Placement · U.S. Army
Which sleeve carries what on the OCP coat, and where to get the measurements. This page is deliberately short on numbers, and the reason is worth reading before you go looking for them elsewhere.
Short answer. The U.S. flag goes on the wearer’s right sleeve. The shoulder sleeve insignia for your current organisation goes on the wearer’s left. Everything else — the tapes, rank, badges, and every measurement — is set out in DA PAM 670-1, and this page does not reproduce it.
Why this page has no measurement table
Army placement is governed by two documents. AR 670-1 is the regulation; it sets policy and then explicitly hands off the detail. Its own summary of changes records that it “deletes all procedural guidance regarding uniforms, insignia, and other uniform accessories,” pointing to the pamphlet instead. DA PAM 670-1 is where the placement paragraphs and the figures actually live.
Both are published by the Army Publishing Directorate. When this page was written, that site could not be read automatically, and the copies circulating on other hosts carried four different dates — 2014, 2015, 2017 and a January 2021 edition. A measurement lifted from a superseded edition looks exactly like a current one, and there is no way to tell them apart on a patch supplier’s blog.
So this page publishes the two sleeve facts that three independent sources agreed on, and stops. If you want the tape geometry, the rank position or any figure in inches, get the current DA PAM 670-1 from the Army Publishing Directorate and read chapter 21. That is not a cop-out; it is the only version of this answer that is safe to act on.
The two sleeves
This answers the question most people are actually asking. What side does the U.S. Army patch go on? Your unit patch — the shoulder sleeve insignia for your current organisation — goes on your left arm. The flag goes on your right. If you are looking at a photograph rather than wearing the coat, both appear on the opposite side of the picture from the side they are worn on.
What the sleeves carry, and what is not confirmed here
| Item | Sleeve | Confirmed here? |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. flag embroidered insignia | Wearer’s right | Yes — stated in DA PAM 670-1 and consistent across sources |
| SSI, current organisation | Wearer’s left | Yes — stated in DA PAM 670-1, and confirmed again by Army reporting in 2025 |
| SSI-FWTS (the combat patch) | Conventionally the wearer’s right, below the flag | Not confirmed here. Check the pamphlet |
| Skill tabs | Above the SSI on the left sleeve | Not confirmed here. Check the pamphlet |
| “U.S. ARMY” tape and nametape | Opposite chest sides | Not confirmed here. The sides and geometry are in the pamphlet |
| Grade insignia | Centre chest | Not confirmed here. Check the pamphlet |
Every row marked “not confirmed” has a confident-looking answer on a dozen commercial sites. Some of those answers are probably right. None of them tells you which edition it came from, which is the only thing that would let you check.
One change worth knowing about
In February 2025 the Secretary of the Army issued HQDA Execute Order 123-25, directing uniformed soldiers supporting garrison operations to wear the shoulder sleeve insignia of their installation senior commander’s unit, rather than the patch they had been wearing. That changes which patch is worn, not where it goes — the SSI is still on the upper left arm.
It is a useful illustration of why dates matter on a page like this. A guide written in 2024 would have been silently wrong for a large number of soldiers within a year, and would have looked no different.
How to get the answer you can act on
- Go to the Army Publishing Directorate and download the current DA PAM 670-1. Check the date on the cover before you read anything.
- Read the placement paragraphs for the item you care about, not a summary of them. The figures carry the measurements.
- If you are in a unit, ask your first-line supervisor or your unit’s command team. Local guidance exists on top of the pamphlet and it is binding on you.
- Do not take a measurement from a patch supplier, including this site. Suppliers make the patch; they do not set where it goes.
This page is a reference written by a patch site. It is not a Department of Defense publication, it is not endorsed by the U.S. Army, and where it differs from the current DA PAM 670-1, the pamphlet is right. Unit insignia and service marks belong to their organisations; nothing here is permission to reproduce or wear them.
Related: Scouts BSA uniform patch placement is the guide on this site where the source could be read and quoted in full, and how placement is measured covers the reference points every one of these publications uses.