In addition to the Air Force, ESC works with other branches of the United States Department of Defense, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and foreign governments.

ESC was originally activated as the Electronic Systems Division (ESD) on 1 April 1961 at Laurence G. Hanscom Field in Bedford, MA.

The Electronic Systems Division had emerged after a decade of efforts to meet a major post-war threat to the North American continent—attack by long-range, nuclear-armed bombers.

At Hanscom Field, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s new Lincoln Laboratory (1951) and later the MITRE Corporation (1958) had worked to bring the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense system to completion.

The appearance of ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads spurred a second wave of defense efforts—the construction of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) and a survivable new command center for the North American Air Defense Command in the underground Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado.

In overcoming the “ground clutter” problem, the 1970s Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) represented a technological achievement for airspace surveillance.

Since the later years of the Cold War, ESC worked to upgrade its key radar, command center, and communications systems.

The decade of the 1990s presented new challenges for the expanded Center in the form of regional conflicts, joint and coalition engagements, terrorism, and asymmetric warfare.

For the series of Joint Expeditionary Force Experiments (JEFX) starting in 1998, ESC managed the insertion of new C2 and information technology.

He decided to hold a technical exercise to emulate a deployed headquarters using the equipment ESC was producing, and test the reports.

[2] Using tents, trailers, and communication vans inside a guarded perimeter, the area was quickly dubbed “Fort Franklin.” It was staffed by engineers from every program office and a few junior military.

[clarification needed][3] Rather than take the failure as a defeat, General Franklin used it to encourage the staff to rebuild the systems under development to interoperate.

[4][5] Not wanting to lose the expertise that had created this success, LtGen Franklin established an ongoing experimentation facility at Hanscom known as the Command & Control (C2) Unified Development Environment (CUBE).