The United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM or STRATCOM) is one of the eleven unified combatant commands in the United States Department of Defense. Headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, USSTRATCOM is responsible for strategic nuclear deterrence, global strike, and operating the Defense Department's Global Information Grid. It also provides a host of capabilities to support the other combatant commands, including integrated missile defense; and global command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR). This command exists to give "national leadership a unified resource for greater understanding of specific threats around the world and the means to respond to those threats rapidly".

Mission statement

USSTRATCOM employs nuclear, cyber, global strike, joint electronic warfare, missile defense, and intelligence capabilities to deter aggression, decisively and accurately respond if deterrence fails, assure allies, shape adversary behavior, defeat terror, and define the force of the future.

Priorities

  • Strategic Deterrence
  • Decisive Response
  • A Combat-Ready Force || Lt General Sean A. Gainey || || Redstone Arsenal, Alabama||
  • 30px 100th Missile Defense Brigade

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| 75px || || Admiral<br>Karl O. Thomas<br>U.S. Navy || || Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads,<br>Virginia || 20px Submarine Force Atlantic

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| 75px || || General<br> Stephen L. Davis<br>U.S. Air Force || || Barksdale Air Force Base,<br>Louisiana ||

20px Eighth Air Force<br>20px Twentieth Air Force

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| || || Lt. General<br>Melvin G. Carter<br>U.S. Marine Corps || || Offutt Air Force Base,<br>Nebraska ||

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Command posts

The Global Operations Center, or GOC, is the nerve center for USSTRATCOM. The GOC is responsible for the global situational awareness of the commander, USSTRATCOM, and is the mechanism by which he exercises operational command and control of the Nation's global strategic forces.

History

USSTRATCOM was originally formed in 1992, as a successor to Strategic Air Command in response to the end of the Cold War and a new vision of nuclear warfare in U.S. defense policy. Department of Defense changes in command structure due to the Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986, led to a single command responsible for all strategic nuclear weapons. As a result, USSTRATCOM's principal mission was to deter military attack, and if deterrence failed, to counter with nuclear weapons.

Throughout its history, it has drawn from important contributions from many different organizations stretching back to World War II. Providing national leadership with a single command responsible for all strategic nuclear forces, General George Butler, in establishing the new command, borrowed from the work of General Curtis LeMay, an early commander of Strategic Air Command. LeMay was a very vocal advocate for a strong national defense, particularly as regards nuclear weapons.

USSTRATCOM also supported United States Africa Command's 2011 military intervention in Libya in a variety of ways, including long-range conventional strikes and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).

An intention by the U.S. Air Force to create a 'cyber command' was announced in October 2006. On 21 May 2010, part of USSTRATCOM's responsibility regarding cyber-warfare operations was spun off into a 10th Unified Command, the United States Cyber Command. As a result, USSTRATCOM's Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) and Joint Functional Component Command – Network Warfare (JFCC-NW) were disestablished.

List of combatant commanders

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See also

  • Nuclear weapons and the United States

References

  • United States Strategic Command Official Website
  • US Strategic Command Airborne Command Post Fact Sheet
  • 2008 Space Almanac, Air Force Magazine, Journal of the Air Force Assoc., August 2008.
  • FAS: United States Space Command (USSPACECOM)
  • GAO Report: Additional Actions Needed by U.S. Strategic Command to Strengthen Implementation of Its Many Missions and New Organization