Army Ballistic Missile Agency

The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was formed to develop the US Army's first large ballistic missile. 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 missile was the first major project assigned to ABMA. The Redstone was a direct descendant of the V-2 missile developed by the von Braun team in Germany during World War II. After the US Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard was chosen by the DOD Committee on Special Capabilities, over the ABMA's proposal to use a modified Redstone ballistic missile as a satellite launch vehicle, ABMA was ordered to stop work on launchers for satellites and focus, instead, on military missiles.

Von Braun continued work on the design for what became the Jupiter-C IRBM. This was a three-stage rocket, which, by coincidence, could be used to launch a satellite in the Juno I configuration. In September 1956, the Jupiter-C was launched with a 30-lb (14-kg) dummy satellite. It was generally believed that the ABMA could have put a satellite into orbit at that time, had the US government allowed ABMA to do so. A year later, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1. When the Vanguard rocket failed, a Redstone-based Jupiter-C launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1, on 31 January 1958. Redstone was later used as a launch vehicle in Project Mercury. Redstone was also deployed by the U.S. Army as the PGM-11, the first missile to carry a nuclear warhead.

...
Wikipedia