LC-16 was originally built by the
United States Air Force in the late 1950s as a way to test launches of their
HGM-25A Titan I ICBMs, complementing
LC-15 to the south and
LC-19 and
LC-20 to the north in accomplishing that task. Six Titan I missiles were launched from the complex between December 1959 and May 1960. These were followed by seven
LGM-25C Titan II missiles, starting with the type's maiden flight on March 16, 1962. The last Titan II launch from LC-16 was conducted on May 29, 1963. Following the end of its involvement with the Titan missile, LC-16 was released to
NASA on September 16, 1964 , which used it for
Gemini crew processing, and
static firing tests of the
Apollo Service Module's propulsion engine. Following its return to the Air Force in 1972, it was handed over to the
United States Army and was converted for use by the
MGM-31 Pershing missile, which made its first flight from the complex on May 7, 1974. Seventy-nine
Pershing 1a and 49
Pershing II missiles were launched from LC-16. The last Pershing launch from the facility was conducted on March 21, 1988. It was deactivated the next day and subsequently decommissioned under the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Following a 30 year period of inactivity, it was announced on January 17, 2019 that
Relativity Space had entered a 5-year agreement with the Air Force to use LC-16 to launch their in-development lifters, the
smallsat-focused
Terran 1 and the heavy-lift
Terran R. After spending a couple years renovating the pad to be launch-capable, Relativity performed the first orbital launch attempt from the complex with the maiden flight of Terran 1 on March 23, 2023, which resulted in a failure after the second stage failed to ignite. Following this failure, Relativity announced that they opted to retire the Terran 1 in pursuit of developing the Terran R, thereby resuming construction work on LC-16 to support the launcher. Relativity currently expects the maiden flight of Terran R to be no earlier than 2026. == Launch statistics ==