Why the U.S. Army Owns So Many Fossils | Hacker News Reader

Why the U.S. Army Owns So Many Fossils

atlasobscura.com

116 pointsandrewl32 comments

Its always fascinated me how the US Army is involved in civilian engineering projects. I remember when I was in DC back in 2012 after the earthquake damaged the Washington needle, the US Army engineers had all their branding up around the repair site. Or when I was just outside of Seattle, the engineers were managing forest land and putting a new road in.

In the UK I don't think the REME or Royal Corps of Engineers have ever done or managed civilian projects.

Anyone able to explain why, is it a federal government thing?

I’m not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar but I believe this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigable_servitude

In the US navigable waterways (rivers etc) are controlled by the federal government. It’s in the commerce clause. There’s also probably a reason for this related to the federal government’s role in resolving disputes between states and rivers flowing among and through multiple states.

Since it controls rivers, the government is also responsible for guarding against flooding, etc. from this stems the Hoover Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority (damming and electrification of the south), etc

Another result of this is that the Army Corps of Engineers maintains some pretty nice recreational facilities along the waterways they manage.

For example: https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/

IIRC, the US Army Corps of Engineers also built/repaired the levees in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Although this is seemingly only my own belief, I get the sense that the difference between how those things are handled even between the USA and in general how that relationship exists in Europe, is the strong emphasis of separation of powers that was constituted in the US's fundamental governing premise.

In Europe, generally speaking the government is largely dominated by the legislative today (whereas it was dominated by the aristocracy prior to WWI, generally). In the USA, the Constitution explicitly separates the Legislative of making the rules/laws; and the Executive, the enactment of the rules/laws ... the rule making and the acting body of the government. That is a notable difference from Europe where the lines are not drawn as clearly and the military, the body generally charged with security the health of the society, is subsumed and subjugated to the legislative, not at all on equal corollary to the government bureaucracy the way that it stands in the USA, where the military is not a body under the legislative the way it generally is in Europe, but rather an equal part to the Executive, acting body.

It's quite a nice balance actually in terms of preventing military control, while also not suppressing the self-preservation requirements of a healthy society the way that has been done in Europe, largely intentionally. It's a larger topic in and of itself, but the artificial suppression of both military and social self-preservation in Europe was very much the reason that the USA (mostly) has been serving as a kind of paternalistic helicopter parent over Europe, because the transatlantic aristocracy has intentionally and artificially suppressed Europe's health, immune system, and therefore basic human self-preservation instincts.

It's a great tragedy actually, and may one day be recognized as the great atrocity it is, a kind of national Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, which will only result in Europe suffering the invariable grave consequences from such actions, be it total vanquishment, conquest, and occupation of their societies by foreigners in a kind of civilizational implosion we only know from the history books, or some other erratic outcome from a backlash against actions that have very much predictable equal and opposite reactions.

But why are soldiers doing it? The IRS is also a federal government thing but it's not run by soldiers.

They are not all soldiers, the corps has considerable civilian staff as well. But the reason is mostly historical. The corps existed first to build and maintain coastal fortifications and then when the western frontier opened up it made sense to assign them to secure the rivers and improve the waterways west (the western expansion was as much a military operation against the native peoples as it was a civilian migration).

The criminal division of the IRS is most certainly armed, as well as equipped with AR-15s, and are trained by Army Special Forces contractors.

Huh? That doesn't make them soldiers. Police are armed as well but they're not soldiers. Civilian contractors aren’t soldiers either.

The Royal Engineers designed, but did not build, the Royal Albert Hall. They've built a fair number of sea defences in Britain and around the world, though none in recent times. Back in colonial times they built much infrastructure, including administrative buildings, irrigation, dams and canals in a number of places, probably most in India and Canada.

There's also the Ordnance Survey that came out of the RE and surveyed a good part of the globe. There's trig points all over the planet.

UK Army engineers have generic responsibility to provide Military Assistance to the Civil Authority (e.g. building emergency bridges after a flood) but are not funded or resourced to conduct general civil engineering. REME are focussed on maintaining the Army’s vehicle fleet.

"the Washington needle' I'll have to start calling it that.

You confused me because you reference Washington, DC and Seattle, Washington; which has the Space Needle.

The USACE completed the original work on the Washington Monument so it makes sense that they would help with the repairs. The US government is a patch work agencies that have historically been used to funnel federal money into state and local projects. Trying to understand the 'reason' an agency does something is usually a maddening history lesson in bureaucracy.

Apologies I am a Brit, how about Obelisk instead? :)

Maybe the name? (Washington Monument) Or we could start calling Buckingham Palace the Fancy Queen House. :-)

I can think of two unofficial reasons:

1. Keep their skills up. 2. Avoid waste of available resources.

I thought the US had extremely strong constitutional rules about not using the military on the US mainland?

Whatever the rules are, I am guessing they are relaxed around civil operations. Pararescuemen (USAF PJs) were deployed for search& rescue during hurricane relief operations.

More if you want to dig into it: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/News/Article/Article/164568...

I don't see any mention of that

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...

I think it's called the Posse Comitatus act or something like that.

It looks like that specifically forbids them from enforcing the law, not public works projects. And there seem to be several exemptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

We have Army National Guard that are often deployed during weather emergencies.

National guard are state resources whenever the feds aren't using them.

Like all other things US military...money.

It allows the Generals to ask for bigger budgets and allows Congress to ask for more money for their States.

For a State there is nothing like having a military base and/or military run projects to boost the coffers.

Edit:

Notwithstanding downvotes, The President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY 2020) includes $4.827 billion in gross discretionary funding for the Civil Works program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Article: The Army Corps of Engineers Excels at Wasting Money (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2...)

As the subtitle says, turns out massive flood control projects are a great way to find dinosaurs.

It is interesting to note that from these finds apparently came the first T-Rex fossils with intact tiny arms.

I don't know how things go in the US, but these days in my neck of the woods the vast majority of archaeological finds come from preventive archaeology. Pretty much every news article starts with "while making a parking lot" or "during the construction of the new XY highway".

My friend's job for a while was to justify not doing any preventative archaeology for new projects, as it obviously costs a lot to have to have 3 or 4 archaeologists go on site and do an excavation for a month or two.

So not from a secret project to weaponize cloned dinosaurs?

Calvin and Hobbes saw this coming:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/117/910/fly...

Context:

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2015/01/04/

Still looking for the Spear of Destiny

Obviously it's in Hangar 51 next to the Ark of the Covenant.

Military units are always the best protected lands.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com