Leadership: February 5, 2003

Archives

The Department of Defense's STRATCOM (Strategic Command) got four new jobs on January 10th. The new jobs were global strike (long range attacks, with bombers or ICBMs), integrated missile defense, integrated information operations (collecting and using information collected via satellites or America's world wide network of listening stations), and global command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR, mainly maintaining the communications systems that collect information and make it available to commanders). STRATCOM was formed last October, by merging the old Strategic Command (which mainly controlled ICBMs and long range bombers carrying nuclear weapons) with the Space Command (which controlled space satellites and space operations in general.) The new STRATCOM is still sorting out exactly what it will do and how it will cooperate with the other parts of the Department of Defense. The main reason for putting all these jobs into STRATCOM was because of the need to eliminate competing bureaucracies and insure that needed information was collected and distributed in a timely manner.