# United States Northern Command **Status: stub — expand.** **NORTHCOM. Established October 1, 2002; headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.** The geographic combatant command responsible for homeland defense and for **defense support of civil authorities** in the continental United States, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and surrounding waters. Its commander is dual-hatted as Commander of NORAD. NORTHCOM matters to federalization because it is the operational destination: once [[National Guard]] units are called into federal service under 10 U.S.C. § 12406, they leave the governor's chain and enter a federal one that terminates at a NORTHCOM component command. It is also the command that demobilizes them when a deployment ends. See [[Defense Support of Civil Authorities]] for the framework it operates under, and [[Combatant Commands]] for its place among the eleven. ## See also - [[National Guard Federalization Flow]] · [[National Guard]] · [[Posse Comitatus Act]] · [[Insurrection Act]]