5th Battalion 52d Air Defense Artillery

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The 5th Battalion 52nd Air Defense Artillery is an air defense artillery battalion in the United States Army. They are based at Fort Bliss, Texas. Known as "five-five-deuce", the battalion motto is "Fighting Deuce". The former motto was "One team, one fight!". The battalion is part of 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade and the 32nd Army Air & Missile Defense Command (32nd AAMDC).

The Battalion is a Air and Missile Dense (AMD) Battalion. It consists of four Patriot Missile batteries (Alpha through Delta), one Avenger battery (Echo) and a maintenance company (Foxtrot Company, formerly the 507th Maintenance Company ) and a headquarters element (HHB). Each battery has six PATRIOT missile launchers per the Patriot PAC-3 configuration.

[edit] History

[edit] Global War on Terror

The battalion was split into two separate groups during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Alpha, Bravo, and Echo Batteries, along with 507th Maintenance Company and 5/52 HHB, were assigned to 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, under Colonel Heidi Brown, the first female Patriot brigade commander, to provide air defense coverage for Coalition forces entering Iraq. Charlie and Delta Battery were assigned to 32nd AAMDC to provide air defense coverage for Kuwait. Delta 5/52 shot down the first Scud launched by Iraqi forces during the opening days of the invasion.

In the summer of 2005, the 507th was disbanded and re-formed as E Company, 5/52 ADA BN , latter to be re-flaged again as F Company. The battalion received an avenger battery that became E Battery 5-52. This was part of an Army-wide reorganization of patriot battalions.