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President Donald Trump isn't giving up on his vision of creating a new Space Force within the US military, even if it has to start out small.
Speaking at the Brookings Institution Tuesday morning, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein confirmed reports that Trump will sign Space Policy Directive 4. "That will establish the Space Force... within the Department of the Air Force," Goldfein said.
Initially, the White House had sought to create a Space Force as a brand new branch of the military, equal in standing to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. But the proposal ran into opposition from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, which must approve the creation of a new military branch.
With Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives, the White House appears to be pursuing a "plan B" that sets up a sort of miniature Space Force under the Air Force. Notably, the new entity maintains the Space Force name, and the directive that's awaiting the president's signature also keeps the goal of converting it into a full-fledged military branch at some point in the future.
"I think the fact that we're having a national debate on space is really healthy," Goldfein said. "We're the best in the world in space and our adversaries know it. They've been studying us and they've been investing in ways to take away that capability in crisis or conflict... We as a nation cannot let that happen."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 21 2019, @02:48PM (9 children)
Debate is reasoned discussion. The side that warns about consolidating power in smaller hands, or recognizes that many of the disparate elements have disparate missions and therefore should actually remain separate entities, has not been heard from at all. Instead we get a welcome to the new TSA of the space science community.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday February 21 2019, @03:06PM (7 children)
For the moment, the Space Force is simply a reshuffling of funds that are already being spent on military space missions. And some people might get to wear fancy badges and others will call themselves space cadets. I don't know where you see a "space TSA" forming. The space science community is already the bitch of the military:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA [wikipedia.org]
https://www.americaspace.com/2012/06/06/top-secret-kh-11-spysat-design-revealed-by-nros-twin-telescope-gift-to-nasa/ [americaspace.com]
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB509/ [gwu.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-STARRS [wikipedia.org]
Space Force will probably just waste some more money (i.e. transfer more $$$ to the Beltway Bandits), but you could easily imagine scenarios in which it could assist space science. For example, the Space Force could be tasked with finding near Earth objects, freeing up responsibility from NASA and using military $$$ to accomplish a shared national/global security and space science goal.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:11PM
This is in sharp contrast to the people who get to wear fancy suits and everyone else calls space cadets, otherwise known as "congress".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Deeo Kain on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:31PM (1 child)
It'll be remembered as the Space Farce.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday February 21 2019, @11:35PM
Speaking of which, here's some newly declassified video of the space force in action [youtu.be].
Mind you if you want to get serious about this, Scotland has a space force to be reckoned with [youtu.be]. When someone announces "set phasers tae malky" you know you're in trouble.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 21 2019, @10:38PM (3 children)
It's a consolidation of power under one umbrella, taking away independent departments or actors and putting them all under one rigid hierarchy, that is not likely to be any more productive or effective than what existed before (and may in fact be worse) nor save any money. That is what the TSA is.\
And militarization of space / placing more responsibilities regarding space to the military is, of itself, a bad end. Why don't we just cut the military's budget instead and give it to NASA with the express purpose of funding near earth object research?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 22 2019, @01:45PM (2 children)
It's all executive branch so they never were independent departments.
Because it's a prisoners' dilemma game. There's significant reward to having a military power advantage in space. None of us would require a military in the first place, if we all played nice with each other.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday February 22 2019, @03:00PM (1 child)
They certainly are independent departments across many branches of the armed services and civilian world, and independent departments within the same agency or branch of the services. The executive branch is not "a department." And there were some good reasons why each branch has its own space representation and activities. It shouldn't all be consolidated under the Air Force, nor to a separate branch of the military.
Under that same logic, writ large, why do we have a Coast Guard? The Navy should be able to take care of every single function the Coasties do. Why do we have a Marine Corps? There's nothing they do that the Army can't take on. Differences in basic mission aside (which also occur with the various administrative entities we have now in space), there's also good organizational reason to keep their missions decentralized.
And I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be military involvement in space activities, even though it would be nice to keep the strategic advantage we enjoy with treaties trying to keep space warfare from happening. (Even though it easily can now - what the satellite shootdowns prove). What I am arguing is that the military should justify any additional needs for space power based on their existing mission requirements, and that the activities should be kept as decentralized as possible. Not make one big "space force" that does everything and anything spacey. There are critics who agree with that view, and I was a little misleading in saying they haven't voiced their opinions. I'm just not sure they were heard under the rush to power and money.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 23 2019, @12:22AM
I just explained why that unfounded assertion is wrong.
It's a rigid hierarchy with the US President at top.
Irrelevant. Everybody breaks down organizations into smaller subunits to do selected tasks. Even the most rigid hierarchies will have a division of labor between the flunkies and the elites at top.
Existing mission requirements necessarily include near future mission requirements.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:38PM
I see what you did there.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?