Air Force Strategic Air Command was originally estab-lished in the U.S. Army Air Forces on 21 March 1946 and was moved to the Air Force when it came into existence as an independent military branch in 1947. Originally focused on providing a single command to control the Air Force’s strategic air-power assets, the Strategic Air Command was initially focused quite heavily on high-altitude bombing and in delivery of the atomic bomb. After the Soviet Union conducted its first several successful A-bomb test, however, the Command’s primary objective was identified as damaging or eliminating the ability of the Soviet Union to deliver nuclear weapons, with a secondary role of using strategic bombing to halt any advances that the USSR might make into Western Europe.
After nuclear-capable ballistics miles came online in latter half of the 1950s, Strategic Air Command assumed responsibility for their maintenance and operation, giving it direct control of two legs of the U.S. nuclear “triad” (submarine-launched ICBMs are the third and final part of the trio). It also oversaw high-altitude surveillance flights such as those made famous when Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, one of the primary reasons for SAC’s existence removed. Coupled with other plans for major Air Force reorganization, the Command’s days were numbered and in 1992 it was disestablished. As a result, its bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, and “flying command post” aircraft were assigned to the newly created Air Combat Command, along with its ICBM arsenal. At the same time, the refueling aircraft that enabled constant surveillance, such as KC-135 Stratotanker and KC-10 Extender, became a part of Air Mobility Command.