[12] The brigade deployed to France along with the rest of the division in September 1918, but it did not participate in any campaigns and never saw combat, instead being utilized as a pool of laborers and reinforcements for frontline units.

[3][40][41] The operation saw three brigades controlling eight battalions dropped by helicopters and US Air Force aircraft into War Zone C, in Tây Ninh Province.

[20] In mid-1967, the 4th Infantry Division's 1st and 2nd Brigades conducting Operation Francis Marion in western Kon Tum Province were making heavy contact with People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces.

While several of its units, including the 2-503rd and A/3-319th were ordered to Tuy Hòa to repair and refit,[60][61] the 173rd was transferred to Camp Radcliff in An Khê and Bong Son areas during 1968, seeing very little action while the combat ineffective elements of the brigade were rebuilt.

In the process the American officers tried to increase pressure on local enemy forces through intensive patrolling and to encourage ARVN battalion, company, and platoon-level leadership through longer, more decentralized operations.

Vietnamization, as later conceived in 1969, was not an objective, and, in fact, the entire effort represented a return to the old strategy of pacification, with American combat operations now tied much closer to the overall task of local security.

Gen. John W. Barnes officially ended the unit's pair-off program and replaced it with Operation Washington Green, an intensive area security effort with territorial and paramilitary forces in Bình Định Province.

Washington Green proved to be the final American campaign in Bình Định Province, and its greatest achievement may have been in training an impressive number of territorial and paramilitary forces.

However, in the long run the operation appeared no more successful than Fairfax's efforts to clean up Gia Dinh Province around Saigon prior to the Tet Offensive.

[64] After widely publicized reports by battalion commander Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert, investigators confirmed that military interrogators of the 173rd Airborne Brigade "repeatedly beat prisoners, tortured them with electric shocks and forced water down their throats".

A former counterintelligence officer gave a statement under oath that "he saw interrogators punch and kick prisoners, beat them with sticks, administer electrical shocks and urinate on them.

[73] This meant that the entire northern front of the war would be conducted by the 173rd Airborne Brigade and Army special forces operating with aircraft from Europe as their only supply line.

[75] The force also received force field artillery headquarters from the 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery, which brought a Tactical Operations Center, a Q-36 counterfire radar and Combat Observation and Lasing Team (COLT)a pair of Dragoneye Unmanned Aerial Vehicles from the US Marine Corps, to be operated by the Brigades Ground Surveillance Systems (GSS) team.

[78] On 26 March 2003, 954 soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade conducted a combat jump from C-17 aircraft onto Bashur Airfield in Northern Iraq[3][82] under the command of Colonel Mayville.

[87] The next day, American forces advanced to Kirkuk during Operation Option North, hoping to control oil fields and military airfields in and around the city.

[6] During its service, the brigade was involved in what later became known as the "Hood Event", arresting Turkish special forces soldiers, believing them to be plotting attacks against local civilian officials in northern Iraq.

The LRS detachment was also tasked at times for recon and intel gathering for other brigade assets, and target acquisition and designation for U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and RAF aircraft.

[98] The 173rd participated in various operations with the objective of ensuring security and subduing Taliban insurgents in the mountainous regions along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, near the Hindu Kush.

[101] Though the platoon was able to drive the insurgents back with air support, the fight resulted in 9 soldiers killed and 16 wounded; the deadliest attack on troops in the country since 2005.

Given the province and its three major districts saw a massive influx of both foreign and domestic fighters due to the relatively calm winter prior to the brigade's arrival, its company-sized and platoon-sized elements found themselves in combat against anti-Coalition forces almost daily from the start of March 2010 until its relief.

[111] In 2017, some 600 personnel (1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment) were deployed to the Baltic countries to be positioned in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia for six weeks to coincide with the duration of the joint Russian/Belarusian strategic Zapad 2017 exercise that began 14 September 2017.

A paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne Brigade's Sky Soldiers, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, in Vicenza, Italy, in 2019 through 2020 plotted an ambush on his unit, "to result in the deaths of as many of his fellow service members as possible.

[115][117] The paratrooper was charged with leaking classified information (including the unit's location) to the RapeWaffen Division and the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), a European Satanic occult-based neo-Nazi and white supremacist group that is also anti-Semitic, and has expressed admiration for Nazis such as Adolf Hitler and Islamic jihadists.

[117] In May 2021, as part of the NATO training exercise Swift Response 2021, soldiers of the brigade were simulating seizing and securing the decommissioned Cheshnegirovo airfield in Bulgaria.

[124] Captain Willard, a fictional character portrayed by Martin Sheen in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, was a member of the 173rd assigned to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group.

Throughout the movie, he wears the Vietnam-era, mustard yellow, "subdued" shoulder sleeve insignia worn by 173rd paratroopers on their jungle fatigues during the Vietnam War.

In the 1987 movie Lethal Weapon, the patch worn by Danny Glover's fictional character Roger Murtaugh during a retrospective of his time in Vietnam was that of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

These include Congressmen Duncan Hunter and Charlie Norwood,[128][129] Archbishop of Baltimore Edwin Frederick O'Brien,[130] Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert M. Kimmitt,[131] business owner Barney Visser,[132] activists Stan Goff and Ted Sampley,[133] and Sergeant Major of the Army Gene C.

[135] Lloyd G. McCarter and Ray E. Eubanks earned the medal while fighting with the 503rd Infantry in World War II, while 13 other soldiers earned medals fighting under the 173rd in Vietnam; John A. Barnes III, Michael R. Blanchfield, Glenn H. English Jr., Lawrence Joel, Terry T. Kawamura, Carlos J. Lozada, Don L. Michael, Charles B. Morris, Milton L. Olive III, Larry S. Pierce, Laszlo Rabel, Alfred Rascon, and Charles J.

[136][137] Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta received the Medal of Honor for heroic actions as a rifle team leader in Company B, 2–503 INF (Airborne) when his squad was caught in a near-ambush the night of 25 October 2007 during Operation Rock Avalanche in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan.