Military Demonstration Teams

The Golden Knights fly and jump from their own fleet of aircraft, performing freefall demonstrations, canopy formations, and precision landings, sometimes onto a target no larger than a dinner plate in front of a live crowd, at several hundred events a year across the country.

The team is organized into a Gold demonstration team, a Black demonstration team, and a competition team that competes in national and international parachuting competitions separate from its public air show schedule, and Golden Knights members hold more U.S. and world parachuting records than any other team, a distinction the Army cites directly in its recruiting materials.

Jumpers typically exit at 12,500 feet and can freefall at speeds around 120 miles per hour, with the canopy team stacking parachutes into stationary formations, one member standing on another's canopy, in a maneuver called a canopy-relative-work stack. The team's Tandem Orientation Program takes reporters, athletes, and recruiting prospects on jumps strapped to a Golden Knights instructor.

The team has jumped into presidential inaugurations, World Series and Super Bowl pregame ceremonies, and the opening of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. It has also had fatal training accidents over its history, and after each the Army reviewed and revised the team's safety and equipment procedures, which are stricter than civilian sport-parachuting standards.

The 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as The Old Guard, is the Army's oldest active-duty infantry unit, tracing its lineage to 1784, and is best known for guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery around the clock, in any weather, without exception.

The regiment also fields the U.S. Army Fife and Drum Corps, performing in Revolutionary War-era uniforms at public ceremonies nationwide, and the Continental Color Guard, giving the Army a historically themed ceremonial outreach presence distinct from the Golden Knights' aerial spectacle.

The Tomb Guard has kept an unbroken watch since 1937. Sentinels march a precise 21-step route with 21-second pauses, echoing the 21-gun salute, and the small number who earn the Tomb Guard Identification Badge after months of testing makes it one of the rarest badges in the Army. The Old Guard also conducts most of the roughly 20 to 30 military funerals held at Arlington on a typical weekday.

Because it is stationed at Fort Myer next to Arlington, the regiment is also the ceremonial escort for the president and visiting heads of state, provides firing parties and caisson teams for state funerals, and, as an infantry unit, serves as a rapid-response force for the defense of Washington, D.C.

The All-American Bowl is an annual high school football all-star game held in San Antonio, Texas, and broadcast nationally on NBC. The first game was played on December 30, 2000, and the U.S. Army was its title sponsor through the January 2018 game, making it one of the Army's largest youth-outreach marketing platforms of that era.

During the Army years, the event included a marching band program and combine-style athletic showcases that brought thousands of high school students and their families into direct contact with Army recruiters and soldiers during the week leading up to the nationally televised game.

The game long served as a showcase for future college and NFL stars, and dozens of All-American Bowl alumni have gone on to the NFL, which gave the Army's sponsorship national sports-media exposure it could not buy directly. The Army also sponsored an All-American Marching Band that selected about 125 high school musicians nationally to perform at halftime.

The Army's use of sports and entertainment sponsorships, which has also included NASCAR, esports, and concert tours, has drawn periodic congressional scrutiny over cost and measurable return on recruiting. The Army's run as the bowl's sponsor ended after the 2018 game: NBC Sports acquired the game in 2019, American Family Insurance sponsored it from 2019 to 2024, and since 2025 it has been the Navy All-American Bowl.