Strategypage looks at Army expansion. The force structure for the maneuver brigades is as follows:
With the 2017 changes the army will speed up its conversion of BCTs (Brigade Combat Teams or “combat brigades”) to more “armor heavy”. Currently the army has 31 active duty combat brigades (11 armored, six infantry, 5 airborne, 3 air assault and 7 Stryker). The army is in the process of converting an infantry brigade to a Stryker brigade and a Stryker brigade to an armor brigade. Eventually the army will have 16 armor brigades. The Army National Guard (a reserve organization) will have 5 armored, 20 infantry and two Stryker brigades[.]
This is as much a future reference for me as it is intended to be informative to you. Although it doesn't give the future composition other than armored brigades. Nor does it say how many active brigades the Army will have. Still 31?
I strongly believe that a focus on conventional combat requires a return of the armored cavalry regiment, modernized for current weapons of course. Sadly I don't ever read anything about that.
I also wonder if the return of great power focus means that the easily rotated brigades for counterinsurgency campaigns should no longer be the focus for the Army maneuver units.
Should the division be restored to prominence in this environment, at least for the heavy armored forces and heavied up Stryker forces (reinforced with tanks, too)?
Maybe my old article on blending the Army and Army National Guard brigades while having headquarters for expansion is relevant today. See "The Path of the Future Army," Military Review, September-October 2000 (Fort Leavenworth, Ks.: US Army Command and General Staff College), pp. 91-93. When published, the editors stripped out charts resulting in some garbled text. I corrected the two text errors and added the charts on my old Geocities site, but the undead link is no longer good.
