Troop
military formation size, generally subordinate to a squadron in cavalry
A troop is a military sub-subunit, originally a small formation of cavalry, subordinate to a squadron. In many armies a troop is the equivalent element to the infantry section or platoon. Exceptions are the US Cavalry and the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery where a troop is a subunit comparable to an infantry company or artillery battery. Historically the remainder of the Royal Horse Artillery used the term troop in the same manner but they eventually aligned with the rest of the Royal Regiment of Artillery in referring to troops as subordinate to artillery batteries.
Troops is often used to refer to the other members of one's company or cause, but because of its military connotations, it conveys a particularly altruistic type of dedicated worker. Traditionally, troops refers to the soldiers in a military.
A cavalry soldier of private rank is called a "trooper" in many Commonwealth armies (abbreviated "Tpr", not to be confused with "trouper").
A related sense of the term, troops refers to members of the military collectively, as in "the troops"; see Troop (disambiguation).
Troops in various forces
Today, a troop is defined differently in different armed forces.
In the Australian Army a troop is the equivalent of a platoon sized element in units of certain corps, those being:
Australian Army Aviation
Royal Australian Armoured Corps
Royal Australian Corps of Signals
Royal Australian Corps of Transport
Royal Australian Engineers
Royal Australian Survey Corps (now disbanded)
Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery
Special Air Service Regiment (SASR)
The SASR is the only unit in the Royal Australian Infantry Corps to use the term troop to refer to its platoon-size elements.
The public source identifies “Troop” as military formation size, generally subordinate to a squadron in cavalry. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Troop, military and formation.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Troop”, the useful work is to connect “military formation size, generally subordinate to a squadron in cavalry” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1080137. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Troop” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.