A Redleg.
A Soldier of the U.S. Army Field Artillery, the branch responsible for cannon, rocket, and missile fires. The nickname comes from the scarlet trouser stripe issued to the branch in the 19th century. The stripe is gone; the name stuck.
A quantitative branch.
The Field Artillery is the Army's quantitative branch. Fire-direction-center math, ballistics, target acquisition, and modern fires-control software all rest on physics, engineering, and applied mathematics. The branch operates AFATDS (the joint fires-control system), ground sensors, counter-battery radar, drones, networked targeting platforms, and the increasingly software-driven backbone of long-range fires. Doing the job well requires the same disciplines K–12 STEM is trying to instill: precision, technical literacy, calm execution under pressure, and the willingness to redo the math when the math doesn't agree.
Many Redlegs entered the Army with engineering, mathematics, computer science, or physics degrees; many more leave the Army with them. STEM expertise isn't adjacent to the Field Artillery, it is the Field Artillery.
An outlet.
Redlegs for STEM exists so the working engineers, mathematicians, technicians, and scientists inside the branch have an outlet to share that expertise where it matters most: the classrooms of Lawton, Cache, Elgin, and the surrounding schools whose students will become the next generation of engineers, scientists, and Soldiers. The branch contributes to the community that hosts it. The community, in turn, raises the kids who will fill the next ranks.
Heritage.
The name reaches back to the early 19th century. Each branch of the U.S. Army was assigned a facing color, for the Artillery, scarlet. During the Mexican–American War, Ringgold's and Duncan's batteries were issued uniforms with a scarlet stripe down the trouser outseam, and the practice carried through the Civil War. The men who wore those stripes acquired a nickname that stuck: Redlegs . The trouser stripe disappeared in 1902 when high-velocity small arms made bright field uniforms a liability. The name did not.
