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Tuesday, October 02, 2018

Organizing for the Big One

The Army will convert a Stryker brigade to an armored brigade and an infantry brigade to a Stryker brigade, leaving the total force at this level:

That will put the Army at a total of 31 BCTs in the regular Army, comprised of 11 armored. 13 infantry and seven Stryker brigades once complete.

The Army National Guard will hold 27 BCTs, among them five armored, 20 infantry and two Stryker brigades.

This gives the total Army 58 BCTs.

In total maneuver brigades, this leaves the active Army with one fewer brigade than before 9/11, I'll note. And the National Guard for a long time had 28 brigades.

Also, I'm not sure where the National Guard's (and Army's) only armored cavalry regiment fits in. I hadn't heard of the Guard going down a brigade, so maybe the 278th is the 28th maneuver unit.

Keep these numbers in mind when hearing about Army "expansion" that rolls around these days.

That said, I'm pleased the Army is heavying up after lightening up during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.

UPDATE: Note that the 278th is actually a small heavy brigade. I wrote this before I discovered that the unit web site is out of date and that the regiment is not an ACR, and forgot to update this post to reflect that knowledge. We don't have any of those units anymore.