In what the United States Army describes as the “most significant Army restructuring in the past 50 years,” it is redesigning its current 10 active duty division force to a 42 or 43 Brigade Combat Team (BCT) force by 2007.

The United States Army says this total organizational redesign of its combat and support units is to better meet current and future operational requirements. This redesign effort, as well as associated rebalancing, stabilization, and cyclical readiness initiatives are deemed important by proponents as they are intended to sustain both the active and reserve Army through a potentially long term, manpower and resource intensive war on terror.

The Army National Guard and Army Reserves will also redesign their forces in a similar fashion.

The planned addition of active duty brigades and the conversion of Army National Guard brigades could provide a larger force pool of deployable combat units to ease the burden on units presently deployed, and possibly to shorten the length of time that units are deployed on operations.

The Army has three other concurrent initiatives underway that it considers inextricably linked to its brigade-centric redesign:

-         rebalancing to create new “high demand” units;