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.
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“So here they are, the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals riding the outposts of the nation, from Fort Reno to Fort Apache, from Sheridan to Stark. They were all the same. Men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“... the yearly expenses of the existing religious system ... exceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“When some one remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a chaplain to the list, if he could have found one who could fill that office worthily. It is easy enough to find one for the United States Army. I believe that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening, nevertheless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.”
—Philip Freneau (1752–1832)
“... the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 4:3.
Tempter to Jesus.