Recently reading the headlines about Band of Brothers coming from HBO tho Netflix and it got me thinking:
– how does the US military divide up it’s soldiers? (Eg regiment vs troop vs platoon vs squadron)
– are there different rules for each branch of the military?
– I’ve only ever heard of the 101st airborne division but not other ones… Was there a 100th division? 99th division, etc? Why is the 101st so famous?
In: 642
The United States Army has three division numbering sequences: one for infantry, one for armor, and one for cavalry.
Airborne divisions are numbered in the infantry sequence.
As a rule of thumb, 1-25 were reserved for Regular Army divisions, 26-75 were originally National Guard divisions, and anything above that was originally Army Reserve.
Without a world war going on, the Army isn’t big enough to need so many divisions (a division varies in size, but a good estimate for a US division might be around 12,000 soldiers or so, across usually three brigades of front-line troops, some artillery, a helicopter brigade, and some other support troops like engineering and logistics, under the command of a two-star general). Right now, all but two divisions are from the infantry sequence (1st Cavalry and 1st Armored, the last other one was 49th Armored from the Texas National Guard).
The active-duty Army kept the numbers mostly from divisions which are in the 1-25 segment of the infantry division sequence. Since it doesn’t have 25 divisions total, it prioritizes numbers that were particularly distinguished in the World Wars, such as 1st Infantry, which landed at Omaha Beach in the Normandy invasion. There are two divisions from the Army Reserve sequence which still exist as actual divisions (plus a couple more which exist as administrative centers for training units, but the Army Reserve doesn’t have its own divisions anymore): the 82nd Airborne, originally the 82nd Infantry raised during World War I (the most decorated American, Alvin York, was in this division) and the 101st Airborne (raised too late for WWI but kept on the list of reserve units in case the Army was going to draft a lot of people again).
These two were designated as airborne divisions in WWII with the mission to enter battle by parachute. They participated in the Normandy invasion and other airborne operations such as Market Garden. The 101st also famously held the line ad Bastogne during the German offensive through the Ardennes (the Battle if the Bulge) and the assistant division commander famously absent a one-word refusal to surrender: “To the German commander: Nuts!”
The TV series *Band of Brothers* is about a component unit of the 101st.
Presently, there are two airborne divisions in the United States Army: 82nd and 11th. 11th was the Alaska-based portion of 25th Infantry Division until a couple of years ago (it was split between Alaska and Hawaii). The Army is transitioning back to divisions being the primary building block rather than brigades like the past 25 years where a division headquarters might have ended up with a few brigades of different roles. Airborne divisions don’t typically parachute into combat in huge numbers these days (it sometimes happens, the French had some success doing it in Mali in 2015, for example). Their main role is to be a strategic quick response force. Since they don’t have much equipment that isn’t easily air-transportable, they can deploy faster than other units. If you hypothetically need troops in Atropia to hold off a Gorgasi invasion, they can get there within a couple of days while the heavier units are still moving their tanks from the pre-positioned stocks in the Middle East. The main thing setting them apart from other light infantry divisions which also have this is that since you have to specifically volunteer for airborne training, they think of themselves as something of an elite force, typically have higher morale, typically hold themselves to a higher standard than other units might.
The 101st is called an airborne division, but since the 1960s, it has actually been an air assault division. This means that it has everything which a standard light infantry division has, plus a larger number of helicopters so that they can fly more troops around at a time than a standard light infantry division.
Light infantry units do not have transport themselves. In practice, they often borrow some extra trucks, drivers, and mechanics owned by a higher-level command for better mobility, but they mostly have trucks for moving supplies and things which are too heavy for individuals to carry like artillery (this can mean that people are expected to be capable of long marches carrying 50lbs of personal equipment, a mortar base plate, and some mortar rounds). Medium units have armored eight-wheeled trucks called Strykers to carry their front-line troops. Heavy units have a mix of Abrams tanks and tracked Bradley vehicles which carry troops. Airborne units are a subset of light units.
Edit:
At most levels, a ground unit can be divided into three primary sub-units and some support. As previously stated, a division is typically three brigades and support. A brigade is three line battalions of infantry and tanks plus some other battalions. Under the previous model that started around 25 years ago, the artillery and cavalry units would be among these battalions, but now, they’re owned centrally by the division and the brigade borrows them when deploying. They also have a battalion of combat support guys like engineers and intelligence, a battalion of combat service guys like logistics. A maneuver battalion is divided into three main companies, plus some support guys. Heavy battalions don’t have heavy weapons companies s like light infantry because their line battalions already have heavy weapons on their tanks and tracked vehicles, but they have more engineers to build bridges and clear other obstacles. Companies are divided into three line platoons, light infantry has a weapons platoon as well, and some guys under company headquarters. A platoon has three squads (a fourth weapons squad) and might have a medic, radio operator, and artillery observer under the platoon headquarters with the platoon leader (a low-ranking officer) and platoon sergeant (a high-ranking enlisted guy who works for the officer). A squad is divided into fire teams of four guys. Most people other than US Marine Corps have two teams per squad, Marine Corps is three.
A regiment is either brigade or battalion-equivalent, but for US Army conventional troops, it only has ceremonial significance. 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th SOAR are regiments in the special operations community which are roughly equivalent to an infantry brigade and an aviation brigade in size.
Infantry is the default, but everything else is slightly different. Vehicles or crew-operated equipment tend to be squad-equivalent. A tank company, for example, is 14 tanks. Each platoon has four tanks (can divide into two sections, one under platoon leader, other under platoon sergeant), one tank for company commander, one for company executive officer (#2 guy), with the first sergeant in charge of a couple of trucks carrying their stuff. Artillery companies are called batteries. A battery could have two platoons of three guns each, with a separate fire direction center per platoon, for example. Cavalry calls their battalions squadrons and their companies troops (British cavalry, a battalion is a regiment, company is squadron, platoon is troop).
It’s less standardized for air units and especially naval units because in those cases, it is more about the equipment than the people.
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