The 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division was originally constituted in July 1968 as the Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC), 4th Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division but was inactivated less than 18 months later on 15 December 1969. More than three dozen years later, the organization’s Headquarters Company was redesignated as Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 82nd Airborne Division on 16 June 2006, with the Brigade’s old Headquarters beginning a separate lineage at that time.
Just five months earlier (5 January 2006, the Battalion’s organizational flash and oval, technically called Airborne background trimming, had been amended to change their descriptions after having been originally approved on 23 November 2005. And just seven months after its organization as a Special Troops Battalion, the unit found itself deployed to Iraq with the 4th Brigade Combat Team as part of Multi-National Division-Baghdad under the 1st Cavalry Division. Its service between February 2007 and April 2008 was recognized in 2010 with a Meritorious Unit Commendation.
The Special Troops Battalion would be deployed support of Operation Enduring Freedom once again, this time in late summer 2009 to provide support for the Maneuver elements of 4th Brigade Combat Team, thus enabling a stronger Afghan National Security Force and strengthening governmental oversight of six key Afghan provinces: Badghis, Farah, Herat, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Zabul. Its superior performance in carrying out this mission during the August 2009 – 2010 led to it being named for its second Meritorious Unit Commendation on 2 April 2012.
In February 2012, 4th BCT and the Special Troops Battalion were deployed for the last time before their inactivation in the fall of 2013. Working closely with Afghan National Security Forces, the Brigade inflicted significant casualties on the Taliban during a five-month spring and summer offensive and in 2016 was selected for a Valorous Unit Award for service between 15 March and 7 September 2012. In November 2012, the 4th BCT was chosen as the first of a new type of unit, Security Force Assistance Brigade, that are now recognized with its own organizational brown beret and flashes.