U.S. Strategic Command Public Affairs, 901 SAC Blvd, Suite 1A1, Offutt AFB NE 68113-6020
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Fact File U.S. Strategic Command Public Affairs, 901 SAC Blvd, Suite 1A1, Offutt AFB NE 68113-6020 |
U.S. Strategic Command is part of a rich history that spans both the interrelated strategic and space communities.
As part of the ongoing initiative to transform the U.S. military into a 21st century fighting force, the DoD merged U.S. Space Command with USSTRATCOM on Oct. 1, 2002. The merger improves combat effectiveness and speeds up information collection and assessment needed for strategic decision-making. The merged command will be responsible for both early warning of and defense against missile attack as well as long-range strategic attacks.
With the command merging with U.S. Space Command in October 2002, USSTRATCOM can trace its roots back to not only its strategic beginnings but to American military space development as well.
In 1945, World War II was over, the nuclear age was upon us, and a Cold War would soon develop between the United States and Soviet Union. Established in March 1946, the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Air Command (SAC) at Offutt AFB, Neb., with its bomber force, symbolized the cornerstone of national strategic policy: deterrence -- deterrence against the growing nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union.
As its contribution to national deterrence, the U.S. Navy began developing nuclear forces. In the late 1950s, with the advent of the Navy's Polaris ballistic missile submarine and the Air Force's first intercontinental ballistic missile, national leadership recognized the need for a single agency to plan and target all U.S. nuclear forces. As a result, the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff (JSTPS) was established in 1960. Its mission was to produce the Nation's strategic nuclear war plan, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). The JSTPS was housed with SAC to take full advantage of SAC's existing war-planning expertise, intelligence capability and an extensive communications network.
It was the combination of the unique capabilities of the Navy's submarine launched ballistic missiles along with the Air Force's bombers and ICBMs that came to be known as the Strategic Nuclear Triad. For almost forty years, the Triad provided a visible, credible deterrent against Soviet aggression.
On June 1, 1992, with the Berlin Wall down, the Warsaw Pact a memory and the Soviet Union nonexistent, the Air Force stood down SAC and the JSTPS also took its place in the history books of the Cold War. That same day, President George H. Bush established a new unified command, U.S. Strategic Command. Its mission of deterrence would sound familiar, but its structure and role would reflect the changing international political landscape.
With USSTRATCOM, for the first time in U. S. history, the planning, targeting and wartime employment of strategic forces came under the control of a single commander while the day-to-day training, equipping and maintenance responsibilities for its forces remained with the services -- the Air Force and Navy.
By the turn of the century, the command was well aware that the future posed challenges both different and greater than those present in 1992 when USSTRATCOM had been established to encourage stability in the post-Cold War world. Events of Sept. 11, 2001, vividly proved that the nation needed a new strategic direction. The emergence of transnational global threats ? state and non-state actors such as terrorist organizations that operate across state borders, increasingly in affiliation with others who oppose U.S. interests required a more integrated approach to our nation's defense. Sept. 11 also illustrated the need to improve the nation's national command and control architecture.
At the same time, the nation's strategic nuclear posture was also under review. While nuclear weapons play an essential role in our nation's security and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers continue to provide the foundation of deterrence, the President and Secretary of Defense called for a broader range of military strategic options, including non-nuclear options. The nation's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, rather than relying on a strategy grounded solely in offensive nuclear response, expanded nuclear deterrence to include non-nuclear strike options, active and passive defenses, supported by a command and control infrastructure, intelligence, and adaptive and responsive planning capabilities
Shortly after a meeting between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May 2002, a summit was held during which both leaders signed a treaty promising bilateral reductions that would result in a total of 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons for each country by the year 2012.
On June 26, 2002, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that U.S. Space Command would merge with USSTRATCOM. As part of a change to the Unified Command Plan, President Bush migrated space missions from the former USSPACECOM and subsequently nominated Admiral James Ellis to be commander of the new unified command, which would retain the U.S. Strategic Command name and would be headquartered at Offutt. The activation of the new USSTRATCOM took place Oct. 1, 2002. The new command was established in response to a dramatically changing security environment generated by emerging global and transregional threats.
President Bush signed Change Two to the Unified Command Plan on Jan. 10, 2003, and tasked USSTRATCOM with four previously unassigned responsibilities: global strike, missile defense integration, Department of Defense Information Operations, and C4ISR (command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance). This unique combination of roles, capabilities, and authorities under a single unified command brings new opportunities in the strategic arena, in addition to further refining the global opportunities to support the regional combatant commanders. The command's reorganization also allowed for a more centralized command and control of the nation's space-based assets and ensured nearly every military space asset was represented in the new USSTRATCOM, broadening the scope of personnel assigned to the command, to include more Army soldiers and Marines, in supporting the full spectrum of military operations.
The new command provides a single commander, with a global perspective, to support the President. It enables better intelligence collection, assessment and planning, thereby improving the situational awareness required for strategic decision-making by the President and Secretary of Defense.
As USSTRATCOM embarks on an era of strategic disengagement marked by sharp decreases in the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, the command today faces new global challenges that cross many boundaries and require a globally-oriented focus.
Before USSTRATCOM merged with USSPACECOM, military space operations were assigned to USSPACECOM, a unified command created in 1985. But America's military actually began operating in space much earlier. With the Soviet Union's unexpected 1957 launch of the world's first man-made satellite, Sputnik I, President Eisenhower accelerated the nation's slowly emerging civil and military space efforts. The vital advantage that space could give either country during those dark days of the Cold War was evident in his somber words. "Space objectives relating to defense are those to which the highest priority attaches because they bear on our immediate safety," he said.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Army, Navy and Air Force advanced and expanded space technologies in the areas of communication, meteorology, geodesy, navigation and reconnaissance. Space continued to support strategic deterrence by providing arms control and treaty verification, and by offering unambiguous, early warning of any missile attack on North America.
On Sept. 23, 1985, the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the ever-increasing value of military space systems by creating a new unified command, U.S. Space Command, to help institutionalize the use of space in U.S. deterrence efforts.
The U.S.-led coalition's 1991 victory in the Persian Gulf War underscored, and brought widespread recognition to, the value of military space operations. U.S. operations in contingencies since the early 1990s, including the Balkans, Southwest Asia, and Afghanistan, have proven the military's reliance on communications, intelligence, navigation, missile warning and weather satellite systems. Space systems are considered indispensable providers of tactical information to U.S. warfighters.
Space support has covered the entire landscape of Operation Iraqi Freedom, providing coalition forces the ability to deliver munitions within minutes of receiving intelligence. The tracking and positioning of ground forces in Iraq, both friendly and adversary, relied on space systems.
Today, USSTRATCOM continues to provide intelligence, planning, targeting, space and information operations expertise to operations around the world and has reclaimed the classic definition of strategic. With its broad portfolio of missions, the command has taken the first steps in the evolution of new strategic capabilities, even as it continues to take the historic first steps in drawing down our nation's deployed nuclear arsenal.
USSTRATCOM will continue to craft an entirely new approach to global operations, instrumental in fighting the war on terrorism, deterring a wider array of potential adversaries, and focused on recasting the nation's global military capabilities for the demands of the 21st Century.
(Current as of March 2004)(USSTRATCOM 10 year history, 10.4MB file, PDF format)