[1][3] In a broader and less formal sense, the term "ranger" has been used, officially and unofficially, in North America since the 17th century, to describe specialized light infantry in small, independent units—usually companies.

The first units to be officially designated Rangers were companies recruited in the New England Colonies to fight against Native Americans in King Philip's War.

The 75th Ranger Regiment is an elite airborne light infantry combat formation within the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC).

Rangers were full-time soldiers employed by colonial governments to patrol between fixed frontier fortifications in reconnaissance providing early warning of raids.

John "Samuel" Smith", who wrote in 1622, "When I had ten men able to go abroad, our common wealth was very strong: with such a number I ranged that unknown country 14 weeks.

[6]: 33  Church was commissioned by the Governor of the Plymouth Colony Josiah Winslow to form the first ranger company for King Philip's War.

In 1716, his memoirs, entitled Entertaining Passages relating to Philip's War, was published and is considered by some to constitute the first American military manual.

An incensed Rogers instead joined forces with the Loyalists, raised the Queen's Rangers, and fought for the Crown, giving historical confirmation to Washington's concerns about the depth of his patriotism.

Continental Army Rangers officers such as John Stark, commanded the  1st New Hampshire Regiment, which gained fame at the Battles of Bunker Hill and Bennington.

Later on during the war, General Washington ordered Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton to select an elite group of men for reconnaissance missions.

He is credited in the lineage of the Army Rangers, as is George Rogers Clark who led an irregular force of Kentucky/Virginia militiamen to capture the British forts at Vincennes, Indiana and Kaskaskia, Illinois.

During the Black Hawk War, in 1832, the Battalion of Mounted Rangers, an early version of the cavalry in the U.S. Army was created out of frontiersmen who enlisted for one year and provided their own rifles and horses.

Military historian Darl L. Stephenson stated that a unit called the Blazer's Scouts were also a precursor to Army Rangers during the Civil War.

[16] Aside from conducting similar irregular warfare on Confederate forces in Richmond, Mississippi and Tennessee, its members were also descendants of the first ranger groups, organized by Robert Rogers in the French and Indian War.

A select fifty or so of the first U.S. Rangers were dispersed through the British Commandos for the Dieppe Raid in August 1942; these were the first American soldiers to see ground combat in the European theater.

[21] Under constant fire during their climb, they encountered only a small company of Germans on the cliffs and subsequently discovered a group of field artillery weapons in trees some 1,000 yards (910 m) to the rear.

Much of the Marauders training was based on Major General Orde Wingate of the British Army who specialized in deep penetration raids behind Japanese lines.

The 5307th Composite Group was composed of the six color-coded combat teams that would become part of modern Ranger heraldry, they fought against the Japanese during the Burma Campaign.

In February 1944, the Marauders began a 1,000-mile (1,600 km) march over the Himalayan mountain range and through the Burmese jungle to strike behind the Japanese lines.

The Army Chief of Staff assigned the Ranger training program at Fort Benning to Colonel John Gibson Van Houten.

During the course of the war, the Rangers patrolled and probed, scouted and destroyed, attacked and ambushed the Communist Chinese and North Korean enemy.

The 2nd and 4th Rangers made a combat airborne assault near Munsan where Life Magazine reported that Allied troops were now patrolling north of the 38th Parallel.

[28] Since satellite communications were a thing of the future, one of the most daring long-range penetration operations of the Vietnam War was launched on 19 April 1968, by members of the 1st Air Cavalry Division's, Company E, 52nd Infantry (LRP), (redesignated Co. H, Ranger), against the NVA when they seized "Signal Hill" the name attributed to the peak of Dong Re Lao Mountain, a densely forested 4,879-foot (1,487 m) mountain, midway in A Shau Valley, so the 1st and 3rd Brigades, slugging it out hidden deep behind the towering wall of mountains, could communicate with Camp Evans near the coast or with approaching aircraft.

[32] In addition to scouting and reconnoitering roles for their parent formations, Ranger units provided terrain-assessment and tactical or special security missions; undertook recovery operations to locate and retrieve prisoners of war; captured enemy soldiers for interrogation and intelligence-gathering purposes; tapped North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong wire communications lines in their established base areas along the Ho Chi Minh trail; and mined enemy trails as well as motor-vehicle transport routes.

[28] After the Vietnam War, division and brigade commanders determined that the U.S. Army needed an elite, rapidly deployable light infantry, so on 31 January 1974 General Creighton Abrams asked General Kenneth C. Leuer to activate, organize, train and command the first battalion sized Ranger unit since World War II.

Primary tasks include: direct action, national and international emergency crisis response, airfield seizure, airborne & air assault operations, special reconnaissance, intelligence & counter intelligence, combat search and rescue, personnel recovery & hostage rescue, joint special operations, and counter terrorism.

The Rangers met with success during the invasion aimed at overthrowing the Taliban government, in which they participated in two operations to secure strategic areas in Kandahar Province in Southern Afghanistan.

[39] These two operations have been the subject of intense debate, with critics contending that they put the soldiers at unnecessary risk and had no clear strategic value or intelligence gains.

[90] On July 5, 2022, the House Armed Services Committee directed the Secretary of the Army to submit a report no later than March 1, 2023 on assessing the feasibility of establishing Ranger Battalion in the National Guard, which included the required resources and timeline for activating the unit.

In 1966, a panel headed by General Ralph E. Haines, Jr. recommended making Ranger training mandatory for all Regular Army officers upon commissioning.