Command History

U.S. Strategic Command History

U.S. Strategic Command is one of ten U.S. unified commands under the Department of Defense.

Headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., USSTRATCOM is a global integrator charged with the missions of full-spectrum global strike, space operations, computer network operations, Department of Defense information operations, strategic warning, integrated missile defense, global C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), combating weapons of mass destruction, and specialized expertise to the joint warfighter.

Day-to-day planning and execution for the primary mission areas is done by five Joint Functional Component Commands or JFCCs and three other functional components:

JFCC - Integrated Missile Defense (JFCC-IMD) Schriever AFB, CO – Is constantly monitoring for any missile activity or threat against the United States and its allies. In the even of an attack, IMD plans and coordinates the necessary actions to counter the threat.

JFCC - Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JFCC-ISR) Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C. – Identifies and recommends appropriate resources to meet high priority intelligence requirements. Essentially, ISR helps ensure the best use of resources to provide decision makers and troops with crucial information when and where they need.
JFCC - Space (JFCC-SPACE) Vandenberg AFB, CA – Continuously coordinates, plans, integrates, commands and controls space operations to provide tailored, responsive, local and global effects, and on order, denies the enemy the same, in support of national, USSTRATCOM, and combatant commander objectives.

JFCC-Global Strike (JFCC-GS) Offutt AFB, NE – Conducts kinetic (nuclear and conventional) and non-kinetic effects planning. CS manages global force activities to assure allies and to deter and dissuade actions detrimental to the United States and its global interests; should deterrence fail, employs global strike forces in support of combatant commander.

JFCC - Network Warfare (JFCC-NW) Fort Meade, MD – Plans, and when directed, executes operations in and through cyberspace to assure US and allied freedom of action, denying adversaries' freedom of action, and enabling effects beyond the cyber domain.

Joint Information Operations Warfare Command (JIOWC) Lackland AFB, TX – Uses information as a tool to change attitudes or perceptions, creating desired results. IO tactics help protect United States interests while disrupting the adversary's capabilities.
Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) Arlington, VA – Directs the operation and defense of the Global Information Grid to assure timely and secure Net-Centric capabilities across strategic, operational, and tactical boundaries in support of Department of Defense full spectrum warfighting, intelligence, and business missions.
USSTRATCOM Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (SCC-WMD) Fort Belvoir, VA – Provides the Defense Department with expertise in contingency and crisis planning to interdict and eliminate the proliferation or use of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

U.S. Strategic Command is part of a rich history that spans both the interrelated strategic and space communities.

America’s military actually began operating in space 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, Afghanistan and Iraq 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.

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.

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 brought new opportunities in the strategic arena, in addition to further refining the global opportunities to support the regional combatant commanders.

In January 2005, in order to further operationalize assigned missions and focus USSTRATCOM on strategic-level integration and advocacy of Unified Command Plan-assigned missions, Gen Cartwright delegated authority for operational and tactical level planning, force execution and day-to-day management of forces to Joint Functional Component Commands (JFCC).

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.

On July 19, 2006, USSTRATCOM officials announced the split of a JFCC - Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike. The disestablishment gave way to Functional Component Command for Space (JFCC SPACE) and a Joint Functional Component Command for Global Strike and Integration (JFCC GSI).

The new command provides a single commander, with a global perspective, to support the President. It allows each JFCC to focus more effectively on its primary mission, and thereby support the warfighter with optimized planning, execution and force management for each mission area.

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 steps in the evolution of new strategic capabilities, even as it continues to take the historic steps in drawing down our nation's deployed nuclear arsenal.

(Current as of March 2007)

(USSTRATCOM 10 year history, 10.4MB file, PDF format)

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