Construction Troops

Military construction formations (construction troops, construction battalion) — (military units in a number of states, intended for the preparation of a theaters of military operations: the construction of military infrastructure, defensive structures and communications, as well as the arrangement and quartering of troops in both wartime and peacetime.

Depending on the tasks they perform and their affiliation with a particular state, military construction formations may be combined into an independent branch of the armed forces (as, for example, in the Construction Troops (Bulgaria)), or be part of other branches of the armed forces, services, and may also be outside the authorized strength of the armed forces, being paramilitary formations or separate organisations.

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and later in the Russian Federation, military construction units were never designated as an independent branch of the armed forces, but existed only as separate military construction units subordinate to the relevant governing bodies. In the Russian Federation, from 1996 to 2017, alongside military construction units, there were engineering and technical military formations under the Federal Executive Bodies, which carried out activities in the field of specialized construction, as well as in the field of operation, restoration, and construction of telecommunications networks.

Many countries worldwide have "military construction formations," primarily those with fairly large armed forces, the most significant of which are part of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Also, for example, in North Korea, civilian construction organizations do not exist at all, and all construction in the country is carried out by military construction workers of the Korean People's Army.^{[citation needed]}

In Nazi Germany the Organization Todt was a construction organism. At the initial stage of the existence of these formations, service in them for German citizens conditionally corresponded to alternative civilian service, which currently exists in a number of countries around the world. After November 1942, personnel of German nationality, and then from the spring of 1944, the military personnel of other nationalities were given full status equal to those of the Wehrmacht. There was also another paramilitary organization of Nazi Germany, which included military construction units—the Reich Labour Service (RAD). In the RAD, from 1935 onward, all German male citizens, and from the start of the Second World War also female citizens, served six months of labor service twice a year (fit young men served this service until conscription into the armed forces). From the spring of 1944, RAD personnel were also given the same status as Wehrmacht personnel.

Taking into account the number of military construction detachments (around 500 — only in civilian ministries and departments) with an average staff strength of 600-800 people in the 1980s, the personnel of military construction units reached 300-400 thousand people, which at that time quantitatively exceeded such branches of the armed forces as the Soviet Airborne Forces (60,000), Soviet Naval Infantry (15,000) and Soviet Border Troops of the KGB (220,000) — taken together. Despite their widespread use and large numbers, the work of military construction workers in the civilian economy, as some believed, was contrary to the Constitution of the USSR and the USSR Law on Universal Military Service, and such units themselves were illegal.^[1][2]