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Space Force Offers First Peek at Camouflage Uniform

posted by martyb on Friday January 24 2020, @09:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the priorities? dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow7701:

Space Force Offers First Peek at Camouflage Uniform:

The official Twitter account of the month-old military service posted[*] a teaser photograph Friday night appearing to show a variant of the Operational Camouflage Pattern used by the Army and Air Force.

Above the left breast pocket in Navy embroidery reads: U.S. Space Force.

[...] The uniform depicts four-star rank, indicating that the uniform belongs to Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, the first commander of U.S. Space Force. It also has the Command Space Operations badge embroidered above the service nametape.

On the left sleeve of the uniform is the United States Space Command patch, denoting the military's newest combatant command, formed shortly before Space Force itself activated Dec. 20. And above that patch is a full-color American flag patch -- a departure from the muted flags that soldiers and airmen typically wear on their right shoulders in OCP uniform.

Many questions remain. Space Force has yet to announce a rank structure, a full system of uniforms or even what to call members of the new service. In a Thursday briefing, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said Raymond was developing a plan regarding every detail.

[*] https://twitter.com/SpaceForceDoD/status/1218335200964464650

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday January 24 2020, @11:49PM (11 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday January 24 2020, @11:49PM (#948241) Journal

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command [wikipedia.org]

    According to AFSPC, its mission was to "Provide resilient and affordable space capabilities for the Joint Force and the Nation."

    AFSPC's primary mission areas were:

    • National Security Space Launch: The launching of satellites and other high-value payloads into space using a variety of expendable launch vehicles and operating those satellites once in space
    • Space control: ensuring the friendly use of space through the conduct of counterspace operations encompassing surveillance, negation, protection and space intelligence analysis
    • Force enhancement: providing satellite-based weather, communications, intelligence, missile warning, and navigation

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force [wikipedia.org]

    Functions

    As described in the United States Space Force Act, it will be organized, trained, and equipped to:

    1. Provide freedom of operation for the United States in, from, and to space
    2. Provide prompt and sustained space operations

    Duties

    Its duties include to:

    1. Protect the interests of the United States in space
    2. Deter aggression in, from, and to space
    3. Conduct space operations
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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:16AM (3 children)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:16AM (#948255) Journal

    Which of those objectives requires camouflage?

    --
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    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:13AM (#948327)

      Stalking outrageous budgets, of course.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 25 2020, @11:32AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 25 2020, @11:32AM (#948443) Journal

      The camo will be worn to the local bars, to impress the women.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilSS on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:55PM

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:55PM (#948579)
      You can credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) the Air Force for that. The AF wanted to reduce uniform costs, and started using their camo uniforms (since they had to have them) as their regular work uniforms. Yea yea, Army. But it made more sense for them. The idea caught on and all the services now do it. It really, REALLY, rankled the Navy at the time, which is why then ended up with their blue camo uniforms*. Also, keep in mind the service members in Space Force are not, despite the memes, stationed in space. Some will be working in the same environments as on-the-ground Air Force members.


      * "Let's make them blue so they don't look quite so stupid. Plus it will better camouflage sailors if they are in the water"
      "But sir, won't that make it harder for our crews to spot people who go overboard?"
      "Eh, I can live with that."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:21AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:21AM (#948259)

    Uh, the US Air Force already does much of this; I know, I work for USAF. Is there some foreseeable benefit to separating these functions from the Air Force?

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:40AM (1 child)

      by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:40AM (#948300) Journal

      Self-aggrandisement not enough of an excuse?jk

      --
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      • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:58PM

        by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:58PM (#948581)
        Just a reminder that congress, not the president, are the ones with the power to create a new service branch. The same congress with the Democrat controlled house that just impeached Trump approved this.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:40AM (#948301)

      > Is there some foreseeable benefit ...

      Sure, Trump gets to add another section to his big military parade.(/sarc)
      And of course there is more attack surface for corruption with the large aerospace companies.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:41AM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:41AM (#948302) Journal

      It is technically a part of the Department of the Air Force, like how the Marines are part of the Department of the Navy. There may be more clear benefits to the re-establishment of U.S. Space Command. There will probably be better recruitment and visibility for the new Space Force (formerly Air Force Space Command).

      You can check out editorials promoting Space Force:

      Why the United States needs a Space Force [spacenews.com]
      The Case for a U.S. Space Force [soylentnews.org]

      Advocates think it will save money (maybe that is what USSPACECOM is doing by consolidating stuff), and that the Air Force just doesn't handle the "domain" properly. For example:

      When the Chinese shot down their own satellite in 2007, both Air Force and non-Air Force leaders throughout the Pentagon could be heard saying that there was no way to defend space, and that we should move to non-space alternatives. The Air Force, in fact, famously initiated a series of exercises labeled “a day without space” so they could figure out how to conduct air operations without space capabilities. How different from the Navy’s submarine experience where the threat was met not by retreat, but by boldly pioneering a new means of warfare.

      In fact, in the seven years after the Chinese attack, from 2007 till 2014, the Air Force had yet to even begin to articulate the need to respond, much less begin to change their structure or their budget to do so. It took action from space advocates in the office of the secretary of defense, rather than on the Air Staff, to begin that change.

      The Air Force failed to identify space as essential to their identity. A Space Force would have had no such qualms. A Space Force would have used the opportunity of the threat to push even harder and faster to defend U.S. space assets, not engage in a retreat — because if they did not, they would no longer matter.

      That sounds like it will drive up spending though.

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:58AM (1 child)

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:58AM (#948340)
      Over the years (this actually started back in the 80's and got hot after a few congressional studies in the late 90's and 2000's) congress has looked at it because they felt the Air Force was treating space operations as a secondary priority. Air Force leadership is more interested in new fighters than space operations and it's caused some internal budget fights. There has also been concerns over promotions at the higher levels favoring former pilots over space operations officers. This gives the space operations folks a seat at the table and a separate budget. It will also eventually (there is a bill in the works for 2021 to do this) pull in space operations personnel from the Army and Navy as well, consolidating them under one chain of command. The idea is that, eventually, Space Force will separate from the Air Force and become their own department in the DoD. Of course the Air Force doesn't want it, but the Air Force has historically been the most territorial of the military branches. Just look at the recent fights between the Army and Air Force over the A-10 for a recent example.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:58PM

        by VLM (445) on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:58PM (#948461)

        I was not in commo, but for obvious civilian professional reasons I kinda hung out with the commo guys when I was in the reserves, in a galaxy far far away a long time ago.

        they felt the Air Force was treating space operations as a secondary priority.

        As they probably should, as they have zoom zoom airplanes as their primary mission. But somebody gotta run the satellites and the entire military was really getting into satellite uplink and downlink stuff and the system, although it was extremely mysterious, none the less worked per the guys I talked to. And there's just more and more military telecom as time goes on.

        There really is a justification for some kind of "telecommunications rangers" or "special satellite forces" or WTF. There are "top down" orgs that put a lot of work into infosec securing army.gov and CAC cards and there are bottom up orgs like the NSA that like to do blue sky research into crypto algos, but there really isn't, or wasn't, an independent force dedicated to centralizing all the military's radio telecom and satellite stuff.

        I would not be entirely surprised if these space force guys wedge themselves into the special forces comms slots, somehow. Guess what, you comms sgts with all this satellite uplink and datalink gear and stuff, you're now reporting to space forces... hence the camo uniforms.

        My guess is as a long term doctrinal shift you're gonna see lots of reliance on satellite comms going right down to individual military member and individual vehicle in the future. Or even lower level. Like the now "old" blue force tracker system, but all IoT'd up, probably via unjammable satellites. Like I bet every crate of M-16 ammo and every grenade will be serial number GPS tracked world wide by satellite and RFID and similar.