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This Global Strike chronology traces the
evolution of Global Strike.
Download report (warning 250 pages/4 MB)
Nuclear Brief March 15, 2006 (updated August 8, 2006) Report: Global Strike Chronology
(Update August 8, 2006: Space and
Global Strike has been reorganized and is now called Global Strike
Integration. Space is a separate Component Command)
At the end of September 2006, the Joint Functional
Component Command for Global Strike and Integration (formerly Space and
Global Strike) is scheduled to achieve
Full Operational Capability (FOC). That event builds on Global
Strike capabilities developed over many years to provide new offensive
strike options to the President against proliferators of weapons of mass
destruction.
This chronology lists the most important of the developments that led to the
creation of the Pentagon's newest and most offensive strike plan. Although
Global Strike is primarily a non-nuclear mission, the information collected for
this chronology reveal that nuclear weapons are surprisingly prominent in both
the planning and command structure for Global Strike.
The roots of the nuclear option in Global Strike go back more
than a decade to the early 1990s, where military planners and policy makers
gradually began to broaden the scope of U.S. nuclear strategy to incorporate
missions against proliferators armed with weapons of mass destruction. Yet the
nuclear counterproliferation mission was controversial because it appeared to
broaden rather than reduce the role of nuclear weapons. The attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon in September 2001 removed those constraints and led to
the formulation of new guidance that has spawned a highly offensive Global
Strike mission with prompt or even preemptive strike planning against imminent
threats anywhere on (and under) the face of the Earth.
The operational embodiment of the Global Strike mission is
CONPLAN 8022, the detailed strike plan directed against proliferation targets in
North Korea, Iran, and elsewhere. First operational in 2004, refinement of
CONPLAN 8022 continues.
Global Strike
CONPLAN 8022 Development Process
From
Joint Staff plan briefing in August 2003. As of January 9, 2006,
according to STRATCOM, "CONPLAN 8022-02 has not been completed.
Consequently it has not been approved and remains as a 'draft'
plan." CONPLAN 8022-01 entered into effect in 2004.
For additional information about the Global Strike mission,
use these links:
