Talk:U.S. Army Combat Arms Regimental System

Latest comment: 16 years ago by W. B. Wilson in topic Untitled

Untitled edit

Although on the whole the article is very professional (a verbatim reproduction of the official US Army web page on the topic)--I did change the summary at the opening of the article to wiki-style and wikify it. --Buckboard 08:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Yep, a verbatim reproduction. That means it is the official view and will hardly offer any serious criticism of CARS. One reason for CARS was the introduction of the unwise Pentomic concept, one consequence of which was the break-up of existing infantry regiments into bunches of battalions that were assigned willy-nilly to different battlegroups. Instead of simply recognizing that this destruction of regimental cohesion was wrong, the Army stayed on this ill-advised path when it instituted the brigade system with the ROAD reorganizations of the 1960s. CARS and its successor system are attempts to maintain the traditions and spirit of the old regiments, but these schemes do not work nearly as well as the old regiments, which had high unit cohesion. The current brigades are filled with battalions from numerous regiments and result in battalions having confused lineages that are split between their original parent regiments and their new parent brigades, not to mention the poor practice of simply grafting lineages onto units who are then declared to carry on some other unit's traditions. Given all this messing about by the desk warriors, it is a wonder that the army's brigades fight as well as they do. W. B. Wilson 16:07, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

As Buckboard says - a good reproduction of the official document - but perhaps we could have some plain English written into the article so as to be able to make sense of it all? I just read through it and still don't have a clue about the American military organisation... Horus Kol 12:23, 21 August 2006 (UTC)Reply


Apparently, the 38th Infantry Regt stands in for the CARS conversion for the 48th Infantry Regt (?!): "Cold War: As companies of the 38th Armored Infantry Battalion they were relieved 15 Feb 1957 from assignment to the 7th Armored Division. Along with the 48th, 38th and 23rd Armored Infantry Battalions, they were consolidated to the 48th Infantry once again under the Combat Arms Regimental System."