Space Systems Command, based at Los Angeles Air Force Base in California, runs development, acquisition, launch and logistics for the U.S. Space Force. It also manages the country’s space launch ranges. The name is only five years old. The organization behind it is considerably older, and it has been renamed, merged and split more times than most of its engineers could easily list.
Born in 1961
The story starts in March 1961. Air Research and Development Command became Air Force Systems Command, and as part of that shake-up the Space Systems Division was set up on 20 March and activated on 1 April. Space and missile work had grown so large that the Ballistic Missile Division was split in two: space under the new division, missiles under the Ballistic Systems Division.
The new outfit inherited the Titan III launch vehicle, a project begun that year that first flew on 1 September 1964. The Titan IIIA paired a modified Titan II missile with a Transtage upper stage. The Titan IIIC, with two large solid boosters, went up from Cape Canaveral on 18 June 1965. The division also built the Titan IIIB, supplied NASA with Titan II launchers for Project Gemini, and developed the Agena target vehicle.
Satellites followed. In 1963 it began the Defense Support Program, an orbiting network of infrared sensors meant to warn of missile launches. It kept developing the Vela satellites too, which came out of a 1960 agreement among the Air Force, the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA to detect high-altitude nuclear tests.
A run of new names
In 1967 the two divisions were merged again as the Space and Missile Systems Organization. In 1979 it was renamed the Space Division and gave up ballistic missile development. By 1989 it was back to Space Systems Division, and a year later the missile job returned.
The 1992 merger of Air Force Systems Command and Air Force Logistics Command produced the Space and Missile Systems Center. In 2001 that center moved under Air Force Space Command, and it stayed attached when the parent became Space Operations Command in October 2020.
The break with the Air Force came in 2021. On 22 April the center became a Space Force unit, reporting to Headquarters U.S. Space Force. On 13 August it was upgraded to a field command and renamed Space Systems Command.
