The United States Space Command (USSPACECOM) was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Department of Defense, created in 1985 to help institutionalize the use of outer space by the United States Armed Forces. The Commander in Chief of U.S. Space Command (CINCUSSPACECOM), with headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado was also the Commander in Chief of the binational U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (CINCNORAD), and for the majority of time during USSPACECOM’s existence also the Commander of the U.S. Air Force major command Air Force Space Command. Military space operations coordinated by USSPACECOM proved to be very valuable for the U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The U.S. military has relied on satellite communications, intelligence, navigation, missile warning and weather systems in areas of conflict since at least the early 1990s, including the Balkans, Southwest Asia and Afghanistan. Space systems have since then been considered as indispensable providers of tactical information to U.S. forces.
As part of the ongoing initiative to transform the U.S. military, on June 26, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that U.S. Space Command would merge with USSTRATCOM. The Unified Command Plan directed that Unified Combatant Commands be capped at ten, and with the formation of the new United States Northern Command, one would have to be deactivated in order to maintain that level. Thus the USSPACECOM merger into an expanded USSTRATCOM, which would retain the U.S. Strategic Command name and would be headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base. The merger was intended to improve combat effectiveness and speeds up information collection and assessment needed for strategic decision-making.
Within STRATCOM, responsibilities for space were first held by the Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike until July 2006 when the command was divided. Space operations are now overseen by the Joint Functional Component Command for Space.
Read more about United States Space Command: Commanders
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, space and/or command:
“United States! the ages plead,—
Present and Past in under-song,—
Go put your creed into your deed,—
Nor speak with double tongue.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)