A field army (also known as numbered army or simply army) is a

military formation Military organization ( AE) or military organisation ( BE) is the structuring of the armed forces of a state so as to offer such military capability as a national defense policy may require. Formal military organization tends to use hierarc ...

in many armed forces, composed of two or more

corps Corps (; plural ''corps'' ; from French , from the Latin "body") is a term used for several different kinds of organization. A military innovation by Napoleon I, the formation was formally introduced March 1, 1800, when Napoleon ordered Gener ...

. It may be subordinate to an

army group An army group is a military organization consisting of several field army, field armies, which is self-sufficient for indefinite periods. It is usually responsible for a particular geographic area. An army group is the largest field organizatio ...

. Air armies are the equivalent formations in

air force An air force in the broadest sense is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army aviati ...

s, and fleets in

navies A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operation ...

. A field army is composed of 80,000 to 300,000 soldiers.

History

Specific field armies are usually named or numbered to distinguish them from "army" in the sense of an entire national defence force or land force. In English, the typical orthographic style for writing out the names field armies is word numbers, such as "First Army"; whereas corps are usually distinguished by

Roman numeral Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...

s (e.g. I Corps) and subordinate formations with

ordinal number In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets. A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the leas ...

s (e.g. 1st Division). A field army may be given a geographical name in addition to or as an alternative to a numerical name, such as the

British Army of the Rhine British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) was the name given to British Army occupation forces in the Rhineland, West Germany, after the First and Second World Wars, and during the Cold War, becoming part of NATO's Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) tasked ...

Army of the Potomac The Army of the Potomac was the primary field army of the Union army in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was created in July 1861 shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run and was disbanded in June 1865 following the Battle of ...

, Army of the Niemen or Aegean Army (also known as the Fourth Army). The

Roman army The Roman army () served ancient Rome and the Roman people, enduring through the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC–AD 1453), including the Western Roman Empire (collapsed Fall of the W ...

was among the first to feature a formal field army, in the sense of a very large,

combined arms Combined arms is an approach to warfare that seeks to integrate different combat arms of a military to achieve mutually complementary effects—for example, using infantry and armoured warfare, armour in an Urban warfare, urban environment in ...

formation, namely the , which may be translated literally as "sacred escort". The term is derived from their being commanded by Roman emperors (who were regarded as sacred), when they acted as field commanders. While the Roman (plural: ) is sometimes translated as "field army", it may also be translated as the more generic "field force" or "mobile force" (as opposed to or garrison units). In some armed forces, an "army" is or has been equivalent to a corps-level unit. Prior to 1945, this was the case with a (; 'army') within the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

, for which the formation equivalent in size to a field army was a (; 'area army'). In the

Soviet Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of Peop ...

and the

Soviet Air Forces The Soviet Air Forces (, VVS SSSR; literally "Military Air Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"; initialism VVS, sometimes referred to as the "Red Air Force") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Sovie ...

, an army was subordinate in wartime to a front (an equivalent of

). It contained at least three to five

divisions Division may refer to: Mathematics *Division (mathematics), the inverse of multiplication * Division algorithm, a method for computing the result of mathematical division Military *Division (military), a formation typically consisting of 10,000 t ...

along with artillery, air defense, reconnaissance and other supporting units. It could be classified as either a combined arms army (CAA) or tank army (TA); and while both were

formations, the former contained a larger number of motorized rifle divisions while the latter contained a larger number of tank divisions.US Army, ''FM 100-2-3 The Soviet Army: Troops, Organization and Equipment'', Paragraph 1-3. In peacetime, a

Soviet army The Soviet Ground Forces () was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under th ...

was usually subordinate to a

military district Military districts (also called military regions) are formations of a state's armed forces (often of the Army) which are responsible for a certain area of territory. They are often more responsible for administrative than operational matters ...

. Modern field armies are large formations which vary significantly between armed forces in size, composition, and scope of responsibility. For instance, within

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

a field army is composed of a headquarters, and usually controls at least two corps, beneath which are a variable number of

. A battle is influenced at the field army level by transferring divisions and reinforcements from one corps to another to increase the pressure on the enemy at a critical point. NATO armies are commanded by a

general A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air force, air and space forces, marines or naval infantry. In some usages, the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colone ...

lieutenant general Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the battlefield, who was norma ...

References

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History

See also

References