United States Army

The Army is the land component of the joint force and the largest of the three military departments by people. It does not fight as itself. Under Title 10 it raises, trains, equips, and sustains forces, then provides them to combatant commanders under the Unified_Command_Plan. That split is the whole map for anyone selling to it: one set of organizations states what is needed, a different set signs the contract, and a third set owns the thing for thirty years afterward.

Field	Value
Type	Military department / Title 10 service
Headquarters	The Pentagon, Arlington, VA (HQDA)
Secretary of the Army	Daniel_Driscoll (26th SECARMY, sworn in 25 Feb 2025)
Chief of Staff of the Army	Acting as of April 2026 — see Chief_of_Staff_of_the_Army
Subordinate to	Office of the Secretary of Defense
Established	14 June 1775 (Continental Army); Department of the Army 1947
Acquisition Executive	ASAALT — Brent_Ingraham, Army Acquisition Executive
End strength	448,276 Regular Army · 328,084 ARNG · 170,601 USAR · 223,386 civilians (DMDC, 30 Jun 2025)
FY2027 request	~ $253 Bt o t a l ($ 215B discretionary + ~ $37.7 Bp ro p ose d man d a t ory), a g ain s t$ 205B enacted in FY2026

How to use this section

Most questions about the Army resolve to one of five: who says it is needed, who buys it, who signs the contract, who sustains it, and who uses it. Those are five different organizations, and confusing them is the most common way a capture plan dies.

Requirement. Force design and concepts now sit inside Transformation and Training Command, specifically its Futures_and_Concepts_Command. Validation runs through JCIDS, and any gap gets tested against DOTMLPF-P before anyone concedes it needs a materiel answer.
Acquisition. ASAALT is the Army Acquisition Executive. Since the 2026 reorganization the layer beneath it is Program Acquisition Executives and Capability Portfolio Executives rather than the old PEO-only structure, with project and product managers holding the actual programs.
Contract. Army_Contracting_Command writes and awards. ACC-Redstone Arsenal alone obligated more than $34.2B across 13,973 actions in FY2025.
Sustainment. Army Materiel Command and its life cycle management commands own the system after fielding, through Materiel_Release, Type_Classification, and the Army_Organic_Industrial_Base.
Use. Theater armies (ASCCs) and the operating force employ it. See Army_Force_Structure.

Money is a separate axis and cuts across all five. Start at Appropriations to find the account, Budget Activities to find the maturity band, and Program Elements to find the specific funding line. The vault holds 234 Army program element pages built from the public justification books.

Mission

10 U.S.C. §7062(b): the Army “includes land combat and service forces and such aviation and water transport as may be organic therein,” and “shall be organized, trained, and equipped primarily for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations on land.”

The Secretary_of_the_Army’s statutory responsibilities under 10 U.S.C. §7013(b) are the practical definition of what the institution does: recruiting, organizing, supplying, equipping (including research and development), training, servicing, mobilizing, demobilizing, administering, and maintaining — plus construction, outfitting, and repair of military equipment and real property. Everything in the sections below exists to execute one of those verbs.

Operational command does not run through the Army. Under 10 U.S.C. §162 the operational chain runs President → Secretary of Defense → combatant commanders, a structure set by the Goldwater_Nichols_Act. The Chief of Staff of the Army has no operational command authority over deployed units.

Components — the Total_Army

Per 10 U.S.C. §7062(c), the Army consists of the Regular_Army, the Army_National_Guard of the United States, the Army National Guard while in federal service, and the Army Reserve. Army civilians are not a statutory component but are counted as one in practice.

The doctrinal framing is the Total_Army: one force, three components, common standards. It matters commercially because Guard and Reserve formations field on different timelines and through different authorities than the Regular Army, and because Guard modernization has its own congressional constituency.

Command Structure

Three categories, all designated by the Secretary of the Army: Army Commands, Army Service Component Commands, and Direct Reporting Units. AR_10-87 is the governing regulation; HQDA General Order 2025-24 directed an expedited revision to document the 2025 changes.

Army Commands (ACOMs)

The highest level of command, primarily responsible for generating Army forces and executing Title 10 functions.

U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) — Redstone Arsenal, AL. Materiel readiness, logistics, the Army_Organic_Industrial_Base, and the life cycle management commands.
U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM) — Austin, TX. Activated 1 October 2025 by consolidating TRADOC and Army_Futures_Command. Owns force generation, force design, and force development.
U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) — Fort Bragg, NC. Inactivating 15 October 2026 per HQDA GO 2025-24; USAWHC is the successor in command.

Army Service Component Commands (ASCCs)

Operational commands aligned to combatant commands. Five are geographic (theater armies), four functional.

ASCC	Aligned to	Note
U.S. Army Central	USCENTCOM	Theater army
U.S. Army Europe and Africa	USEUCOM / USAFRICOM	Theater army; gained III_Corps Dec 2025
U.S. Army Pacific	USINDOPACOM	Theater army; gained I_Corps Dec 2025
U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Command	USNORTHCOM / USSOUTHCOM	Activated 5 Dec 2025 at Fort_Bragg; absorbing Army North and Army South
U.S. Army North	USNORTHCOM	Reassigned to USAWHC; inactivates 15 Oct 2026
U.S. Army South	USSOUTHCOM	Reassigned to USAWHC; inactivates 15 Oct 2026
U.S. Army Cyber Command	USCYBERCOM	Functional
U.S. Army Transportation Command	USTRANSCOM	Functional; redesignated from SDDC on 24 Sep 2025
U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command	Functional	Space and missile defense
U.S. Army Special Operations Command	USSOCOM	Functional; Fort Bragg

Direct Reporting Units (DRUs)

Fifteen organizations providing broad general support in a single discipline not available elsewhere in the Army.

Army Acquisition Support Center · Army Audit Agency · Arlington_National_Cemetery · Civilian Human Resources Agency · Army Corps of Engineers · Army_Corrections_Command · Army Criminal Investigation Division · Human Resources Command · Intelligence and Security Command · Joint Counter-small UAS Office · Army Medical Command · U.S. Military Academy · Military District of Washington · Military Postal Service Agency · Army Test and Evaluation Command

Two of these matter disproportionately to industry. ATEC is the independent test authority whose verdict gates Materiel_Release. JCO is the joint executive agent for counter-small UAS, which is why a nominally Army office sets requirements the other services buy against — see Counter_UAS.

Operating force

Below the theater armies the structure runs corps → division → brigade → battalion → company. See Army_Force_Structure for what a Brigade_Combat_Team is, how the four corps are now assigned, and what the Mobile_Brigade_Combat_Team conversion does to the force.

The Acquisition Enterprise

ASAALT is the Army’s acquisition, logistics, and technology secretariat, and its principal is the Army Acquisition Executive (AAE) — the Component Acquisition Executive for the Army under the Defense_Acquisition_System. The AAE is the Milestone_Decision_Authority for most Army programs and the sole authority for program initiation unless delegated.

The 2026 reorganization replaced a flat PEO structure with a two-axis one:

Program Acquisition Executives (PAEs) own acquisition execution across a portfolio: Maneuver, CC2, Fires, Maneuver Air, Agile Sustainment and Ammunition, Layered Protection and CBRN.
Capability Portfolio Executives (CPEs) own portfolio outcomes: Ground, Aviation, Mission Autonomy, Offensive/Defensive/Integrated Fires, C2 and Information Network, Intelligence and Spectrum Warfare, Ammunition and Energetics, Combat Logistics, CBRND, and Simulation/Training/Test/Threat.

Certain PAEs and CPEs dual-report: to ASAALT for acquisition and to T2COM for requirements. That is the structural expression of the ATI premise that requirements and acquisition were too far apart.

Supporting the enterprise: seven Deputy Assistant Secretaries covering procurement, research and technology, sustainment, plans/programs/resources, defense exports, systems management, and acquisition reform; USAASC for the acquisition workforce; and Army_Contracting_Command for contracting execution. Program leadership titles are not interchangeable — see Program_Manager_vs_Product_Manager_vs_Project_Manager.

A system is not “fielded” until it clears two gates most vendors underestimate: Type_Classification (is this acceptable for the Army inventory) and Materiel_Release (is it safe, suitable, and supportable). Both are AMC-side authorities, not ASAALT ones.

Modernization: the Army Transformation Initiative

The Army_Transformation_Initiative (ATI), announced May 2025 and directed by the Secretary of Defense’s 30 April 2025 memorandum on Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform, is the organizing frame for everything above. Three lines of effort: deliver critical warfighting capabilities, optimize force structure, eliminate waste and obsolete programs.

What ATI actually did, in structural terms:

Merged TRADOC and Army_Futures_Command into T2COM (1 Oct 2025).
Merged FORSCOM, U.S. Army North, and USARSOUTH into USAWHC (activated 5 Dec 2025, predecessors inactivate 15 Oct 2026).
Reassigned I_Corps to USARPAC and III_Corps to USAREUR-AF, putting corps headquarters under theater armies.
Reorganized ASAALT around PAEs and CPEs.
Began converting all Infantry Brigade Combat Teams to Mobile BCTs.
Cut Security Force Assistance Brigades from six to two and deactivated air cavalry squadrons.
Sought roughly $4.9B in divestitures of legacy equipment — see ATI_Program_Cancellations.

Directed capability priorities from the same SecDef memorandum: long-range missiles able to strike moving land and maritime targets by 2027; electromagnetic and air-littoral dominance by 2027; unmanned systems and launched effects in every division by end of 2026; and cheaper, more mobile counter-UAS.

The portfolio view sits at Army_Modernization_Priorities, with the individual lines at Long_Range_Precision_Fires, Next_Generation_Combat_Vehicle, Future_Vertical_Lift, Army_Network_Modernization, Air_and_Missile_Defense_Modernization, and Counter_UAS. The Cross_Functional_Teams that drove these under Army_Futures_Command were folded into T2COM.

The money follows. In the FY2027 request, Next_Generation_Command_and_Control is roughly $3.8B across procurement and RDT&E, counter-small UAS procurement is$ 994M (up from $336 M), an d [[M - S H OR A D]] ro ug h l y d o u b l es t o$ 461M.

Budget

The Army’s FY2027 request is approximately $253 B, s pl i t in t oro ug h l y$ 215B discretionary and $37.7 Bp ro p ose d man d a t ory f u n d in g t h ro ug h se p a r a t e l e g i s l a t i v e v e hi c l es, a g ain s t ro ug h l y$ 205B enacted for FY2026. RDT&E is roughly $19B. The request funds growth to about 469,000 Regular Army and 331,300 ARNG.

To trace any of it:

Appropriations — the account. RDT&E, Army is 2040; Army procurement splits across aircraft, missiles, weapons and tracked combat vehicles, ammunition, and “other.”
Budget Activities — the maturity band inside an RDT&E account. A line’s BA tells you its real stage regardless of the briefing.
Program Elements — the line Congress actually funds. Army PEs carry a trailing A. The vault holds 234 of them.
PPBE_Process and Congressional_Budget_Process — how the number got there and who can change it.
Unfunded_Requirements — what the Army wanted but did not put in the request, submitted separately to Congress. Often the most useful single document of the year.

See also DoD_Budget_Hierarchy for how these layers nest.

Why it matters

The Army buys more distinct things than any other service and buys them in larger unit quantities. Ground vehicles, artillery and ammunition, tactical networks, soldier equipment, aviation, air and missile defense, and now counter-UAS and autonomy at scale. It is also the service most exposed to the Army_Organic_Industrial_Base question: it owns 23 arsenals, depots, and ammunition plants, so for a large class of items the government is both customer and competitor.

Three practical consequences:

The buyer is not the user. A pitch that convinces a division commander does not move money. Money moves through ASAALT portfolios and the PPBE_Process, with the requirement validated through T2COM and JCIDS.
Fielding is a separate fight from award. Type_Classification and Materiel_Release are governed by AMC and ATEC, and a program can be fully funded and contracted and still not reach soldiers.
The 2025-26 reorganization scrambled the account map. Any target list, org chart, or contact sheet built before October 2025 points at commands that no longer exist. FORSCOM is a going concern until 15 October 2026 and then is not.

US_Army