Changes

| officers =8890,317 795 (2009)

| reserves =558458,000 220 (2009)

The '''United States Army''' is the branch of the [[United States]] armed forces which has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. As of 20072009, it consisted of 523549,000 015 brave soldiers on active duty, 347358,000 391 in the Army National Guard (ARNG) and 190205,000 297 in the United States Army Reserve (USAR).<ref name="demo">[http://www.armyg1.army.mil/HR/docs/demographics/FY09%20Army%20Profile.pdf United States Army Demographics]</ref>

The Army was created by order of the [[Second Continental Congress]] on June 14, 1775. It is the oldest branch of the United States Armed Forces.

President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] modernized the U.S. Army, with the reforms of [[Elihu Root]]. Previously it , the Army had maintained many small garrisons scattered in the western states to control Indians (which were not needed unnecessary after 1890), and small coastal defense installations near port cities (which were never used). Now With the reforms, it now had , for the first time in its history, a general staff and advanced training schools to professionalize the officer corps. Even so, the army was amazingly small in terms of world comparisons, as the graph demonstrates for 1906.

On July 26, 1948, President [[Harry S. Truman]] signed Executive Order 9981; it began the process of ending racial segregation in the armed forces and was finally in effect in the ealy early 1950s.

*On Oct. 17 2001, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki announced that the black beret would become standard Army headgear the following year. Shinseki said he wants to use the sense of pride that the beret has long represented to the Rangers to foster an attitude of excellence among the entire Army as it moves forward with its sweeping transformation effort to a lighter, more deployableeasier to deploy, and more agile force. His decision set off a firestorm in both the active-duty and veteran Ranger community as well as in the Army’s Army's other two special operations camps, the Special Forces and the airborne. In 2002, the Army made the tan-color beret the official beret of the U.S. Army Rangers, and all Army soldiers began wearing the black beret. [http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/generalinfo/a/berethistory_2.htm]

From 2003 onwards, a member of the US Army is officially called a "Soldier". This was the result of General Peter Schoomaker, then Army Chief of Staff, ordering all official Army publications to capitalize the word "Soldier."According to General Schoomaker, *{{cquote|The change gives soldiers the respect and importance they've always deserved, especially now in their fight against global terrorism. <ref name="soldier">[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004573.html#moreMilitary Capitalization]</ref>}}

* Bluhm, Raymond. ''U.S. Army: A Complete History,'' (2005) oversize, heavily illustrated [httphttps://www.amazon.com/U-S-Army-Complete-Raymond-Bluhm/dp/088363113X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210626315&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]

* Doughty, Robert. et al. ''American Military History And The Evolution of Western Warfare'' (1996), , standard texbook