Corps Operations

Abstract

The United States Army has published doctrine on corps operations since the beginning of the twentieth century. Its experience with large unit operations began during the Civil War. Leaders on both sides realized that they could not command and control regiments, brigades, and divisions without an intermediate headquarters between the Army-level planning and supporting field operations and the lower echelon forces actually engaged in battle. Corps operations have been included in eleven Army field service regulations (and later field manuals) both for larger-unit operations spanning from 1905 to 1996. All reflected contemporary conditions and provided guidance to existing corps operations. This manual describes the corps headquarters: a continental United States-based headquarters, with no assigned troops other than those in its headquarters battalion, which is deployable worldwide. The Army's two capstone publications, Field Manual (FM) 1 and FM 3-0, along with keystone publications FM 3-07 and FM 3-24, anticipate that future United States military operations will be joint campaigns requiring unity of effort by a team of military, civilian, joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational organizations. The corps headquarters focuses on serving as an intermediate or senior tactical land echelon with the ability to command and control divisions, brigade combat teams, and associated functional and multifunctional support brigades. It remains capable of transitioning to a joint task force or joint force land component command headquarters. The redesigned corps headquarters represents one of the biggest changes in Army organizations since World War II. Army of Excellence doctrine established the corps headquarters at the top of an organizational structure that contained thousands of Soldiers and numerous subordinate organizations. While they still exist in the Army forces structure, those subordinate forces are no longer assigned to the corps.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 26, 2010
Accession Number
ADA538895

Entities

Organizations

  • United States Army Combined Arms Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Cyber
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Business Administration
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Control Systems
  • Digital Communications
  • Employment
  • Health Services
  • Information Systems
  • Intelligence Collection
  • Management Personnel
  • Medical Personnel
  • Military Organizations
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Surveillance
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control