Fourteenth Air Force/Related Articles

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Parent topics

• United States Air Force [r]: Branch of the U.S. armed forces responsible for land-based aircraft, as well as land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles ^[e]
  • Air Force Space Command [r]: Add brief definition or description
• United States Strategic Command [r]: The U.S. unified headquarters for the missions of worldwide nuclear and conventional precision strike; command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in support of strategic operations; global network operations of the Global Information Grid, information operations, ballistic missile defense, and reduction of weapons of mass destruction threats ^[e]
• National Reconnaissance Office [r]: An agency of the United States intelligence community, which designs, procures, launches, and operates intelligence satellites and certain aircraft/UAV platforms. It does not analyze their output. ^[e]

Subtopics

Units

• 30th Space Wing [r]: Add brief definition or description Operates the U.S. Western (space) test range at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Vandenberg is the U.S. Western (space) test range, complementing the Eastern Test Range. Western launches are preferable for satellites that will be in high-latitude satellite orbits.
• 45th Space Wing [r]: Add brief definition or description Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. This Wing runs military launches from the Eastern Test Range at Cape Canaveral (i.e., Kennedy Space Center) complementing Vandenberg for launches in lower latitudes.
• 21st Space Wing [r]: Add brief definition or descriptionPeterson Air Force Base, Colorado, responsible for a worldwide radar, electro-optical tracking electro-optical imagery and electro-optical MASINT network for space and missile launch tracking, starting with BMEWS and the AN/FPS-115 PAVE PAWS radars with a principal mission of warning against submarine-launched ballistic missiles and a secondary space surveillance role. It also operates the AN/FPQ-16 space surveillance radar
• 50th Space Wing [r]: Add brief definition or description Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, principally responsible for Global Positioning System, communications, and Defense Support Program (DSP) and successor space-based staring infrared MASINT systems that detect the heat of a missile launch.
• 460th Space Wing [r]: Add brief definition or description at Buckley AFB, Colorado, which manages the downlink for a number of National Reconnaissance Office reconnaissance satellites, as well as working with DSP.

Equipment & technologies

• Ballistic Missile Early Warning System [r]: Add brief definition or description(BMEWS)
• Electro-optical tracking [r]: The use of electronics, possibly in combination with mechanical positioning systems, to aim an optical system at a source of infrared, visible, or ultraviolet light, and follow it for purposes of observation or weapons guidance ^[e]
• Imagery intelligence [r]: the practice of taking and interpreting visible and infrared light photographs and video, radar imagery, and other ways to form pictures of subjects of interest ^[e]
• Electro-optical MASINT [r]: A subdiscipline of measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), which has similarities to but complements imagery intelligence (IMINT); it does not form images, but validates them and produces information on phenomena that emit, absorb, or reflect electromagnetic energy in the infrared, visible light, or ultraviolet spectra, where the value is knowledge of the type of energy detected ^[e]
• AN/FPQ-16 [r]: originally the Perimeter Attack Radar Characterization System for the cancelled Safeguard ballistic missile defense, now a fixed ground radar with a space surveillance mission ^[e]

Other related topics

• Twentieth Air Force [r]: The organization responsible to Air Force Space Command for the readiness of U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and to the United States Strategic Command for their operational use ^[e]