Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/United States Army

United States Army

Content-wise, I believe that this article is suitable for promotion. However it has few sources and thus recently failed an A-class review. I am looking for comments on any other ways that the article can be improved. -Ed! (talk) 01:10, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Nick Dowling

This is a reasonable quality article, but needs a lot of work to meet A class, especially as there are lots of excellent sources which are available. The United States Marine Corps article is a FA and provides a useful model. My suggestions are:

• More citations are needed - as a rule of thumb, provide a citation for everything. The sources should also be independent from the Army wherever possible - most of the current references are to the Army's website.
• Some of the article is confusing - for instance, why are the figures for numbers of personnel in the lead for different dates? - is a common date available. "The U.S. Army is led by a civilian Secretary of the Army" is confusing as the same sentence says that this official's role is to provide "oversight" for the Army's Chief of Staff and it's later said that the "Chief of Staff of each service only has the responsibility to organize, train and equip their respective service component" which suggests that it's they who are in charge of the Army as an institution while other people command its deployable elements during operations.
• Given that the article states that the Army traces its history back to the 18th century, why does the history of the Army's organisation in the poorly named "Army components" section start at 1917? The 2.5 para discussion of mass civilian mobilisation in the event of an attack on the US in this section also seems excessive given the very low likelihood of this ever happening - one sentance would probably be enough given that it's now an antiquated concept which has little relevance to the US Army's actual organisation and doctrine.
• More generally, some bits of the article provide a brief history of the topic while others don't. I'd suggest that the article be restricted to the Army as it currently stands, with histories being spun off into History of the United States Army and appropriate sub-articles.
• The history section presents a very simplistic and triumphalist history of the Army which focuses on its combat performance and says almost nothing about the history of the Army as an institution. Claims like the victory in the 1991 Gulf War "proving the effectiveness of the new untried all-volunteer force" are troublesome as they don't demonstrate a relationship between cause and effect - if the victory over Iraq in 1991 was a particularly significant achievement why did the US Army call one of the official histories of the war 'Certain Victory' and does the bungled occupation of Iraq after 2003 mean that the all-volunteer Army is now a failure? Other bits of the section seem outright wrong (eg, "the Army had a small participation in the successful invasions of Panama" - the article on this topic indicates that more than a division's worth of troops were involved and the Army made up the majority of the invasion force) and the process of integrating African Americans and women into the Army needs to be mentioned as these are key parts of the Army's history.
• The weapons and training sections are pretty good.
• Get rid of the 'Values' section - mission statements and the like add nothing to the value of encyclopaedia articles as they're inevitably noble statements developed my marketeers. A section on 'military discipline' or similar might be worth including and would cover similar ground in an encyclopaedic manner.
• The 'Famous former soldiers' section should also go as this is basically a trivial list of famous people who happened to have once been in the Army (which was a very common experience in the days of mass conscription). What rationale is there for listing people who are famous only because of their military service such as Douglas MacArthur and Stonewall Jackson listed alongside people who achieved fame through totally unrelated fields such as Mickey Rooney and Jimi Hendrix?
• The major commands section should be integrated with the Combat maneuver organizations section. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Leobold1

Couple things jump out at me

• There should be a direct link to the court case that places the Army under Federal jurisdiction over the complaints from the Governor. Findlaw and Lexis would be good ones, and one with this type of controversary would be listed elsewhere on the internet.
• Each of the Unified Combat Commands, as well as units listed under "Combat maneuver organizations", should have a link at least to their homepages.
• The wikilink for "Battalion/Squadron Commander", "Headquarters and Headquarters Company/Battery", and "Company/Battery/Troop Commander" should be changed to "Battalion Commander", "Headquarters and Headquarters Company", and "Company Commander" which gives the information for both and is a good link.
• A list of the brigades under the divisions under "Combat maneuver organizations" can be listed, just as the "Army Special Operations Command" has.
• The title of "History" should be changed to "Battle History" or "War History" as that's all it has. There was much more that happened during the life of the Army than just wars. Should have more info added or the name changed.
• Couple more details on the Indian Wars under "1800s" as well as links can be added.
• The Boxer Rebellion actually happened mostly in the 1900s, not the 1800s (only the last 2 months of 1899) as listed. May want to change to 1900s.
• The links for Futuresoldiers.com is a bad one. The webpage linked doesn't have the quoted listed on it anywhere. The links should go directly to the webpage that the information comes from, not a general site where you have to search for the information. None of the links from the webpage shout out where the quotes come from.
• "Uniforms" should list more than just the current uniform. A couple of paragraphs on uniforms since the American Revolution can be added (with pictures if you so choose).
• The Future Force Warrior system isn't part of the Uniform. Placed in a separate section either in Equipment or a new part for Future of the Army (which there are a few articles that can be referenced) would be much better. Category:Future American weapons
• The "Equipment" section is very well detailed and written well. Only minor additions as to the funtion of the equipment can be added.
• More information on the different training schools and different MOS's are needed.

Overall, a well written article, with some minor (yet somehow time consuming :) ) changes including links and addition of information here and there. Really, aside from the links, these are minor tweaks and don't take much away from the article. Just reading it gives a small feeling of incompleteness.

Leobold1 (talk) 21:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)