Reorganization Objective Army Divisions

The reorganization plan of the United States Army is a current modernization and reorganization plan of the United States Army that is being implemented under the direction of Brigade Modernization Command.

This effort formally began in 2006 when General Peter Schoomaker (the Army Chief of Staff at the time), was given the support to move the Army from its Cold War divisional orientation to a full-spectrum capability with fully manned, equipped and trained brigades. This was the most comprehensive reorganization since World War II and included modular combat brigades, support brigades, and command headquarters, as well as rebalancing the active and reserve components. (The plan was first proposed by Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, in 1999, but was bitterly opposed internally by the Army.) In 2006 a new deployment scheme known as Grow the Army was adopted that enabled the Army to carry out continuous operations. The plan was modified several times including an expansion of troop numbers in 2007 and changes to the number of modular brigades.

On 25 June 2013, plans were announced to disband 13 modular brigade combat teams (BCTs) and expand the remaining brigades with an extra maneuver battalion, extra fires batteries, and an engineer battalion.

In 2016 the Army force generation process ARFORGEN is being sidelined because it relied mostly on the Active Army, in favor of the total force policy, which includes the Reserve and National Guard; in the new model, the total force could have fallen to 980,000 by 2018, subject to DoD's Defense Strategic Guidance to the Joint Staff. By 15 June 2017, the Department of the Army approved an increase in the Active Army's end-strength from 475,000 to 476,000. The total Army end-strength increases to 1.018 million.

Before General Schoomaker's tenure, the Army was organized around large, mostly mechanized divisions, of around 15,000 soldiers each, with the aim of being able to fight two major theatres simultaneously. Under the new plan, the Army would be organized around modular brigades of 3,000–4,000 soldiers each, with the aim of being able to deploy continuously in different parts of the world, and effectively organizing the Army closer to the way it fights. An additional 30,000 soldiers were recruited as a short-term measure to assist in the structural changes, although a permanent end-strength change was not expected because of fears of future funding cuts, forcing the Army to pay for the additional personnel from procurement and readiness accounts. Up to 60% of the defense budget is spent on personnel and an extra 10,000 soldiers would cost US$1.4 billion annually.

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