Brigades: Building Blocks for Force XXI.

Abstract

While the US Army has become brigade based for many aspects of training and deployment, this echelon has not received the institutional or doctrinal emphasis necessary for the future. Now that the US Army is embarking on a journey to develop a Strategic Land Force structure for the Twenty-First Century - Force XXI, it may be an opportune time to revisit this echelon. Thus this paper explores an organizational level that has recently been eliminated from the active force structure - the separate brigade and the heavy separate brigade in particular. The study first traces the operational and organizational history of separate brigades focusing on several key units such as Wilder's Lightning Brigade, the China Relief Expedition, Task Force Butler, the Red Devils Brigade in Vietnam, and the Tiger Brigade in the Persian Gulf. This paper then develops a vision of what a brigade based Force XXI structure might look like.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 18, 1995
Accession Number
ADA295855

Entities

People

  • John A. Bonin

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artillery
  • Civil War
  • Combat Operations
  • Computers
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Control Systems
  • Employment
  • Governments
  • Information Processing
  • Lessons Learned
  • Military History
  • Military Organizations
  • Organizational Structure
  • Students
  • United States Military Academy
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Military Science
  • Strategic Security Studies