Regimental combat team

A regimental combat team (RCT) is a provisional major infantry unit of the United States Marine Corps to the present day and of the United States Army during World War II and the Korean War. It was formed by augmenting a regular infantry regiment with smaller tank, artillery, combat engineer, mechanized, cavalry, reconnaissance, signal corps, air defense, quartermaster, military police, medical, and other support units to enable it to be a self-supporting organization in the combat field.

World War II RCTs were generally of two types:

An example of the former was the habitual organization of the 337th Regimental Combat Team of the 85th Infantry Division:

Examples of the latter were the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, 370th Regimental Combat Team, 158th Infantry Regimental Combat Team, and the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team.

Regimental combat teams combined the high cohesion of traditional regimental organization with the flexibility of tailored reinforcements to accomplish any given mission.

Believing that future battlefields would be dominated by tactical nuclear weapons, the U.S. Army broke up its infantry regiments in the mid-1950s and formed Battle Groups, four or five of which composed a pentomic infantry division. Although the pentomic structure was deemed to be a failure, reorganizations during the 1960s (ROAD) replaced the infantry regimental combat teams with brigades that were modeled after the World War II combat commands employed by American armored divisions. As a consequence, infantry battalions that were formerly grouped into regiments were scattered among the new brigades with a consequent loss of unit cohesiveness, and the unnecessary complication of unit traditions that related both to the old parent regiments and to the new brigades.

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