U.S. soldiers receive combat patches during a ceremony at Irbil Air Base, Iraq, on Oct. 23, 2025. Soldiers assigned or attached to units supporting military operations while deployed to the Middle East and Africa are now authorized to wear combat patches, according to a March 26 memo signed by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy A. George. (Doniel Kennedy/U.S. Army)
With the U.S. preparing for potential ground operations in Iran and the number of American troops wounded in action increasing, the Army’s top general has authorized soldiers supporting the war to wear Army combat patches, signifying involvement in hostilities.
The combat patch approval affects soldiers “assigned or attached to units supporting military operations while deployed” to the Middle East and Africa, according to a March 26 memo signed by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy A. George.
An image of the memo was shared online in the Army subreddit, and the Army verified its authenticity Monday to military news site Task & Purpose. But the memo did not yet appear to be on the Army Publishing Directorate’s public-facing website, where a similar authorization was published last July after U.S. bombers struck three nuclear sites deep inside Iran during a 12-day war.
The change lets eligible active-duty, Reserve, and National Guard soldiers swap the insignia of their deployed units from the left shoulder to the right shoulder of their uniforms. Soldiers don the patches while deployed but may continue to wear them afterward to indicate prior service in a combat zone.
The latest memo applies to those deployed during a period from Feb. 28, the date President Donald Trump announced the start of the operation, to a date yet to be determined. It comes as thousands of Marines and paratroopers have been arriving in the region and as the Pentagon has reportedly been weighing the deployment of 10,000 more ground troops to the area.
But Trump told reporters Tuesday from the Oval Office that he expected U.S. forces to wrap up the military operation against Iran in “maybe two weeks, maybe three.”
“We’re hitting them very hard,” he said.
The U.S. has struck more than 11,000 targets inside Iran since the start of the war, which the U.S. has dubbed Operation Epic Fury, including killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and destroying weapons stockpiles, production facilities, and the country’s largest naval vessels.
Iran’s return fire with missile and drone strikes has so far killed six U.S. troops and wounded hundreds more. Another six U.S. troops were killed in a plane crash in Iraq.
The number of U.S. service members wounded increased to 348 as of Tuesday, with six considered seriously wounded and 315 listed as “returned to duty,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said in response to a query Wednesday. That total is up from 303 in an update last Friday that The Associated Press reported.
U.S. bases in the Middle East have also sustained considerable damage, with a New York Times report last week describing many as “all but uninhabitable.”
The Army memo shared on social media did not include an enclosure cited in the memo that appears to list the deployed locations where the combat patch is authorized. A similarly named attachment to the authorization last July listed the countries of Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Israel, Yemen, Oman, Lebanon, Egypt and Djibouti.
Over the past 25 years, units deployed to war zones have held “patching” ceremonies, where soldiers often stand in formations on swaths of gravel between rows of concrete blast walls to be presented with versions of the unit patches embroidered in subdued green-and-black colors.
At one such event in September 2023 in Iraq, described in an Army statement, Lt. Col. Russell P. Lemler of the 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, explained that during World War II, “before the concept of combat patching,” soldiers who transferred from one unit to another would move their previous unit’s patch to their right sleeve in honor of their fallen comrades and to distinguish themselves as combat veterans.
The Army did not immediately respond to a request for further information about the latest combat patch authorization.
