The United States Army Signal Corps (USASC) is a branch of the United States Army responsible for establishing and managing the communication and information systems for the command and control of the combined arms forces. The USASC manages new technologies and capability portfolios, which are in turn transferred to other U.S. government entities. The branch's responsibilities include military intelligence, meteorological forecasting, and aviation.
Mission statement The USASC supports command and control across combined arms forces. Its network operations include information assurance, information dissemination management, network management information, and management of the electromagnetic spectrum. This includes designing and installing data communications networks using single- and multichannel satellite, tropospheric scatter, terrestrial microwave switching, messaging, video teleconferencing, and visual information systems. The USASC integrates base communications and information processing management systems into a global information network intended to provide army, coalition, and joint operations with what the military calls, "knowledge dominance."
History
Early history
While serving as a medical officer in Texas in 1856, Chief Signal Officer Albert James Myer proposed that the Army use wigwag (or aerial telegraphy), a visual communications system that he developed for signaling. When the Army adopted his system on 21 June 1860, the USASC was created with Myer as the first and only Chief Signal Officer. Myer's first assignment in his new position was in the early 1860s as part of the Navajo expedition in New Mexico. In June 1861, Myer's system was used to direct the fire of a harbor battery at Fort Wool against the Confederate positions opposite Fort Monroe during the Civil War. Flags were used for daytime signaling, while torches were used at night. Until 1863, Myer relied mostly on detailed personnel. Then, on 3 March 1863, the USASC was authorized as a separate branch of the Army by an Act of Congress (Public Law No. 58 Article VIII, Section 17 and 18). Myer's Civil War innovations included an unsuccessful balloon experiment at First Bull Run and, in response to McClellan's desire for a Signal Corps field telegraph train, an electric telegraph in the form of the Beardslee telegraph machine. During the Civil War, Wigwag began to be replaced with electric telegraph, bypassing line-of-sight restrictions. Myer used his office in downtown Washington, D.C. to temporarily house the Signal Corps School. The location was later moved to Fort Greble, one of the Defenses of Washington during the Civil War, and then again moved to Fort Whipple, where the school remained for over 20 years and was ultimately renamed Fort Myer.
Signal Corps detachments participated in campaigns fighting Native Americans in the west, such as the Powder River Expedition of 1865. In July 1866, Congress decided that there should be at minimum a cadre of Signal Officers, even in peacetime. It then provided one Chief Signal Officer of the Army, with the rank of Colonel. Six additional officers and 100 men were chosen from the Corps of Engineers for the Signal Corps. The electric telegraph, in addition to visual signaling, became a USASC responsibility in 1867. Within 12 years, the Signal Corps had constructed, maintained and operated 4,000 miles of telegraph lines along the nation's western frontier. In 1870, the Signal Corps established the Congressionally-mandated national weather service. Within a decade, with the assistance of Lieutenant Adolphus Greely, Myer commanded the weather service until his death in 1880. The Weather Bureau became part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1891 and the corps retained responsibility for military meteorology. In 1881, the Signal Corps participated in the First International Polar Year. One of the groups commanded by Lieutenant Greely became separated from their base camp and were marooned on an ice floe. Due to starvation and drowning, only seven of the original 25 volunteers survived, which meant a 28% chance of surviving. The Signal Corps aided in the Spanish–American War of 1898 and the subsequent Philippine Insurrection. In addition to visual signaling, including heliography, the corps supplied telephone and telegraph wire lines, cable communications, enabled the use of telephones in combat, conducted combat photography, and renewed the use of balloons. Shortly after the war, the Signal Corps constructed the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS), also known as the Alaska Communications System (ACS). Contemporary accounts described this as among the first wireless telegraph systems in the Western Hemisphere. In October 1903, Congress directed then Chief Signal Officer Brigadier General Adolphus Greely to issue an order. In October 1904, Congress appropriated $25,000 for the Signal Corps to "build a flying machine for war purposes" directing Chief Signal Officer Brigadier General Adolphus Greely to oversee the effort. Chief Signal Officer Brigadier General Adolphus Greely thus contracted the Wright brothers in 1908 to build and demonstrate a military airplane; the Wrights conducted their trials at Fort Myer, Virginia. Their historic first powered flight had taken place at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December 1903.
World War I
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