement for geographic support in Afghanistan has led to a dispersed Geographic Support Group (GSG) of about a half-Squadron size being deployed from the Regiment on an enduring basis there.

In addition to Afghanistan the Regiment plays a key part in other Defence outputs. These tasks have recently included deployments of airfield survey teams around the world to contribute to international air safety as part of the Terminal Aeronautical GNSS Geodetic Survey (TAGGS) Programme; support to other Defence Intelligence organisations; support to other Intelligence Agencies; and finally support to the Op ELLAMY Libya campaign where Regimental personnel worked both in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and at sea with the UK Naval Task Group.

Closer to home, the Regiment continues to be heavily involved in support to UK Operations through the Standing Joint Command; with personnel supporting the planning for the Olympic Games and the potential Oil Tanker strikes of 2012.

Sport, Adventure Training and other Opportunities
 
The Regiment has an excellent sporting ethos and record of success. Teams regularly compete in a variety of cricket, rugby, football, boxing, golf, cross country, swimming and volleyball competitions. Members of the Regiment have and do currently represent the Combined Services and Army at rugby, cricket and swimming. Of particular note this year, the Regiment has won the Army Minor Unit Cups for hockey, squash and athletics.

A contingent from the Regiment spent the beginning of March 2012 on the annual Regimental Winter Ski-Touring Exercise in Les Contamines, France. The Regiment also saw its football team head to Boston, Massachusetts in the summer of 2011 to compete against three local collegiate teams. In addition, members of the Regimental Cycling Team went to the French Alps to complete the 760 km ride from Thon-les-Bains on the shores of Lake Geneva to Antibes on the Cote D’Azur in July 2011. Closer to home, adventurous training activities have recently been conducted by Squadrons in the Lake District, Brecon Beacons and Bavaria.

Comments

Needs an update, no longer at Dennison Barracks, moved to RAF Wyton in 2014.

Update all done, thanks

What happened to 19 SQN

I would be very interested to know what happened to 19 Sqn as well. People I have asked, appear not to know :-(

Disbanded mid 1990s, then resurfaced shortly as 19 Specialist Team Royal Engineers, now defunct.