Army Recruiting Battalion Indianapolis

The Recruiting Battalion Indianapolis is one of the oldest in USAREC, dating back to 1964, when the Army Recruiting Command was established at Hampton, VA. In the early 1970s, after Congress authorized an all-volunteer Armed Forces, the organization was known for a time as a Recruiting Main Station (RMS) and later as a District Recruiting Command (DRC) before its designation as a Recruiting Battalion in October, 1983.

Its boundaries have varied over the years as well, shrinking in the early 1970s as the number of recruiting districts grew to accommodate high missions in that decade and the succeeding one. With the end of the Cold War and resulting Defense cutbacks in the early 1990s, the Battalion’s boundaries expanded again under the USAREC drawdown, acquiring areas previously under command of the inactivated Peoria, Louisville, and Cincinnati Battalions. As part of the USAREC transformation of 2008, the Louisville and South Bend Companies were transferred to the Nashville and Chicago Battalions, respectively, while Indianapolis gained three Companies encompassing a large area in central Illinois from the inactivated St. Louis Battalion.

Currently the Indianapolis Battalion covers an area of more than 66,000 square miles. it includes the state capitals of Indianapolis and Springfield along with medium-sized cities such as Peoria, Evansville, Fort Wayne, Bloomington-Normal, Terre Haute, Champaign-Urbana, and Lafayette.

The Indianapolis Battalion is one of eight battalions assigned to the 3rd Recruiting Brigade, headquartered at Fort Knox, KY. The 3rd Brigade covers nearly all of the Midwest, including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, as well as large portions of Kentucky and Tennessee.