I walk by a yard with a sign “Veteran of the United States Army.” It’s a sign you don’t see very often, but probably should. The members of the United States armed forces who put their lives on the line for our freedom and receive very little pay for their efforts deserve to be celebrated. I have a friend who was drafted into the Army when he was not doing well in medical school and made a 20-year career of it. My father was in the U.S. Army in World War II. He was drafted when he was in college working on his Ph.D. He was stationed as a medic and after the war was over, the U.S. government brought in professors to teach classes at an abandoned casino in France. My dad said he could see a giant roulette wheel leaning up against a wall. He was grateful for the wonderful gift of education he received there. I’m sure many of you know someone who had a relationship with the United States Army. Let’s find out more about it.
According to Wikipedia, the United States Army is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution. It is a uniformed service of the United States and is part of the Department of the Army, which is one of the three military departments of the Department of Defense. The U.S. Army is headed by a civilian senior appointed civil servant, the secretary of the Army and by a chief military officer, the chief of staff of the Army who is also a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is the largest military branch, and in the fiscal year 2020, the projected end strength for the Regular Army was 480,893 soldiers; the Army National Guard had 336,129 soldiers and the U.S. Army Reserve had 188,703 soldiers. The combined-component strength of the U.S. Army was 1,005,725 soldiers. As a branch of the armed forces, the mission of the U.S. Army is "to fight and win our Nation's wars, by providing prompt, sustained land dominance, across the full range of military operations and the spectrum of conflict, in support of combatant commanders.” The branch participates in conflicts worldwide and is the major ground-based offensive and defensive force of the United States.
Mission Section 3062 of Title 10, U.S. Code defines the purpose of the army as:
· Preserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States.
· Supporting the national policies.
· Implementing the national objectives.
· Overcoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States.
In 2018, “Army Strategy 2018” articulated an eight-point addendum to the Army vision for 2028. While the Army mission remains constant, the Army strategy builds upon the Army's brigade modernization by adding focus to corps and division-level echelons. Modernization, reform for high-intensity conflict and joint multi-domain operations are added to the strategy — to be completed by 2028.
The Army's five core competencies are prompt and sustained land combat, combined arms operations, to include combined arms maneuver and wide–area security, armored and mechanized operations and airborne and air assault operations; and special operations, to set and sustain the theater for the joint force, and to integrate national, multinational, and joint power on land.
Origins The Continental Army was created on June 14, 1775 by the Second Continental Congress as a unified army for the colonies to fight Great Britain, with Georg Washington appointed as its commander. The army was initially led by men who had served in the British Army or colonial militias and who brought much of British military heritage with them. As the Revolutionary War progressed, French aid, resources and military thinking helped shape the new army. A number of European soldiers came on their own to help, such as Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who taught Prussian Army tactics and organizational skills.
The army fought numerous pitched battles and in the South in 1780 and 1781, at times using the Fabian strategy and hit-and-run tactics— under the leadership of Major General Nathanal Greene — hit where the British were weakest to wear down their forces. The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. Hit-and-run tactics are a tactical doctrine of using short surprise attacks, withdrawing before the enemy can respond in force and constantly maneuvering to avoid full engagement with the enemy. Washington led victories against the British at Trenton and Princeton but lost a series of battles in the New York and New Jersey campaign in 1776 and the Philadelphia campaign in 1777. With a decisive victory at Yorktown and the help of the French, the Continental Army prevailed against the British.
After the war, the Continental Army was quickly given land certificates and disbanded in a reflection of the republican distrust of standing armies. State militias became the new nation's sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Point's arsenal. However, because of continuing conflict with Native Americans, it was soon realized that it was necessary to field a trained standing army. The Regular Army was at first very small and after General St. Clair’s defeat at the Battle of the Wabash — where more than 800 Americans were killed — the Regular Army was reorganized as the Legion of the United States, which was established in 1791 and renamed the United States Army in 1796.
In 1798, during the Quasi-War with France, Congress established a three-year "Provisional Army" of 10,000 men, consisting of twelve regiments of infantry and six troops of light dragoons. By March 1799, Congress created an "Eventual Army" of 30,000 men, including three regiments of cavalry. Both "armies" existed only on paper, but equipment for 3,000 men and horses was procured and stored.
Early wars on the frontier The War of 1812, the second and last war between the United States and Great Britain, had mixed results. The U.S. Army did not conquer Canada, but it did destroy Native American resistance to expansion in the Old Northwest and it validated its independence by stopping two major British invasions in 1814 and 1815. After taking control of Lake Erie in 1813, the U.S. Army seized parts of western Upper Canada, burned York and defeated Tecumseh, which caused his Western Confederacy to collapse. Following U.S. victories in the Canadian province of Upper Canada, British troops who had dubbed the U.S. Army "Regulars, by God!", were able to capture and burn Washington, which was defended by militia, in 1814. The regular army, however proved they were professional and capable of defeating the British army during the invasions of Plattsburgh and Baltimore, prompting British agreement on the previously rejected terms of a status quo ante bellum. Two weeks after a treaty was signed (but not ratified), Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans and Siege of Fort St. Philip and became a national hero. U.S. troops and sailors captured HMS Cyane, Levant and Penguin in the final engagements of the war. Per the treaty, both sides — United States and Great Britain — returned to the geographical status quo. Both navies kept the warships they had seized during the conflict.
The U.S. Army fought and won the Mexican-American War —1846–1848, which was a defining event for both countries. The U.S. victory resulted in acquisition of territory that eventually became all or parts of the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming and New Mexico.
American Civil War The American Civil War was the costliest war for the U.S. in terms of casualties. After most slave states, located in the southern U.S., formed the Confederate States, the Confederte States Army, led by former U.S. Army officers, mobilized a large fraction of Southern white manpower. Forces of the United States — the "Union" or "the North" — formed the Union Army, consisting of a small body of regular army units and a large body of volunteer units raised from every state, north and south, except South Carolina.
For the first two years Confederate forces did well in set battles but lost control of the border states. The Confederates had the advantage of defending a large territory in an area where disease caused twice as many deaths as combat. The Union pursued a strategy of seizing the coastline, blockading the ports, and taking control of the river systems. By 1863, the Confederacy was being strangled. Its eastern armies fought well, but the western armies were defeated one after another until the Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862 along with the Tennessee River. In the Vicksburg campaign of 1862–1863, General Ulysses Grant seized the Mississippi River and cut off the Southwest. Grant took command of Union forces in 1864 and after a series of battles with very heavy casualties, he had General Robert E. Lee under siege in Richmond as General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta and marched through Georgia and the Carolinas. The Confederate capital was abandoned in April 1865, and Lee subsequently surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House. All other Confederate armies surrendered within a few months. The war remains the deadliest conflict in U.S. history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 men on both sides. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6.4% in the North and 18% in the South.
World wars The United States joined World War I as an "Associated Power" in 1917 on the side of Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the other Allies. U.S. troops were sent to the Western Front and were involved in the last offensives that ended the war. With the armistice in November 1918, the army once again decreased its forces. In 1939, estimates of the Army's strength range between 174,000 and 200,000 soldiers, smaller than that of Portugal's, which ranked it 17th or 19th in the world in size. General George C. Marshall became Army chief of staff in September 1939 and set about expanding and modernizing the Army in preparation for war.
The United States joined World War II in December 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Some 11 million Americans were to serve in various Army operations. On the European front, U.S. Army troops formed a significant portion of the forces that landed in French North Africa and took Tunisia and then moved on to Sicily and later fought in Italy. In the June 1944 landings in northern France and in the subsequent liberation of Europe and defeat of Nazi Germany, millions of U.S. Army troops played a central role.
In the Pacific War, U.S. Army soldiers participated alongside the United States Marine Corps in capturing the Pacific Islands from Japanese control. Following the Axis surrenders in May (Germany) and August (Japan) of 1945, army troops were deployed to Japan and Germany to occupy the two defeated nations. Two years after World War II, the Army Air Forces separated from the army to become the United States Air Force in September 1947. In 1948, the army was desegregated by order 9981 of President Harry S. Truman.
1945-1960 The end of World War II set the stage for the East–West confrontation known as the Cold War. With the outbreak of the Korean War, concerns over the defense of Western Europe rose. Two corps, V and VII, were reactivated under the Seventh United States Army in 1950, and U.S. strength in Europe rose from one division to four. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops remained stationed in West Germany, with others in Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, until the 1990s in anticipation of a possible Soviet attack. During the Cold War, U.S. troops and their allies fought communist forces in Korea and Vietnam. The Korean War began in June 1950, when the Soviets walked out of a UN Security Council meeting, removing their possible veto. Under a United Nations umbrella, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops fought to prevent the takeover of South Korea by North Korea and later to invade the northern nation. After repeated advances and retreats by both sides and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army's entry into the war, the Korean Armistice Agreement returned the peninsula to the status quo in July 1953.
1960-1970 The Vietnam War is often regarded as a low point for the U.S. Army due to the use of drafted personnel, the unpopularity of the war with the U.S. public and frustrating restrictions placed on the military by U.S. political leaders. While U.S. forces had been stationed in South Vietnam since 1959, in intelligence and advising/training roles, they were not deployed in large numbers until 1965, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. U.S. forces effectively established and maintained control of the "traditional" battlefield, but they struggled to counter the guerrilla hit-and-run tactics of the communist Viet Cog and the North Vietnamese Army. On a tactical level, U.S. soldiers — and the U.S. military as a whole — did not lose a sizable battle.
During the 1960s, the Department of Defense continued to scrutinize the reserve forces and to question the number of divisions and brigades as well as the redundancy of maintaining two reserve components, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara decided that 15 combat divisions in the Army National Guard were unnecessary and cut the number to eight divisions — one mechanized infantry, two armored and five infantry, but increased the number of brigades from seven to 18 — one airborne, one armored, two mechanized infantry and 14 infantry. The loss of the divisions did not sit well with the states. Their objections included the inadequate maneuver element mix for those that remained and the end to the practice of rotating divisional commands among the states that supported them. Under the proposal, the remaining division commanders were to reside in the state of the division base. However, no reduction in total Army National Guard strength was to take place, which convinced the governors to accept the plan. The states reorganized their forces accordingly between December 1, 1967 and May 1, 1968.
1970-1990 The Total Force Policy was adopted by Chief of Staff of the Army General Creighton Abrams in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and involved treating the three components of the army – the Reguar Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve as a single force. General Abrams' intertwining of the three components of the army effectively made extended operations impossible without the involvement of both the Army National Guard and Army Reserve in a predominately combat support role. The army converted to an all-volunteer force with greater emphasis on training to specific performance standards driven by the reforms of General William E. DePuy, the first commander of United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. The 1980s was mostly a decade of reorganization. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 created unified combatant commands bringing the army together with the other four military services under unified, geographically organized command structures. The army also played a role in the invasions of Grenada in 1983 (Operation Urgent Fury) and Panama in 1989 (Operation Just Cause). By 1989 Germany was nearing reunification, and the Cold War was coming to a close. Army leadership reacted by starting to plan for a reduction in strength. By November 1989 Pentagon briefers were laying out plans to reduce army end strength by 23%, from 750,000 to 580,000. A number of incentives such as early retirement were used.
1990s In 1990, Iraq invaded its smaller neighbor, Kuwait, and U.S. land forces quickly deployed to assure the protection of Saudi Arabia. In January 1991 Operation Desert Storm commenced, a U.S.-led coalition which deployed over 500,000 troops, the bulk of them from U.S. Army formations, to drive out Iraqi forces. The campaign ended in total victory, as Western coalition forces routed the Iraqi Army. Some of the largest tank battles in history were fought during the Gulf War. The Battle of Medina Ridge, Battle of Norfolk and Battle of 73 Easting were tank battles of historical significance. After Operation Desert Storm, the army did not see major combat operations for the remainder of the 1990s but did participate in a number of peacekeeping activities. In 1990 the Department of Defense issued guidance for "rebalancing" after a review of the Total Force Policy, but in 2004, Air War College scholars concluded the guidance would reverse the Total Force Policy which is an "essential ingredient to the successful application of military force."
21st century On September 11, 2001, 53 Army civilians — 47 employees and six contractors — and 22 soldiers were among the 125 victims killed in the Pentagon in a terrorist attack when American Airlined Flight 77 commandeered by five Al-Qaeda hijackers slammed into the western side of the building, as part of the September 11 attacks. In response to the September 11 attacks and as part of the Global War on Terror, U.S. and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, displacing the Taliban government. The U.S. Army also led the combined U.S. and allied invasion of Iraq in 2003; it served as the primary source for ground forces with its ability to sustain short- and long-term deployment operations. In the following years, the mission changed from conflict between regular militaries to counterinsurgency, resulting in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. service members — as of March 2008 — and injuries to thousands more. 23,813 insurgents were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. Until 2009, the army's chief modernization plan, its most ambitious since World War II, was the Future Combat Systems program. In 2009, many systems were canceled, and the remaining were swept into the Brigade Combat Team modernization program. By 2017, the Brigade modernization project was completed, and its headquarters, the Brigade Modernization Command, was renamed the Joint Modernization Command or JMC. In response to budget sequestration in 2013, Army plans were to shrink to 1940 levels, although actual active-Army end-strengths were projected to fall to some 450,000 troops by the end of FY2017. From 2016 to 2017, the Army retired hundreds of OH-58 Kiowa Warrior observation helicopters, while retaining its Apache gunships. The 2015 expenditure for Army research, development and acquisition changed from $32 billion projected in 2012 for FY15 to $21 billion for FY15 expected in 2014.
Currently, the Army is divided into the Regular Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard. Some states further maintain state defense forces, as a type of reserve to the National Guard, while all states maintain regulations for state militias. State militias are both "organized," meaning that they are armed forces usually part of the state defense forces or "unorganized," simply meaning that all able-bodied males may be eligible to be called into military service. The U.S. Army is also divided into several branches and functional areas. Branches include officers, warrant officers and enlisted soldiers, while functional areas consist of officers who are reclassified from their former branch into a functional area. However, officers continue to wear the branch insignia of their former branch in most cases, as functional areas do not generally have discrete insignia. Some branches, such as Special Forces, operate similarly to functional areas in that individuals may not join their ranks until having served in another Army branch. Careers in the Army can extend into cross-functional areas for officer, warrant officer, enlisted and civilian personnel.
Structure By 2013, the army shifted to six geographical commands that align with the six geographical unified combatant commands:
· United States Army Central headquartered at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina
· United States Army North headquartered at Fort Sam Houston, Texas
· United States Army South headquartered at Fort Sam Houston, Texas
· United States Army Europe headquartered at Clay Kaserne, Wiesbaden, Germany
· United States Army Pacific headquartered at Fort Shafter, Hawaii
· United States Army Africa headquartered at Vincenza, Italy
The army also transformed its base unit from divisions to brigades. Division lineage will be retained, but the divisional headquarters will be able to command any brigade, not just brigades that carry their divisional lineage. The central part of this plan is that each brigade will be modular i.e., all brigades of the same type will be exactly the same, and thus, any brigade can be commanded by any division. As specified before the 2013 end-strength re-definitions, the three major types of brigade combat teams are:
· Armored brigades, with strength of 4,743 troops as of 2014.
· Stryker brigades, with strength of 4,500 troops as of 2014.
· Infantry brigades, with strength of 4,413 troops as of 2014.
In addition, there are combat support and service support modular brigades. Combat support brigades include aviation brigades, which will come in heavy and light varieties, fires (artillery) brigades — now transforms to division artillery — and expeditionary military intelligence brigades. Combat service support brigades include sustainment brigades and come in several varieties and serve the standard support role in an army.
Training Training in the U.S. Army is generally divided into two categories — individual and collective. Because of COVID-19 precautions, the first two weeks of basic training — not including processing & out-processing — incorporate social distancing and indoor desk-oriented training. Once the recruits have tested negative for COVID-19 for two weeks, the remaining 8 weeks follow the traditional activities for most recruits, followed by Advanced Individualized Training or AIT where they receive training for their military occupational specialties or MOS. Some individual's MOSs range anywhere from 14 to 20 weeks of One Station Unit Training, which combines Basic Training and AIT. The length of AIT school varies by the MOS. The length of time spent in AIT depends on the MOS of the soldier. Certain highly technical MOS training requires many months e.g., foreign language translators. Depending on the needs of the army, Basic Combat Training for combat arms soldiers is conducted at a number of locations, but two of the longest-running are the Armor School and the Infantry School, both at Fort Benning, Georgia. Sergeant Major of the Army Dailey notes that an infantrymen's pilot program for One Station Unit Training or OSUT extends 8 weeks beyond Basic Training and AIT, to 22 weeks. The pilot — designed to boost infantry readiness — ended December 2018. The new Infantry OSUT covered the M240 machine gun as well as the M249. The redesigned Infantry OSUT started in 2019. Depending on the result of the 2018 pilot, OSUTs could also extend training in other combat arms beyond the infantry. One Station Unit Training will be extended to 22 weeks for Armor by Fiscal Year 2021. Additional OSUTs are expanding to Cavalry, Engineer and Military Police in the succeeding fiscal years. A new training assignment for junior officers was instituted, that they serve as platoon leaders for Basic Combat Training or BCT platoons. These lieutenants will assume many of the administrative, logistical and day-to-day tasks formerly performed by the drill sergeants of those platoons and are expected to "lead, train and assist with maintaining and enhancing the morale, welfare and readiness" of the drill sergeants and their BCT platoons. These lieutenants are also expected to stem any inappropriate behaviors they witness in their platoons, to free up the drill sergeants for training.
The United States Army Combat Fitness Test or ACFT was introduced into the Army, beginning in 2018 with 60 battalions spread throughout the Army. The test is the same for all soldiers, men or women. It takes an hour to complete, including resting periods. The ACFT supersedes the Army physical fitness test (APFT), as being more relevant to survival in combat. Six events were determined to better predict which muscle groups of the body were adequately conditioned for combat actions: three deadlifts, a standing power throw of a ten-pound medicine ball, hand-release pushups — which replace the traditional pushup, a sprint/drag/carry 250 yard event, three pull-ups with leg tucks — one needed to pass, a mandatory rest period and a two-mile run. On October 1, 2020 all soldiers from all three components — Active Army, Reserve and National guard — are subject to this test. The ACFT movements directly translate to movements on the battlefield.
Following their basic and advanced training at the individual-level, soldiers may choose to continue their training and apply for an "additional skill identifier" or ASI. The ASI allows the army to take a wide-ranging MOS and focus it into a more specific MOS. For example, a combat medic, whose duties are to provide pre-hospital emergency treatment, may receive ASI training to become a cardiovascular specialist, a dialysis specialist or even a licensed practical nurse. For commissioned officers, training includes pre-commissioning training, known as Basic Officer Leader Course A, either at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point or via Reserve Officers’ Training Corps or ROTC, or by completing Officer Candidate School. After commissioning, officers undergo branch specific training at the Basic Officer Leaders Course B — formerly called Officer Basic Course — which varies in time and location according to their future assignments. Officers will continue to attend standardized training at different stages of their career.
Collective training at the unit level takes place at the unit's assigned station, but the most intensive training at higher echelons is conducted at the three combat training centers — the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California; Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana; and Joint Multinational Training Center at the Hohenfels Training Area in Hohenfels and Grafenwöhr, Germany. ARGORGEN is the Army Force Generation process approved in 2006 to meet the need to continuously replenish forces for deployment, at unit level and for other echelons as required by the mission. Individual-level replenishment still requires training at a unit level, which is conducted at the continental U.S. replacement center at Fort Bliss, in New Mexico and Texas before their individual deployment. Chief of Staff Milley notes that the Army is suboptimized for training in cold-weather regions, jungles, mountains or urban areas where in contrast the Army does well when training for deserts or rolling terrain. Post 9/11, Army unit-level training was for counterinsurgency; by 2014–2017, training had shifted to decisive action training.
Uniforms The Army combat uniform currently features a camouflage pattern known as operational camouflage pattern; it replaced a pixel-based pattern known as universal camouflage pattern in 2019.
On November 11, 2018, the Army announced a new version of “Army Greens” based on uniforms worn during World War II would become the standard garrison service uniform. The blue Army service uniform will remain as the dress uniform. The Army Greens were first fielded in the summer of 2020.
The beret flash of enlisted personnel displays their distinctive unit insignia. The U.S. Army's black beret is no longer worn with the Army combat uniform or ACU for garrison duty, having been permanently replaced with the patrol cap. After years of complaints that it was not suited well for most work conditions, Army chief of staff General Martin Dempsey eliminated it for wear with the ACU in June 2011. Soldiers who are currently in a unit in jump status still wear berets, whether the wearer is parachute-qualified or not — maroon beret, while members of Security Force Assistance Brigades wear brown berets. Members of the 75th Ranger Regiment and the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade (tan beret) and Special Forces (rifle green beret) may wear it with the Army Service Uniform for non-ceremonial functions. Unit commanders may still direct the wear of patrol caps in these units in training environments or motor pools.
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