Prompt and sustained land combat
Closing with and destroying enemy forces, seizing and holding terrain, and staying in the fight long after the opening days of a conflict — the capability that distinguishes land forces from every other domain.
Component strengths as assigned, June 2025 (CRS IF10544). Budget is FY2026 enacted.
The United States Army is the land service branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, established by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1775 — more than a year before the Declaration of Independence. It is the senior service by date of founding, and the largest of the eight uniformed services by personnel.
The Army’s legal purpose is set out in Section 7062 of Title 10, U.S. Code, which charges it with preserving the peace and security of the United States, supporting national policies and objectives, and defeating any nation responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the country. In practice that means the Army organizes, trains and equips forces for prompt and sustained combat on land, and provides the bulk of the ground forces that combatant commanders draw on worldwide.
Unlike the other services, the Army is built from three distinct components that fight as one force. The Regular Army is the full-time active component. The Army National Guard is a dual state–federal force that answers to state governors for domestic emergencies and to the President when federalized. The Army Reserve is a federal reserve component providing the specialized enabling capabilities — medical, engineering, logistics, civil affairs — that sustain a deployed force. Together with roughly 223,000 Department of the Army civilians, they make the Army the largest single organization in the U.S. government outside the Postal Service.
The Army also carries a set of responsibilities no other service holds. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages the nation’s navigable waterways, flood control and much of its federal construction. Army units respond to hurricanes, wildfires and civil emergencies at home. And the Army trains the largest share of the joint force’s ground combat leaders through its schools at Fort Benning, Fort Moore, Fort Leavenworth and West Point.
Everything the Army does resolves into a handful of enduring functions. These are the mission sets that shape how it is organized, trained and equipped.
Closing with and destroying enemy forces, seizing and holding terrain, and staying in the fight long after the opening days of a conflict — the capability that distinguishes land forces from every other domain.
Armored, aviation and air-defense formations rotate continuously through Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East so that potential adversaries face committed U.S. ground power before a crisis begins.
The Army owns the joint force’s ground-based air and missile defense — Patriot, THAAD, IBCS and the new LTAMDS radar — protecting bases, ports and allied capitals against ballistic, cruise and drone threats.
The Army is the joint force’s executive agent for common logistics: fuel, water, ammunition, transportation and medical support that keep every service supplied once a campaign moves inland.
Guard and active units respond to hurricanes, floods, wildfires and civil emergencies, while the Corps of Engineers carries a permanent public-works mission across the United States.
Security force assistance, combined exercises and long-running training partnerships give allied armies the ability to defend themselves and to operate alongside American formations.
The Army is organized into three Army Commands that generate and sustain the force, nine Army Service Component Commands that provide land forces to the geographic and functional combatant commands, and fifteen Direct Reporting Units with specialized missions.
Generates and readies conventional combat forces; being absorbed into Western Hemisphere Command.
Doctrine, training and future concepts — formed October 2025 by merging Army Futures Command and TRADOC.
Logistics, sustainment, depots and the organic industrial base.
Activated December 2025, merging Forces Command with Army North and Army South.
Special Forces, Rangers, Army special operations aviation and psychological operations.
Military construction, civil works, navigation and flood-risk management nationwide.
Army formations nest inside one another in a ladder that runs from a handful of soldiers to a field army of hundreds of thousands.
| Squad | 4–12 soldiers | Staff sergeant |
|---|---|---|
| Platoon | 16–50 soldiers | Lieutenant |
| Company | 60–200 soldiers | Captain |
| Battalion | 400–1,000 soldiers | Lieutenant colonel |
| Brigade combat team | 4,000–4,700 soldiers | Colonel |
| Division | 12,000–16,000 soldiers | Major general |
| Corps | 40,000–100,000 soldiers | Lieutenant general |
| Field army | 100,000–300,000 soldiers | General |
The Army predates the country it serves. Its history is a long argument between two ideas — a small professional force and a large citizen army — resolved differently in every era.
The Continental Army was created on June 14, 1775, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the New England militia units besieging Boston and authorized ten companies of riflemen. George Washington took command the following day. After the Revolution the force was very nearly dissolved: the peacetime Army fell to fewer than a hundred men, and it took St. Clair’s disastrous defeat in 1791 to convince Congress to build a real standing force, organized as the Legion of the United States in 1792 under Anthony Wayne. The legionary structure was dropped in 1796 and the force reverted to the name it has carried ever since.
For most of the nineteenth century the Army was a small frontier constabulary that expanded enormously in wartime and contracted just as fast afterward. The Civil War broke that pattern in scale if not in principle: Union enlistments reached roughly 2.67 million, including nearly 179,000 African American soldiers. The modern relationship between the Regular Army and the states was settled by two laws — the Militia Act of 1903, which made state militias the Army’s federally funded reserve, and the National Defense Act of 1916, which locked the National Guard into the federal structure.
The twentieth century made the Army permanent. Conscription under the 1917 Selective Service Act raised the wartime National Army; in 1941 the components were consolidated as the Army of the United States for the Second World War. The 1947 National Security Act split the Army Air Forces off as an independent Air Force, and Executive Order 9981 began desegregation in 1948. When induction authority expired on June 30, 1973, the Army became an all-volunteer force — the single most consequential change in its modern history, and the one that shaped the professional Army of Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army marked its 250th birthday on June 14, 2025, in the middle of the largest reorganization since the end of the Cold War — a deliberate pivot away from two decades of counterinsurgency toward large-scale combat against a peer adversary.
The Second Continental Congress adopts the forces besieging Boston and authorizes ten rifle companies, creating the Continental Army and fixing the Army’s birthday.
After St. Clair’s defeat, Congress authorizes a reorganized standing force under Major General Anthony Wayne.
The legionary organization ends and the force takes the designation it has carried ever since.
Union enlistment strength reaches roughly 2.67 million soldiers, including 178,975 African Americans, at a cost of more than 640,000 Union casualties.
The Militia Act makes state militias the Army’s reserve, and the National Defense Act of 1916 binds the National Guard into the federal force structure.
Conscription raises the wartime National Army alongside the Regular Army and the National Guard; some 24 million men eventually register.
Congress consolidates the components into a single wartime organization for the Second World War.
The National Security Act splits the Army Air Forces off as an independent United States Air Force.
President Truman orders equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, beginning desegregation of the Army.
Induction authority expires and the Army becomes an all-volunteer service for the first time since 1940.
Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq drive twenty years of sustained ground combat and repeated deployment cycles.
The Army marks its 250th birthday, merges Futures Command with TRADOC into T2COM, and stands up Western Hemisphere Command.
In 2025 the Army launched the Army Transformation Initiative, the most significant restructuring in a generation. It merged Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command into a single Transformation and Training Command on October 1, 2025, stood up Western Hemisphere Command that December, and reorganized infantry brigades into lighter, faster Mobile Brigade Combat Teams. The capabilities it prioritizes:
Missiles able to strike moving targets, including at sea, extending Army reach into the maritime domain.
Drones organic to every division, with counter-drone capability pushed down to platoon level.
The NGC2 program is the Army’s largest single modernization line, replacing legacy tactical networks with an AI-assisted architecture.
M-SHORAD, PAC-3 MSE and the AN/TPY-2 radar, with the Army as the operational lead for the ground layer of homeland missile defense.
The M1E3 Abrams, the XM30 infantry combat vehicle and the MV-75 tiltrotor — the first clean-sheet replacements for Cold War designs.
Advanced and additive manufacturing at operational units, and modernized ammunition production to sustain a long fight.
Army rank falls into three tracks. Enlisted soldiers carry out the mission and, as noncommissioned officers, lead at the small-unit level. Warrant officers are technical specialists who stay in one field for a career. Commissioned officers hold command authority and responsibility for planning and decision-making. Pay grades run E-1 to E-9 for enlisted, W-1 to W-5 for warrants, and O-1 to O-10 for officers.
General of the Army — a five-star grade — exists in law but has not been held since Omar Bradley’s death in 1981. Devices shown are schematic diagrams of each pay-grade tier, not reproductions of official insignia artwork.
Army identity is unusually well documented, because so much of it is fixed by executive order and by the Institute of Heraldry rather than by custom alone.
The Army’s brand palette is black and gold — Army Black and Army Gold — with Army Green as a supporting color. The Army flag is a different scheme entirely: a white field with the Department of the Army seal in ultramarine blue above a scarlet scroll.
Established by Executive Order 10670 on June 12, 1956. It carries the Army seal device in ultramarine blue above a scarlet scroll reading UNITED STATES ARMY, with 1775 beneath it. Campaign streamers — one for every campaign the Army has fought — attach below the spearhead.
This We’ll Defend has appeared on Army heraldry since the 1778 Continental Army War Office seal. It is on the Army seal and on the drill sergeant identification badge, which is why it reads as the drill field’s motto as much as the institution’s.
The five-pointed white star began as a practical recognition marking painted on American and Allied vehicles in the Second World War to reduce friendly fire. It was later adopted as the Army’s identity mark, and brand rules now require it be paired with the Army wordmark.
Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage — remembered by the acronym LDRSHIP. They are taught in basic training and cited in evaluations throughout a career.
The Army Goes Rolling Along was dedicated as the official song on November 11, 1956. Its melody is Edmund Gruber’s 1908 Caisson Song, arranged as a march by John Philip Sousa in 1917.
The U.S. Army was founded on June 14, 1775, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the militia forces besieging Boston and authorized ten companies of riflemen. That date is observed as the Army’s birthday, and it makes the Army the oldest of the six armed services — older than the United States itself by more than a year.
As of mid-2025 the Army had roughly 448,000 soldiers on active duty, 328,000 in the Army National Guard and 171,000 in the Army Reserve, plus about 223,000 Department of the Army civilians — close to 1.17 million people in total. Congress authorized an active-duty end strength of 454,000 for fiscal year 2026.
This We’ll Defend. It dates to the 1778 War Office seal of the Continental Army and appears on the Army seal and the drill sergeant identification badge.
The Army’s brand colors are black and gold, with green as a supporting color. The Army flag uses a separate scheme — a white field with an ultramarine blue seal device and a scarlet scroll — which is why Army merchandise and Army heraldry often look different from one another.
Enlisted ranks run Private (E-1 and E-2), Private First Class, Specialist or Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Sergeant First Class, Master Sergeant or First Sergeant, and Sergeant Major or Command Sergeant Major. Warrant officers run WO1 through CW5. Commissioned officers run Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, then Brigadier General through General.
The Regular Army is the full-time active component. The Army Reserve is a federal part-time component that supplies specialized enabling units — medical, engineering, logistics, civil affairs. The Army National Guard has a dual state and federal role: it answers to state governors for disasters and domestic emergencies, and can be federalized by the President for overseas missions.
Title 10 of the U.S. Code charges the Army with preserving the peace and security of the United States, supporting national policy, and defeating nations that commit acts of aggression. Day to day that means sustained land combat capability, forward-deployed deterrence, ground-based air and missile defense, theater logistics for the whole joint force, and domestic disaster and civil support.
Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage — taught as the acronym LDRSHIP. Alongside them, the Warrior Ethos from the Soldier’s Creed: place the mission first, never accept defeat, never quit, never leave a fallen comrade.
A field army of 100,000 to 300,000 soldiers, commanded by a general, is the largest standard formation. Below it a corps runs 40,000 to 100,000, a division 12,000 to 16,000, and a brigade combat team roughly 4,000 to 4,700.
The Department of the Army received $204.9 billion in enacted funding for fiscal year 2026, of which $194.8 billion was discretionary. The fiscal year 2027 request rose to $252.8 billion.
Sparta Pewter USA builds custom coins, awards, gifts and unit recognition pieces for the U.S. Army.