82nd Airborne Division

The division's headquarters and roughly 1,000 paratroopers under Maj. Gen. Brandon Tegtmeier received deployment orders on 24 March, with the 3,000-strong Immediate Response Force held on 18-hour alert. The 1st Brigade Combat Team, the Devil Brigade, followed into Kuwait days later, joining 3,500 Marines aboard USS Tripoli and pushing the theatre total past 50,000 US personnel.

Trump told reporters the same week that the US had "won the war", language paratroopers are not usually sent to reinforce. Three Pentagon sources described active planning for an amphibious seizure of Kharg Island, which handles 90 per cent of Iran's oil exports, alongside preparation of detention facilities for Iranian prisoners.

By early April, eighteen A-10 Warthog ground-attack aircraft, close air support jets built to loiter over a battlefield rather than strike and withdraw, had arrived alongside the division's fully deployed 1st Brigade Combat Team. Two EA-37B electronic warfare aircraft joined them, completing a mix that reads as preparation for occupation rather than the standoff air campaign the administration described publicly.

The division cancelled its own training exercises during this period, and detention facilities for Iranian prisoners moved into preparation alongside the Kharg Island seizure planning. Every serving commander watched the Army's own chief of staff removed mid-campaign days later, over promotion policy unconnected to the 82nd's battlefield readiness.