red-one report
n.— «An Army regiment apparently does not move an inch before knowing that everyone is accounted for. The process, known as a red-one report, is not unlike what you did in elementary school at the morning bell. And these warriors line up alphabetically about as smoothly as does a sixth grade class.» —“Long road into Iraq is only the beginning” by Bill Johnson in Baghdad, Iraq Rock Mountain News (Denver, Colo.) Nov. 6, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
In 1971, when a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan, famous authors and artists were invited to write letters to the city’s youngest readers, extolling the many benefits of libraries. One of the loveliest was from E.B. White, author of...
So is this a reference to The Big Red One, the nickname for the 1st Infantry Division recently discussed on the ADS list?
Dunno. It strikes me that the journalist may not have understood the term correctly, in part because to call a “report” a “process” doesn’t quite work. Also, I’m not sure of the relationship between the Army’s 1st Infantry Division and the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment.