Unit Designations in Our New Modular Army

For some time our Army has been redesigning itself to move beyond a Cold War paradigm. It has undertaken comprehensive transformation to improve upon its campaign quality and its joint and expeditionary capabilities. The new modular Army will provide relevant and ready land power to combatant commanders, will be manned by soldiers and leaders of the all-volunteer force and will increase the capacity of our Army to execute the full spectrum of operations. This article describes the results of this ongoing process, and the unit designations that will be employed to embody them.

When Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower accepted the German surrender in May 1945, he commanded almost five million troops and a million vehicles organized into three army groups. His 91 combat divisions averaged 15,000 men each. Two to five divisions made up a corps, several corps an army, and several armies an army group. His attack across northern Europe cost his armies 750,000 casualties, including almost 200,000 dead, which they replaced en route and moved on. Such a Götterdämmerung of blood and fire was the reasonable expectation of two generations of Cold War warriors who followed Eisenhower into Central Europe, and they maintained an army designed to cope with it.

With the end of the Cold War, strategic circumstances altered radically. No likely peer adversary threatens sustained ground combat at the highest level of intensity. Technological advance has blurred traditional boundaries between the services and eroded some of the logic for the rigorous but comforting traditional command hierarchy. It now is not unusual for embattled soldiers to converse freely with headquarters hundreds of miles away while drawing fire support from a broad inventory of weapons and platforms whose operators they do not know and will never meet. Changing socio-economic circumstances have altered the nature of both our soldiers and their adversaries. Globalization, modernization and associated low birth rates have rendered the former Cold War adversaries ever more interdependent and given them stable, aging and generally prosperous populations. The incentives for state to state conflict amongst them have declined, as have the pools of uncommitted young manpower suitable for waging it. Conversely, runaway population growth, hostile ideologies and fragile state structures in much of the Third World have rendered it more volatile than ever. Here, adversaries seem less likely to be nations as a whole and more likely to be rogue regimes, insurgents, terrorists, pirates, criminal syndicates and purveyors of ethnic violence.

The diverse, scattered and inchoate violence of our new century suggests the need for a force structure more nimble than that of the Cold War. To better conceptualize a new design, planners on the Army Staff, in Training and Doctrine Command and elsewhere, abandoned traditional labels for a period and used such terms as unit of action (UA) or unit of employment (UE) to shape their discussion. The UA has emerged as a self-contained combined arms force of between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers. The UEx is a more senior headquarters responsible for controlling the tactical and influencing the operational level of war, while the UEy controls the operational and shapes the strategic level. During the course of deliberations, it became apparent that a two star UEx focusing on the tactical level and a three star UEx focusing on the operational would be desirable. Both would be fully capable, when appropriately augmented from other services, of serving as a joint task force or joint force land component command. Army transformation's redesign leaves battalion and below echelons substantially intact with respect to nomenclature.

The intent was not to leave UA, UEx and UEy as permanent titles, of course. Throughout the process, the Center of Military History has advised Headquarters, DA on the design and implementation of the modular force structure and has the staff lead for designating the new organizations.

Although there are changes with respect to equipment and force mix, there is no particular logic for changing naming conventions. Thus a U.S. Army Regimental System battalion can retain its name, lineage and honors, and can consist of lettered companies, numbered platoons and so on.

Redesign presents greater naming challenges above the battalion level. The UA combines features of the contemporary brigade and division, the UEx features of the contemporary division and corps, and the UEy features of the contemporary corps and army. With defensible historical logic we could label a UA a brigade, a brigade combat team, a regiment, a group or even a division. A UEx could be a division, a corps or some new designation such as tactical field force. A UEy could be a corps, an army or some new designation such as operational field force. These possibilities were debated, formulated into courses of action, vetted with distinguished retirees and ultimately decided by the Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Army. Each tactical UEx will perpetuate the lineage and honors of a current division and will be designated as a division. Four UAs, ideally based or mobilized on the same or on a nearby continental U.S. post, will perpetuate the lineage and honors of constituent brigades of that division and will be called brigade combat teams.

The new division, like the corps of World War II, will be a tactical headquarters for command and control only-about a thousand soldiers all told-and does not organically include the old division base of combat support and combat service support. Much of this has been driven down into the brigade combat teams. More will be reorganized into separate support UAs: aviation, fires, battlefield surveillance, sustainment and maneuver enhancement. To reinforce autonomy, with the exception of aviation brigades, these will not bear divisional designations. Most of the fires UAs will bear the lineage and honors of historical separate field artillery brigades and corps artillery, and will be called fires brigades. The sustainment UAs will carry the lineage and honors of historical combat service support organizations like support groups and corps support commands, and will be called sustainment brigades. The multifunctional battlefield surveillance UAs may bear the lineage and honors of historical military intelligence brigades and groups, and will be called battlefield surveillance brigades. The new maneuver enhancement brigade is too unprecedented a concept and too diverse in its composition to readily have a historical lineage assigned to it. These will bear new names, flags and patches, and their history will start the day they are activated. Insofar as possible, the constituent battalions of these combat support and combat service support brigades will perpetuate their current designations and lineage and honors. Each combat brigade, and some combat support and combat service support brigades, will contain a brigade special troops battalion bearing the lineage of the brigade headquarters company, as well as a support battalion bearing a traditional lineage.

The division differs from its predecessors in another important respect. When deployed it will generally be task-organized with brigade combat teams and supporting brigades wearing a variety of patches, and may well leave brigade combat teams wearing their own patches at home station. On a given continental U.S. post, brigade combat teams will rotate through a force generation cycle wherein one or more are ready to deploy one is reconstituting after having returned from deployment and one, perhaps, is deployed. Divisions will be responsible for the peacetime training and readiness oversight of units bearing their patch, unless and until that responsibility passes to a designated expeditionary force. As a contingency emerges, ready brigade combat teams from as many posts as necessary will be packaged to meet it. If a division headquarters is to deploy as well, it will take charge of this mix of brigades from different posts bearing different patches and the support brigades designated to accompany them. When in garrison the division may also direct the training and preparation of units on post not bearing its patch, if so assigned. Needless to say, this flexible scheme requires agility in the modular force and the highest professional standards of leadership at every level.

In addition to the brigade combat teams, there will be a few outlying combat units organized at their level. The 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team will remain in Europe as a separate brigade, as will the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and 12th Aviation Brigade. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment will remain as they are, fulfilling specific designated missions. The current Stryker brigade combat teams, less the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Europe and the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the National Guard, will be designated as constituent brigades of either the 2nd Infantry Division or the 25th Infantry Division (Mechanized). This concentration under a single headquarters for training and preparation will facilitate effective rotation.

With divisions and brigade combat teams controlling the tactical level, more senior headquarters must control the operational and strategic. The strategic level is the purview of the theater commander and his superiors. This will be a joint headquarters, and beyond the responsibility of the Army to name. Within it will be an Army service component command (ASCC) commanded by a senior general with administrative and support functions for Army units in theater, and perhaps the responsibility to command and control operations. The ASCC, however, will have the capability to assume the role of joint force land component command (JFLCC). Alternatively, the command and control of operations may be the responsibility of a separate, expeditionary and nongeographically constrained headquarters commanded by a three star general. This three star headquarters-the three star UEx-will also be capable of commanding and controlling at the operational, joint and coalition levels. The distinction between the two commanders could be functional, rather than hierarchical. Ordinarily, both will report to the theater commander-the Army service component commander always, and the expeditionary commander when so designated.

The theater Army element will perpetuate the lineage of a numbered Army, but will be referred to geographically. Thus the Army component in Europe will be referred to as the U.S. Army Europe, will perpetuate the lineage and honors of the Seventh Army and will consist of soldiers who wear the Seventh Army patch. The three star expeditionary headquarters, based in the continental United States, that ordinarily controls operations will perpetuate the lineages and honors of a corps and will be called a corps. There will be no fixed operational hierarchy in the redesigned Army; rather, hierarchy will be built to suit the circumstances. Intense conflict might require several corps in theater, each reporting to the JFLCC. Less challenging circumstances might require a single corps, or even a single division, reporting directly to the theater commander. Politics and diplomacy might require a three star headquarters in a scenario wherein actual troop requirements are modest. A corps with one or a few brigade combat teams reporting directly to it might be appropriate in such a case. There might even be circumstances wherein a brigade combat team reports directly to the theater commander. The corps and division will serve as the core for joint task forces, if so required, rapidly transitioning to joint organizations when jointly manned.

Army transformation inevitably requires considerable reflagging. Some historic units are being stood up and others inactivated. Determining the mix of regimental designations within brigade combat teams and divisions has required considerable thought and deliberation. Within the National Guard and Army Reserve, due attention must be given to the local origins of the lineages and honors being perpetuated. In the years to come, the Center of Military History will provide historical support to the new units and continue to assist in the implementation of required reflagging. Other historical programs will have to be relooked as well. Brigade combat teams will develop histories distinct from that of the rest of the division whose patches they wear, and division historians and museums will be responsible for much enlarged story lines. Throughout the reflagging process the underlying intent will be to establish unit designations that reflect the flexible redesign of a transformed Army, while inspiring soldiers with the greatness of their heritage.

No redesign is perfect, nor is it forever. The new modular Army will be a full spectrum force, facing wildly scattered, diverse episodes of mid- and low-intensity violence during the near future. Deployments will be continuous, and thus relief and rotation essential. Patterns of violence will fluctuate, and notice will often be minimal. In such a world, rapid deployment and flexible force packaging will be essential to American success. These requirements will be built into the doctrine, units and the official unit designations of the new modular Army.

By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown

U.S. Army retired

BRIG. GEN. JOHN S. BROWN. USA Ret., has been chief of military history at the U.S. Army Center of Military History since December 1998. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor, in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War and returned to Kuwait as commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, in 1995. He holds a doctorate in history from Indiana University and is the author of Draftee Division: The 88th Infantry Division in World War II.

Copyright Association of the United States Army Nov 2005
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