The agency was established at Redstone Arsenal on 1 February 1956, and commanded by Major General John B. Medaris with Wernher von Braun as technical director.

The Redstone was a direct descendant of the V-2 missile developed by the von Braun team in Germany during World War II.

This was a three-stage rocket, designed to test Jupiter missile components which, by coincidence, could be used to launch a satellite in the Juno I configuration (that is, with an added fourth stage).

Initially called the Redstone-S (S for solid), the name was changed to MGM-31 Pershing and a contract was awarded to The Martin Company, beginning a program that lasted 34 years.

In early 1958, NACA's "Stever Committee" included consultation from the ABMA's large booster program, headed by Wernher von Braun.

On 1 July 1960, the AOMC space-related missions and most of its employees, facilities, and equipment were transferred to NASA, forming the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC).

In the aftermath of World War II, a number of German rocket scientists and engineers were moved to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip.

The group was settled at Fort Bliss, Texas – where they aided General Electric's Project Hermes efforts to build and test a variety of V-2-derived designs at the nearby White Sands Proving Ground.

[4] Around the same time, North American Aviation (NAA) won the contract to build a long-range cruise missile that became the SM-64 Navaho.

The NAA team discovered that a major upgrade to the V-2's original Model 39 engine was planned through the use of a new fuel injector design, but the Germans were not able to cure lingering combustion problems.

[5] While the Navajo program dragged on, NAA split the team into three groups, Rocketdyne handled engines, Autonetics developed inertial navigation systems (INS) and the Missile Division retained the Navaho itself.

In addition to the switch to JP-4, the engine did away with the hydrogen peroxide system of the XLR-41 that powered the turbopumps and replaced it with a turbine that ran on the rocket fuel itself, simplifying the overall design.

[5] Von Braun's team initially considered making a version of the Redstone using the LR89 and adding a second stage, stretching the range to 1,900 km (1,200 mi).

[6] But ongoing work on the LR89 suggested that the engine could be further improved, and in 1954, the Army approached Rocketdyne to provide a similar design with a thrust of 600,000 N (130,000 lbf).

However, by July 1955, the Joint Coordinating Committee on Ballistic Missiles concluded that there were enough differences between the two concepts that an entirely new design should be built for the role.

He proposed a six-year development program costing US$240 million (equivalent to $2.73 billion in 2023) with a total production of 50 prototype missiles.

Likewise the Air Force does not claim the last three Redstone flights, RS-46, CC-43 and CC-48, to be part of the Jupiter-A program, while ABMA lists them.

The second of these tests also used a new three-stage upper that had been designed for the Juno I rocket, a further expansion of the Jupiter-C intended for future space launches.

The goal had originally been to match Redstone's accuracy at the Jupiter's much extended range, but as development continued it became clear the ABMA team could improve on that considerably.

This approach saw support of a number of influential theorists, notably Henry Kissinger, and was seized on as a uniquely Army mission.

[15] But as the Jupiter program began to progress they became increasingly concerned that it would enter service before Atlas, potentially handing the Army some sort of strategic role in the short term.

The Air Force vision of war was significantly different from the Army's, consisting of a massive attack on the Soviet Union in the event of any sort of major military action, the so-called "Sunday punch".

Examining a wide variety of complaints between the two forces, on 18 November 1956, he published a memo that limited the Army to weapons with a range of 320 km (200 mi) or less, and those dedicated to air defense to half that.

[21] This ultimately led to the court-martial of Colonel John C. Nickerson Jr., after he leaked information about various Army projects, including the then-secret Pershing missile.

During a visit by Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the various plans were presented, notably the Juno V concept which ABMA saw as a solution for launching the spy satellites the Air Force was designing.

ARPA then provided ABMA with initial funding to keep the Juno V project moving, and assigned it von Braun's preferred name of "Saturn", meaning "the one after Jupiter".

When the next president, John F. Kennedy, announced the goal of landing on the Moon on 25 May 1961, two competing designs were considered for the booster, Marshall's Saturn V and the NASA Nova.