The U.S. Army has announced that the Idaho Army National Guard’s 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team is among the first of the U.S. Army’s armored BCTs selected to transform to a Mobile Brigade Combat Team as part of the Army Transformation Initiative.
ATI is a strategic modernization effort by the U.S. Army designed to strengthen the military’s capabilities in response to emerging global threats by adapting fighting formations and integrating new technologies to prepare units and Soldiers to fight on the modern battlefield.
The transition will see the unit exchange its Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles for Infantry Squad Vehicles as the Army becomes more mobile and lethal to focus on future threats.
The Idaho Army National Guard’s 116th is among three other armored BCTs across the National Guard selected to convert. The 30th ABCT (North Carolina) and the 278th ABCT (Tennessee) will also undergo this transformation into a lighter, more agile fighting force.
The 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team is the Idaho National Guard’s largest combat unit and is headquartered in Boise with companies located in nearly two dozen Idaho communities and subordinate battalions located in Montana, Nevada and Oregon. The 116th has been an armored unit, a unit equipped with tanks and other up-armored vehicles, since 1949. The 116th conducted its largest mobilization in unit history when it deployed to Iraq in 2004 as a heavy brigade combat team. After returning from Iraq in 2005, the unit transitioned into a standard armored brigade equipped with the M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The brigade deployed again to Iraq in 2011 and completed two battalion-sized deployments to Southwest Asia from 2021 to 2023.
