Letter From General Dennis D. Cavin


Read his Bio

September 8, 1998

2d Missile Battalion
71st Artillery

The Nike Hercules systems that soldiers of the 2d Missile Battalion, 71st Artillery crewed are museum artifacts, but the Battalion’s legacy endures. Your Battalion’s 1958 headline-making deployment to Taiwan at the height of the Cold War served as the prototype for the crisis deployments of Patriot air and missile defense systems that make headlines today.  

Soldiers of the 2d Missile Battalion, individually and collectively, proved air defense missile units can quickly deploy and rapidly become operational in crisis situations.

We will continue to field increasingly sophisticated air and missile defense systems as we move forward into the 21st Century, but we will not recast the mold that produced the soldiers of the 2d Missile Battalion. Rather, we will strive to produce soldiers whose expertise, competence and selfless devotion to duty merit comparison to the high standards you set four decades ago at a moment of crisis.

 First to Fire

Dennis D. Cavin

Major General, U.S. Army
Commanding General Defense Artillery Center and Fort Bliss