09 February 2015

Brigade Reorganizations Coming This Year

Along with inactivations and consolidations of some brigades, there are internal changes coming, too.

In addition, all the BCTs — stateside and abroad — will receive additional engineer and fires capabilities.

Infantry and Stryker BCTs now have one engineer company, while armored BCTs have two.

Under the reorganization, the brigade support troops battalion in each BCT will be converted into a brigade engineer battalion with gap-crossing, breaching and route clearance assets.

This grows the number of engineers in each brigade from about 120 in the infantry and Stryker BCTs and about 200 in the armored BCTs to more than 300 engineers in all.

The infantry and armored brigades also will gain increased fires capability by going from a 2-by-8-gun fires battalion to a 3-by-6. This gives the brigades two additional howitzers and one additional battery to support the three maneuver battalions.

In the infantry BCTs, one battery will be equipped with 155mm Howitzers, providing it with precision fires capability, according to information from the Army.

The Stryker brigades retain the 3-by-6 design.