A field army (or numbered army or simply army) is a

military formation Military organization or military organisation is the structuring of the armed forces of a State (polity), state so as to offer such military capability as a military policy, national defense policy may require. In some countries paramilitary ...

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 first named as such in 1805. The size of a corps varies great ...

and may be subordinate to an army group. Likewise, air armies are equivalent formation within some

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 ...

s, and within a

navy A navy, naval force, 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 operations and related functions. It in ...

the comparable notion is that of a

fleet Fleet may refer to: Vehicles *Fishing fleet *Naval fleet *Fleet vehicles, a pool of motor vehicles *Fleet Aircraft, the aircraft manufacturing company Places Canada * Fleet, Alberta, Canada, a hamlet England * The Fleet Lagoon, at Chesil Beach ...

. A field army is composed of 300,000 to 600,000 troops.

History

Specific field armies are usually named or numbered to distinguish them from "army" in the sense of an entire national land military force. In

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, 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 numbers (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 There have been two formations named British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). Both were originally occupation forces in Germany, one after the First World War and the other after the Second World War. Both formations had areas of responsibility located ...

Army of the Potomac The Army of the Potomac was the principal 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 surrender of the Confede ...

Army of the Niemen The Army of the Niemen (german: Njemen-Armee) was an army level command of the German Army in World War I. ''Armee-Abteilung'' Lauenstein The German offensive in Courland was intended to be a diversion while the main effort was made further ...

Aegean Army The Aegean Army or Fourth Army is one of the four main formations of the Turkish Army. It covers the entire west coast of the Anatolia peninsula and has its headquarters in İzmir. It was organised in the 1970s in response to political tensions ...

(also known as the Fourth Army). The

Roman army The Roman army (Latin: ) was the armed forces deployed by the Romans throughout the duration of Ancient Rome, from the Roman Kingdom (c. 500 BC) to the Roman Republic (500–31 BC) and the Roman Empire (31 BC–395 AD), and its medieval contin ...

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 by using infantry and armour in an urban environment in which each supports the other) ...

formation, namely the ''

sacer comitatus The comitatenses and later the palatini were the units of the field armies of the late Roman Empire. They were the soldiers that replaced the legionaries, who had formed the backbone of the Roman military since the Marian reforms. Organizati ...

'', 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 ''

comitatensis The comitatenses and later the palatini were the units of the field armies of the late Roman Empire. They were the soldiers that replaced the legionaries, who had formed the backbone of the Roman military since the Marian reforms. Organization ...

'' (plural: ''comitatenses'') is sometimes translated as "field army", it may also be translated as the more generic "field force" or "mobile force" (as opposed to ''

limitanei The ''līmitāneī'' (Latin, also called ''rīpēnsēs''), meaning respectively "the soldiers in frontier districts" (from the Latin phrase līmēs, meaning a military district of a frontier province) or "the soldiers on the riverbank" (from the ...

'' 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 ''gun'' (軍; "army") within the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

, for which the formation equivalent in size to a field army was an "area army" (方面軍; ''hōmen-gun''). In the

Soviet Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

and the

Soviet Air Forces The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...

, an army was subordinate in wartime to a front (an equivalent of army group). It contained at least three to five divisions 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 later 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 uk, Радянська армія , image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg , alt = , caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army , start_date ...

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, and ...

. 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, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

a field army is composed of a headquarters, and usually controls at least two corps, beneath which are a variable number of divisions. 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 of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED ...

lieutenant general Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) 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 ...

References

{{Authority control

History

See also

References