Military Civics: The Many Armies of the United States

There are just shy of a hundred official land component military organizations in the United States of America, each with their own unique legal structure and chain of command. In this video, I try to break down the details for you. It also seems to have taken several days for someone to observe I have the branches in the wrong sequence, Marines go before Navy.

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[iivin]

I'd gladly watch a couple more videos on this kind of subject

[joshkarpoff]

The Dept of Defense should link to this video from now on for all explanations of this subject.

[fitzpado]

This is the most informative/clear cut discussion on the various "militaries" within the US I have ever heard in my 30+ years in the Army. I had some insight into the subject, but other parts, such as the States militias, I only had a passing knowledge. I wished this video was around about 25 years ago when I was exposed to some of these organizations as a young staff officer, it would have cleared some of misinformation I was told about them. I would highly recommend this video to to all CPTs Career Courses in all of the service schools. It would make their lives easier later on as staff officers. You are a "GO" at this station!

[michelesilvestri]

me, an european, whatching this video like “oh yes, some cool informative video, how complex could it be”
also me, losing my shit 5 minutes into the video

[mwhyte]

I bet some of your friends from your days in the Irish Defense Force have watched this and said "damn what kind of mess have you gotten yourself into over there?" .

[andrewbend]

And people say The British/Commonwealth system is confusing

[markallan]

As a retired USCG / USCGR SCPO, I want to applaud you for tackling this subject.

[neuroshrink]

Very well done! Thank you for including the State Guard in your description of forces. As a retired "Regular Army" Officer, I found new life as a member of the TXSG, serving under the Governor of Texas, who will allow service to a more mature age than Federal forces. The two roles don't conflict at all and you can serve in both capacities. One is Federal money, the other State. My CAC card now has a Texas flag.

[Phoenix_OP]

Glad you mention about the State Defense Force

[keagansimpson]

I’m a soldier in the Ohio Military Reserve (one of Ohio’s three state defense forces) and I found this video to be extremely helpful in understanding the command structure of the military. I would love to show this to other soldiers in my unit.

[jarink]

I remember being affected by these laws in '93. I was in the 1st ID, stationed at Ft. Riley, Kansas. (Regular Army). There were severe floods that summer and many states in the midwest declared disasters. Ft. Riley sits almost at the confluence of the Big Blue and Kansas rivers, both of which had dams and reservoirs flanking the post.

As Federal Title X troops, we were NOT allowed to help with flood prevention, mitigation or rescue efforts, except on the actual post itself (being Federal property). This was the case even though many of us lived off post, including me. Only the 1st Engineer Battalion was designated as being able to assist in civilan disaster relief efforts (mostly providing direct support to the Army Corps of Engineers, who ran the dams). I don't know under what legal justification this was done.

Other units were allowed (after a couple of days for command to get things straightened out legally) to assist off-post personnel only from their unit move belongings and family to safer locations. Even then, only a few trucks from each unit were allowed off-post. Off-hours, we were more or less free to volunteer to help civilian disaster efforts like filling sandbags and moving belongings. This was with the stipulation that we could not be ordered or even encouraged to do so by anyone in our chain of command. In fact, several of us were told to not even mention we were doing this to our superiors.

[vinsonnash]

That's an awesome story (re: signing your own warrant)

[billbrockman]

As a retired Air Guardsman, I appreciate this explanation.

[AthAthanasius]

This was definitely interesting.

Summary: It's complicated (by how it's the United **States** of America).

[The_O]

I appreciate you talking about state guards they are often looked over and underappreciated. You will probably see in the comments to come tons of info about them as people will comment.

[durandol]

The Chieftain's a Guardsman? Where's his lasgun?

[fredorman]

In the 50’s I was in the New York Army Nation National Guard and in the 60’s the NY State guard. In the NYARNG we were familiar only with the very basic dichotomy between state and federal. In the state guard we all considered it a fraternal organization, having no idea of any official significance. This video should be SOP for all military and police as well as politicians.

[doughudgens]

To confuse things more: I was a commissioned officer in the US Army Reserve on active duty orders to the regular Army. The units I was assigned to were Regular Army, but almost all officers were Reservists. In my ROTC class, about 10% were RA, the rest got Reserve Commissions.
RA types were subject to recall to active duty until age 60 (I think) when they left active service. I was only subject to recall for 8 years after commissioning.

[shorttimer]

When I went into basic there were RA, NG, AR, and US. Drill sergeant told us very early on that those of us who weren't US, I was RA, chose to be there and so would never get any sympathy from him. Not that there was any to be had anyway.

The only time it mattered was with the headcount entering the mess hall.

The Army was undergoing changes at the time, early 70s. Partway through basic we switched from yelling 'kill, kill, kill' during bayonet drill to 'yeah, yeah, yeah'. Wonder if that was influenced by the “Alice's Restaurant Massacre”.

[jsorbieus]

Served two years in the Army of The United States and didn’t know it. I thought the US on my dog tags meant “Unwilling Service”. Thanks for this video, very interesting.