Ok, right up front I want to make it clear that this post is simply an extended riff on the same theme I have been fixed upon in my three previous offerings. So, if a bit of repetition annoys you, feel free to just ignore the following somewhat rambling observations – all of them more or less prompted by the increasingly threatening prospect of a major US/Israeli attack on Iran, and how it could set the world on fire.
Just the other day, for giggles, I posed the following question to the Grok3 beta on 𝕏:
How many combat divisions are there, combined, in the US Army and US Marines? And what is the approximate head count in each division?
Here is Grok’s answer:
Here’s the breakdown for the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps combat divisions as of March 25, 2025, based on their current organizational structures.
U.S. Army Combat Divisions
The U.S. Army has 10 active combat divisions. These are:
1st Armored Division
1st Cavalry Division (functions as an armored division)
1st Infantry Division
2nd Infantry Division
3rd Infantry Division
4th Infantry Division
7th Infantry Division
10th Mountain Division (light infantry)
82nd Airborne Division
101st Airborne Division (air assault)
The Army National Guard has additional divisions, but they’re not active-duty unless mobilized, so we’ll stick to the 10 active ones.
Approximate Head Count:
Army divisions vary by type:
Infantry (e.g., 10th Mountain): ~10,000–12,000
Armored (e.g., 1st Armored): ~14,000–15,000
Airborne/Air Assault (e.g., 82nd, 101st): ~12,000–14,000
Average is roughly 12,500 per division.
U.S. Marine Corps Combat Divisions
The Marine Corps has 3 active combat divisions:
1st Marine Division
2nd Marine Division
3rd Marine Division
The 4th Marine Division is a reserve unit, so it’s excluded from the active count here.
Approximate Head Count:
Marine divisions are typically larger and more flexible, averaging 15,000–18,000 personnel, depending on attachments and mission. Modern adjustments (e.g., Force Design 2030) lean toward a rough average of 16,500 per division.
Combined Total
Army: 10 divisions
Marines: 3 divisions
Total: 13 active combat divisions
Head Count Summary
Army Division: ~12,500 (10,000–15,000)
Marine Division: ~16,500 (15,000–18,000)
Rough Total Personnel
Army: 10 × 12,500 = ~125,000
Marines: 3 × 16,500 = ~49,500
Total: ~174,500 personnel across all 13 divisions.
These are ballpark figures—exact numbers shift with deployments and policy changes—but this reflects their current state.
I posted Grok’s reply, and added the following commentary:
IF THE US ASSEMBLED EVERY ARMY AND MARINE COMBAT DIVISION ON THE PLANET, IT WOULD AMOUNT TO A MERE 175,000 SOLDIERS.
Logistical constraints aside, this would be woefully insufficient to make war against Russia, China, or Iran.
The dominant retort to my citing of the acute limitations of US ground forces is that American airpower would overwhelm any opposition that could be arrayed against them.
Never mind that US airpower hasn’t faced meaningful opposition since Vietnam, where ~10k airframes were shot down – including a lot of F-4s and B-52s brought down by 1950s-era Soviet S-75s.
An early 1960s-era S-125 was used by the Serbs in 1999 to shoot down an American F-117A “stealth fighter”.
I think it was some typically over-confident Englishman who famously said in the 1930s, “The bomber will always get through.”
It was soon discovered that wasn’t true. Not by a long shot.
And as much as American air war aficionados are fond of their myths, it is almost certainly not true now.
Sure, it’s all fun and games flying over defenseless terrain to drop JDAMs on mud huts and wedding parties, but major power opposition can not only shoot back with great potency here in 2025, it also has the capacity to replenish and adapt.
And bear in mind, one of the most significant revelations of the Ukraine War is that Soviet / Russian air defense systems — both kinetic and electronic — remain FAR SUPERIOR to their western counterparts.
The supposedly awesome Storm Shadow / SCALP cruise missiles achieved negligible success in Ukraine. In the year prior to their disappearance from the battlefield, they were getting defeated upwards of 90% of the time. And American JASSMs and Tomahawk cruise missiles are inarguably no more capable of penetrating Russian air defenses. They are just another subsonic cruise missile that will be detected early, and reliably targeted and killed.
The US ATACMS ballistic missiles became one of the biggest embarrassments of American arms yet. Although precise statistics are not yet available, it is sufficiently well-attested that, of the 500+ delivered to Ukraine, fewer than about 50 (if that) managed to hit their intended targets. Many were defeated by electronic countermeasures; many were simply shot down by Russian missiles.
Fact is, all Russian missilry has proven far superior to anything the NATO bloc has ever demonstrated. And I’m not even talking about the Oreshnik, which remains a novelty for now. I’m talking about things like the daily-use Iskander — an equal of which cannot be found in western inventories.
Similarly, the layered arrays of Pantsir, Tor, Buk, S-300, S-400, and S-500 have no comparable analogues in the US/NATO quiver.
And that’s not even the worst part.
The most damning deficiency of western precision weaponry of ALL types is that it simply does not exist in quantities sufficient to cover a theater and conduct even a few weeks of high-intensity 21st century warfare. Nor can production be scaled up to a meaningful degree in anything even approaching the near- to medium-term.
If it became the top priority beginning tomorrow, it would very conceivably take a decade for US armaments production to achieve the level of output Russia and Iran have already attained.
And the US will not, in our lives, nor that of our children’s children’s children, achieve the production output of China.
Meanwhile, US/NATO/Israeli air defense is effectively impotent against Russian and Iranian strike missiles. And they openly admit it from time to time. A recent NATO analysis determined they could only hope to attempt to cover about 5% of strategic targets in Europe.
“That’s all well and good,” some will say, “but Iran is not Russia.”
True enough. But the Iranians have based the overwhelming majority of their missile development on Russian designs. And there are compelling indications they have an impressively large inventory of them.
And anyone who scoffs at Iranian engineering is embarrassingly misinformed.
“Sure, sure,” others will say, “but our peerless Suppression of Enemy Air Defense capabilities will kill them all before they know what hit them.”
Well, as for the awesomeness of American SEAD capability, maybe it’s all that and more, but we have no objective evidence to support that thesis.
American SEAD capability has NEVER ONCE faced formidable major-power opposition.
Yes, we hear incessantly how the “invisible” B-2s and F-35s are going to easily penetrate enemy airspace and sweep away all threats. But that’s just baseless bravado speaking, in my considered opinion. And I am convinced that well-informed analysts all around the world have correctly calculated that it ain’t gonna prove nearly as easy as the average American Joe erroneously believes it will be.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that a US/Israel air campaign – however necessarily brief it would be – can and will inflict some powerful strikes. But Iran’s capability to shoot back is not going to be destroyed in a week, or a month, or a year. And people in America – and particularly in Washington – need to come to grips with the high probability that a major air campaign against the Iranians is going to result in some shocking losses for American airpower.
The bomber is NOT always going to get through.
Several of them are going to end up in flaming debris on Iranian mountainsides. And then the Iranians are going to launch a multi-platform counterstrike package that is going to unquestionably overwhelm the defenses of American bases in the Persian Gulf region. And they may very likely have the capability to credibly threaten both Diego Garcia and any US Navy ships that are within their considerable reach.
I remain strongly persuaded that making war against Iran is a very bad idea.
As I have noted recently: Geography is the indomitable god of war.
If the Trump administration opts for war against Iran, I suspect it will be predicated on the questionable assumption that it constitutes a preparatory strike against China; a means by which to seize control of Persian Gulf energy exports and thereby deprive China of those resources.
These are bold plans likely to go awry.
And if Elbridge Colby and his entourage of Yellow Peril imbeciles actually succeed in persuading the Trump White House and the imperial powers-that-be to begin a “maximum pressure” campaign against China … well, we will, ‘ere long, hear these words thundering from the east: 拿着我的啤酒.
Reprinted with permission from imetatronink.
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