Army Branches - Explore Officer Career Fields

When exploring Army branches, cadets consider factors like their long-term goals and career interests, as well as the culture and lifestyle of each branch.

Army Branches - Explore Officer Career Fields

When exploring Army branches, cadets consider factors like their long-term goals and career interests, as well as the culture and lifestyle of each branch.

Branches by Category

The U.S. Army branches can be categorized into Operations, Operations Support, Force Sustainment, and Information Dominance, each focusing on different aspects of military operations. 

  • Operations: The operations process involves planning, preparing, executing, and assessing a mission.
  • Operations support: Support operations ensure that military forces are ready and effective.
  • Force Sustainment: Sustainment operations provide the logistics, maintenance, and support needed to keep military forces ready and effective.
  • Information Dominance: Information dominance may be defined as superiority in the generation, manipulation, and use of information sufficient to afford its possessors military dominance.

Operations

The operations process includes planning, preparing, executing, and assessing a mission.

This category includes soldiers and units that are directly involved in combat or combat-like missions. It covers things like infantry, armor (tanks), artillery, aviation (helicopters), and special operations forces. These are the people and teams that are on the front lines or closely support those who are.

Operations Support

Support operations include tasks like ensuring that the Army has the equipment needed for training, exercises, combat, and other scenarios. 

These are the professionals who help the frontline forces do their job effectively. This includes intelligence experts who gather and analyze information about the enemy, and communications specialists who ensure secure and reliable communication. It also includes people responsible for training and developing Army forces—basically those who make sure the Army is well-prepared and properly equipped for its missions.

Force Sustainment

Sustainment is a warfighting function that provides personnel, logistics, and other support to maintain and prolong operations. Sustainment operations are used to build and maintain combat power. 

This group keeps the Army running. It includes logistics (like supply and transport), human resources, and financial management—everything that ensures soldiers are fed, equipped, paid, and supported. These roles aren't necessarily on the front lines, but the Army couldn’t function without them.  They often are embedded within the Operations Units though.

Information Dominance

Information Dominance is a crucial element for achieving operational advantage. It refers to the degree of information superiority that allows a commander to effectively use information systems and capabilities to gain a tactical edge while simultaneously denying those capabilities to the adversary. Information dominance is not about simply having more data than the enemy, but rather about transforming that data into relevant information in a timely manner for diverse forces with dynamically changing needs. It is a critical component of US military success in multidomain operations, where operations are conducted across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. 

This is the Army’s high-tech edge. It includes cyber specialists and information warfare experts who protect Army networks, disrupt enemy systems, and manage the flow of digital information to gain the upper hand in both physical and virtual battlespaces.

Virtual Branch Outreach

To enhance the branch education process, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command developed Virtual Branch Outreach (VBO). VBO is a public-facing virtual environment designed to provide branching education and assistance to cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Contact the Accessions Division

The Accessions Division oversees Branch Week, Branch Night, and Post Night, and leads the transition process from cadet to lieutenant during the second semester for the graduating class. 

Accessions is a subordinate division of the Department of Military Instruction, comprised of officers who represent the culture and personalities of each of the army branches.