Office of Homeworld Security

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Homeworld Security


Office of Homeworld Security

The Office of Homeworld Security is an agency of the Air Force Space Command, responsible for providing military oversight of activities relating to the Stargate.

History

Established by President Henry Hayes shortly after the Battle of Antarctica. Prior to his Presidency, different aspects of the Stargate Program had been the purview of different commands and agencies spread across the United States military, a measure that had led the Program to struggle with miscommunication, jurisdictional conflicts, and in some cases outright corruption. After seven years with a direct line to the (previous) President, Hayes felt it was about time that General George Hammond's responsibilities were elevated, and moved a little bit closer to the presidency in Washington, DC. The Office of Homeworld Security was created to give Hammond — promoted to Lieutenant General for the role — the authority to clean house, bringing the various disparate elements of the Stargate Program under a more unified leadership and perview. In addition to Stargate Command — under the new leadership of Brigadier General Jack O'Neill — a new division was created under William Ronson to coordinate Earth's fleet of F-302s and BC-303 and 304 Battlecruisers, named Deep Space Command. Hammond's leadership also encompassed research and development at Area 51, and the investigative and intelligence efforts of the NID, itself under investigation and restructuring due to the efforts of The Trust.  (SG1: "Lost City, Part 1", "New Order, Part 2", "Endgame", "Full Alert")

After a year of restructuring and reorganisation, General Hammond retired from the military, and accepted the position of National Security Advisor. General O'Neill was promoted to replace him, although oversight over the NID was retained by Hammond in his role as part of the National Security Council. A new Major General — Hank Landry — was appointed to Stargate Command, and while General O'Neill was technically the senior of the two due to his position, the two formed a symbiotic working relationship, with Landry for the most part taking point on anything offworld, while O'Neill maintained oversight of everything on. Matters were complicated further by the creation of the International Oversight Advisory, an international funding body derived from the United Nations Security Council and created after the Senate Appropriations Committee diverted funding away from Stargate Command and to the new Atlantis Expedition. The IOA had oversight over non military activities by the Stargate Program, but their jurisdiction was open to a certain degree of interpretation and flux.  (SG1: "Avalon, Part 1", "The Ties That Bind", "The Fourth Horseman, Part 1"; ATL: "The Intruder")


After Atlantis returned to Earth amid the battle against the Wraith Super-Hive, the Office of Homeworld Security was expanded and reorganised into Homeworld Command: a unified combatant command not unlike USNORTHCOM, USSOCOM, or USSTRATCOM, which centralised all of the Stargate-related operations and activities of all branches of the military under a single organisational structure, with Jack O'Neill — by then a Lieutenant General — in command.  (SGU: "Air, Part 1")


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Behind the Scenes

While "Homeworld Security" is deliberately evocative of Homeland Security, this organisation is notably the Office of Homeworld Security and not the Department of Homeworld Security. This nomenclature echoes military organisations like the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), or the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) — an organisation led by a Rear Admiral, equivalent to O'Neill's rank of Major General. ONI itself may be familiar to fans of the Halo franchise, albeit in a futuristic United Nations form.