Uniformed services of the United States in the context of "US Military"

The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and the naval warfare force of the United States. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, one undergoing trials, two new carriers under construction, and six other carriers planned as of 2024. With 336,978 personnel on active duty and 101,583 in the Ready Reserve, the U.S. Navy is the third largest of the United States military service branches in terms of personnel. It has 299 deployable combat vessels and about 4,012 operational aircraft as of 18 July 2023. The U.S. Navy is a part of the United States Department of Defense and is one of six armed forces of the United States and one of eight uniformed services of the United States.

The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which was established during the American Revolutionary War and was effectively disbanded as a separate entity shortly thereafter. After suffering significant loss of goods and personnel at the hands of the Barbary pirates from Algiers, the United States Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794 for the construction of six heavy frigates, the first ships of the Navy. The United States Navy played a major role in the American Civil War by blockading the Confederacy and seizing control of its rivers. It played the central role in the World War II defeat of Imperial Japan. The United States Navy emerged from World War II as the most powerful navy in the world, succeeding the British Navy. The modern United States Navy maintains a sizable global presence, deploying in strength in such areas as the Western Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. It is a blue-water navy with the ability to project force onto the littoral regions of the world, engage in forward deployments during peacetime and rapidly respond to regional crises, making it a frequent actor in American foreign and military policy.

The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. U.S. federal law names six armed forces: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. Since 1949, all of the armed forces, except the Coast Guard, have been permanently part of the United States Department of Defense, with the Space Force existing as a branch of the Air Force until 2019. They form six of the eight uniformed services of the United States.

From their inception during the American Revolutionary War, the Army and the Navy, and later the other services, have played a decisive role in the country's history. They helped forge a sense of national unity and identity through victories in the early-19th-century First and Second Barbary Wars. They played a critical role in the territorial evolution of the U.S., including the American Civil War. The National Security Act of 1947 created the Department of Defense or DoD, (after a short period being called the National Military Establishment) headed by the secretary of defense, superior to the service secretaries. It also created both the U.S. Air Force and National Security Council; in 1949, an amendment to the act merged the cabinet-level departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force into the DoD.

The United States Army (U.S. Army) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution. It operates under the authority, direction, and control of the United States secretary of defense. As a part of the United States Department of Defense, it is one of the six armed forces of the United States and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. The Army is the most senior branch in order of precedence amongst the armed services. It has its roots in the Continental Army, formed on 14 June 1775 to fight against the British for independence during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784 to replace the disbanded Continental Army.

The U.S. Army is part of the Department of the Army, which is one of the three military departments of the Department of Defense. The U.S. Army is headed by a civilian senior appointed civil servant, the secretary of the Army (SECARMY), and by a chief military officer, the chief of staff of the Army (CSA) who is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is the largest military branch, and in the fiscal year 2022, the projected end strength for the Regular Army (USA) was 480,893 soldiers; the Army National Guard (ARNG) had 336,129 soldiers and the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) had 188,703 soldiers; the combined-component strength of the U.S. Army was 1,005,725 soldiers. The Army's mission is "to fight and win our Nation's wars, by providing prompt, sustained land dominance, across the full range of military operations and the spectrum of conflict, in support of combatant commanders". The branch participates in conflicts worldwide and is the major ground-based offensive and defensive force of the United States of America.‌

The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines or simply the Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combined arms, implementing its own infantry, artillery, aerial, and special operations forces. The U.S. Marine Corps is a part of the United States Department of Defense and is one of the six armed forces of the United States and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States.

The Marine Corps has been part of the United States Department of the Navy since 30 June 1834 with its sister service, the United States Navy. The USMC operates installations on land and aboard sea-going amphibious warfare ships around the world. Additionally, several of the Marines' tactical aviation squadrons, primarily Marine Fighter Attack squadrons, are also embedded in Navy carrier air wings and operate from the aircraft carriers.

The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is a part of the United States Department of Defense and is one of the six armed forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal Corps, the USAF was established by transfer of personnel from the Army Air Forces with the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947. It is the second youngest branch of the United States Armed Forces and the fourth in order of precedence. The United States Air Force articulates its core missions as air supremacy, global integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, rapid global mobility, global strike, and command and control.

The Department of the Air Force, which serves as the USAF's headquarters and executive department, is one of the three military departments of the Department of Defense. The Department of the Air Force is headed by the civilian secretary of the Air Force, who reports to the secretary of defense and is appointed by the president with Senate confirmation. The highest-ranking military officer in the Air Force is the chief of staff of the Air Force, who exercises supervision over Air Force units and serves as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As directed by the secretary of defense and secretary of the Air Force, certain Air Force components are assigned to unified combatant commands. Combatant commanders are delegated operational authority of the forces assigned to them, while the secretary of the Air Force and the chief of staff of the Air Force retain administrative authority over their members.

The United States Space Force (USSF) is the space service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and was established on 20 December 2019. Part of the United States Department of Defense, it is one of the six armed forces of the United States and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the second independent space force to have been formed, after the Russian Space Forces; together with that of China, it is one of only two still extant.

The United States Space Force traces its origins to the Air Force, Army, and Navy's military space programs created during the beginning of the Cold War. US military space forces first participated in combat operations during the Vietnam War and have participated in every U.S. military operation since, most notably in the Gulf War, which has been referred to as the "first space war". The Strategic Defense Initiative and creation of Air Force Space Command in the 1980s marked a renaissance for military space operations.

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the United States military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission with jurisdiction in both domestic and international waters and a federal regulatory agency mission as part of its duties. It is the largest coast guard in the world.

The U.S. Coast Guard protects the United States' borders and economic and security interests abroad; and defends its sovereignty by safeguarding sea lines of communication and commerce across U.S. territorial waters and its Exclusive Economic Zone. Due to ever-expanding risk imposed by transnational threats through the maritime and cyber domains, the U.S. Coast Guard is at any given time deployed to and operating on all seven continents and in cyberspace to enforce its mission. Like its United States Navy sibling, the U.S. Coast Guard maintains a global presence with permanently-assigned personnel throughout the world and forces routinely deploying to both littoral and blue-water regions. The U.S. Coast Guard's adaptive, multi-mission "white hull" fleet is leveraged as a force of both diplomatic soft power and humanitarian and security assistance over the more overtly confrontational nature of "gray hulled" warships. As a humanitarian service, it saves tens of thousands of lives a year at sea and in U.S. waters, and provides emergency response and disaster management for a wide range of human-made and natural catastrophic incidents in the U.S. and throughout the world.