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Regionally Aligned Forces

Regionally Aligned Forces is the Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff of the Army's vision for providing combatant commanders with versatile, responsive, and consistently available Army forces. Regionally Aligned Forces will meet combatant commanders' requirements for units and capabilities to support operational missions, bilateral and multilateral military exercises, and theater security cooperation activities.

Beginning in March 2013, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division (2/1ID), stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., will support U.S. Africa Command's security cooperation and partnering requirements. 2/1ID will undergo training at the Combat Training Center before embarking on specialized Language, Regional Expertise and Cultural training. Once training is complete, over the course of the next year, teams of Soldiers from the brigade will deploy to multiple African countries to engage in partnering and training events, and to support bilateral and multinational military exercises.

The implementation of the full Regionally Aligned Force concept will take several years to complete. The initial priority is to begin alignment of Corps and Divisions in Fiscal Year 2013. The Army will formally establish the alignment of I Corps to U.S. Pacific Command, III Corps to U.S. Central Command, and XVIII Corps to the Global Response Force. In addition, in fiscal year 2013, Army will align divisions to U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Northern Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Africa Command. For fiscal year 2014, the Army will align brigades to support theater requirements. Planning was underway to align brigades to PACOM, EUCOM and AFRICOM. The projected date for completion of regional alignment was 2016.

The Army is regionally engaged and globally responsive an indispensable partner and provider of a full range of capabilities to combatant commanders in a joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multi-national environment. Regional alignment synchronizes the Army's strategic framework of Prevent, Shape, and Win by addressing Army's enhanced regional and global presence in Prevent improving the global security environment by increasing partner capacity in Army's Shape role and underpinning the Army Total Force capability, capacity, and readiness to Win. As part of the joint force and as America's Army, in all that it offers, the Army provides the versatility, responsiveness, and consistency to Prevent, Shape, and Win.

Brigades, divisions and corps are assigned to combatant commanders from different regions of the world -- U.S. Africa Command, U.S. European Command, U.S. Pacific Command, U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Central Command, and U.S. Southern Command. Those forces, including active and Reserve Components, could be U.S.-based with some forces deployed to the region to which they're assigned. The level of force could be large, such as a brigade, or it could be just a few Soldiers, such as an advise-and-assist mission. These levels are thus tailorable and scalable to meet the required needs.

Units assigned to a region could also be deployed outside their area, should the need arise. Units are not permanently assigned to regions. They rotate in and out of the various regions.

The primary goal of RAF is to prevent war by partnering with nations within the region. Partnering can be military-to-military training, providing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, and sharing intelligence and interoperability. RAF is also about partnering with other government and nongovernmental agencies in disaster relief and humanitarian operations. The Army has even expanded the RAF partnership to include the private sector and academia.

The Army "intends that all forces not committed to assigned missions" -- like those in Korea, Afghanistan and in the Global Response Force -- "will be in a regionally aligned force construct, available to the geographical combatant commander," Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, commander, U.S. Army Forces Command, known as FORSCOM, said 22 October 2014.

For a RAF unit to be at a full readiness level, it goes through a thorough training cycle at a combat training center, which includes decisive action engagements and wide-area security, as well as follow-on, region-specific training. But should sequestration continue, just one FORSCOM-assigned RAF brigade -- 4th Brigade Combat TEam, 1st Infantry Division, backfilling 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, for AFRICOM -- would be able to train at NTC in fiscal year 2014.