In 2004 the US Army eliminated its division cavalry squadrons in favor of standardized brigade combat team modularity. Now, when executing offensive, defensive, or stability actions, division commanders must rely upon, and thus commit, subordinate maneuver brigades to conduct zone, route, and area reconnaissance tasks and screen, guard, and cover missions. Given the unlikelihood of recreating permanent division cavalry due to resource constraints, doctrinal solutions can provide creative options for providing forceful information collection capacity at the two-star level. By incorporating insights from the general history of division-level cavalry, a security operations case study in Vietnam, and a reconnaissance operations case study in the Persian Gulf, this study proposes a series of organizational templates for the purpose of temporarily detaching, training, and augmenting brigade cavalry squadrons to directly answer division commanders' information requirements. The resulting cavalry task force, when empowered as a direct reporting element with cross-domain capabilities, provides internally resourced, tactically effective, and readily available scouting capability to bridge tactical and operational efforts in unified land operations.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)