Regionally Aligned Forces

Regionally Aligned Forces support Combatant Commands (CCMDs), which includes the six Geographic Combatant Commands (GCCs) as well as the three functional combatant commands, with predictable access to mission tailored, regionally trained, and culturally aware forces responsive to all requirements, including operational missions, bilateral and multilateral military exercises and theater security cooperation activities. Army regional alignment is the process that organizes and improves the Army’s ability to provide Regionally Aligned Forces to the Geographic Combatant Commanders. Regional alignment provides focus and direction for unit training and preparation. Regionally Aligned Forces are drawn from the Army Total Force, which includes active United States Army, the Army National Guard and the United States Army Reserve. corps and divisions will be aligned to ensure Joint Task Force capability to every GCC. Through regional alignment, the Army will maintain its war-fighting skills and complement these skills with language, regional expertise and cultural awareness training.

Overview
The 2010 U.S. National Security Strategy calls for strong security partnerships with allies and partners. The defense strategic guidance directs the U.S. military services to strengthen allied and partner relationships, and to pursue new partnerships. Regionally aligned, mission tailored forces play an essential role in the defense strategic guidance, which rebalances to the Asia-Pacific region while maintaining Army commitment to partners in and around the Middle East. Knowing that partnerships are fundamental to regional and global security, and to ensure better and faster Army responsiveness to GCC security cooperation and operational requirements, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Raymond T. Odierno, directed the Army to improve its ability to engage regionally with partners while remaining globally responsive.

The Army will first and foremost remain capable of fighting and winning America's wars, by ensuring that it “… shall be organized, trained and equipped primarily for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations on land.” To better accomplish this Congressional directive within a global area of responsibility, regional alignment allows Army Forces to more efficiently organize themselves in strength and composition to best support each Geographic Combatant Commander, and to quickly deploy and sustain operations in support of Combatant Command requirements. Importantly, Army regional alignment will also improve the Army’s ability to provide soldiers and capabilities to the GCCs, to help support the United States Department of State efforts to promote greater security and stability in regions and countries whose interests share a common vision of freedom and prosperity. Following Department of State direction, and at GCC request for training and mentoring capabilities, Army Forces can help improve partner capacity to provide security to their populations; to serve as part of United Nation or coalition efforts; and to build stronger military institutions that are accountable to civilian authority and that respect the rule of law. The regionally aligned force concept will work within U.S. legal authorities established by the United States Congress, the Department of State, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Regional alignment
Some Army formations are already regionally and habitually aligned. This includes soldiers within the United States Army Special Operations Command and the United States Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, Foreign Area Officers, and the Army National Guard State Partnership Program. These Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard units have traditionally focused on specific countries and regions. They have either required or encouraged their soldiers to learn the languages of those regions, and some of these persons and units could focus on a single region for most of their career. Also, some units are assigned to a particular GCC, such as 2nd Infantry Division (2ID) and 25th Infantry Division (25ID) to U.S. Pacific Command. Assigned units remain regionally aligned to the same GCC, although Army personnel assigned to them will rotate on the normal Army personnel rotation cycle.

The Army decided to align a brigade to each GCC to provide them with consistent, dedicated and regionally focused Army Forces and capabilities to support their security cooperation and partnering requirements, and to respond more quickly and effectively to a potential crisis or contingency. They will not be habitually aligned, and will rotate yearly. The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 1st Infantry Division (commonly called 2-1ID), stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas, is the first BCT to be aligned to a Combatant Command. Additional brigades will be aligned in subsequent Fiscal Years, and a corps and/or division will also be aligned to each GCC.

Preparation
Army Forces aligned under the Regionally Aligned Forces concept will receive a basic introduction to the culture and history of their region of alignment. Training occurs primarily at a unit’s home station through on-line courses, or taught by training teams that travel to the unit’s location. This training is important for helping U.S. Army soldiers to better appreciate the region where they will be employed, though they will not be expected to become regional or linguistic experts. U.S. Army Special Operations Forces have historically worked with U.S. partner nation military forces and will continue to do so. These Army personnel attain a very high degree of cultural awareness and language capability and develop very specialized, regionally focused areas of expertise. Conventional Forces support the Geographic Combatant Commanders with skills such as logistics, maintenance, communication, finance, administration, military rule of law, and other skills critical for sustaining and maintaining security forces that can participate in multinational operations, who remain answerable to their civilian authorities, and who respect the rule of law.

Employment
As in the past, soldiers will continue to support security cooperation programs of varying size and duration. For example, they can travel in teams as small two persons to support a Military-to-Military Traveling Contact Teams (M2M TCT) that provide expertise to the host nation in areas such as logistics, intelligence, common core soldier skills such as land navigation and first aid, or critical skills such as communications. The Army could also provide several hundred soldiers to support and participate in bilateral and multilateral military exercises, such as those held regularly in the U.S. Pacific Command region at the request of the host nation. M2M TCTs are generally no longer than five days; exercise support could require some soldiers to remain in country for a month or more; and participation in some U.S. Department of State funded capacity building programs can last longer.

Way ahead
Aligning Army forces with regions allows the integration of planning and training for GCC contingencies, focuses language and cultural training, and provides predictable and dependable capabilities to GCC and Army Service Component Command (ASCC) commanders. In addition, the Army will consider how to manage, train and develop soldiers to support regional alignment and ensure appropriate investments are made in soldiers.

Benefits

 * Combatant Commands have access to capabilities drawn from the Army Total Force to support a full range of military operations, military exercises and partnering activities.
 * U.S. Army soldiers will gain greater awareness of regional and cultural history and current events, and will gain an appreciation of the primary languages within their region of alignment.
 * U.S. Army soldiers will have more opportunities to work with and exchange experiences and lessons learned with their partner nation counterparts.
 * U.S. Army soldiers can draw from over ten years of operational experience in areas such as logistics, equipment maintenance, finance, administration, military rule of law, and other institutional skills that are critical for improving the capacity of partner military forces to provide greater security at home, and to more effectively participate in multinational operations.
 * Regional alignment will help improve the U.S. Army’s ability to work with U.S. Government organizations, intergovernmental and international organizations.
 * Regional alignment will help improve U.S. Army contributions to partner capacity building in support of Department of State policies and priorities.
 * Regional alignment will help improve the U.S. Army’s contribution to building trust and understanding with U.S. partners and allies, that can help lead to greater coalition effectiveness.