The United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) is a specialized major command within the United States Army. The command was established in 1997. The SMDC is an organization composed of several components:
- SMDC Headquarters and the Force Development Integration Center in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama
- 1st Space Brigade, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado – consists of 1st Space Battalion, 117th Space Battalion (Colorado Army National Guard) and 53rd Signal Battalion (SATCOM)
- 100th Missile Defense Brigade (GMD), Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado
- 49th Missile Defense Battalion, Alaska Army National Guard, Fort Greely, Alaska
- U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command / U.S. Army Strategic Command (Forward) located in Peterson AFB, Colorado Springs, Colorado
- Space and Missile Defense Technical Center (SMDTC)
- Space and Missile Defense Battle Lab (SMDBL)
- Space and Missile Defense Acquisition Center (SMDAC) based in Huntsville, Alabama; the SMDAC comprises:
- High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (HELSTF), at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
- U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll/Reagan Test Site (USAKA/RTS), in the Republic of the Marshall Islands
- Army Space Program Office (ASPO) in Alexandria, Virginia
- Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensors Project Office (JLENS) based in Huntsville, Alabama
- Ballistic Missile Targets Joint Project Office (BMTJPO) based in Huntsville, Alabama
The current commander is Lieutenant General Richard P. Formica., with Senior Enlisted Advisor Command Sergeant Major Larry S. Turner.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, army, space, missile, defense and/or command:
“Europe and the U.K. are yesterday’s world. Tomorrow is in the United States.”
—R.W. “Tiny” Rowland (b. 1917)
“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm’s length.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“A set of ideas, a point of view, a frame of reference is in space only an intersection, the state of affairs at some given moment in the consciousness of one man or many men, but in time it has evolving form, virtually organic extension. In time ideas can be thought of as sprouting, growing, maturing, bringing forth seed and dying like plants.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“... the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world’s sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)