Ballistic Missile Defense Organization

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The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (or BMDO) was an agency of the United States Department of Defense. It was known as the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) until it was renamed by the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1993. This change in name was accompanied by a shift in emphasis from national missile defense to theater missile defense, i.e. from global to regional coverage. In 1998, focus shifted back to national missile defense when Defense secretary William Cohen proposed spending an additional $6.6 billion on ballistic missile defense programs to build a national system to protect against attacks from North Korea or accidental launches from Russia or China. [1] BMDO was renamed as the Missile Defense Agency in 2002.

The BMDO became better known in the public eye in 1994 when it launched a space probe, Clementine, to the Moon, in collaboration with NASA. The BMDO was primarily interested in field testing new satellite and space reconnaissance technologies incorporated in Clementine, technologies which enabled Clementine to discover pockets of ice at the Moon's south pole.