On Monday 18 June, President Trump announced that he was moving to establish via the Pentagon the United States Space Force, a sixth branch of the US military. “I am hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces,” Trump said during a meeting of the National Space Council. “Our destiny beyond the Earth is not only a matter of national identity but a matter of national security,” Trump added.
Trump had met with the Space Council to sign a policy directive on traffic management in space. It was during this meeting that the president advocated for a Space Force as an independent but equal military branch. Currently all outer space activities related to the military are under the auspices of the Air Force’s Space Command.
The idea of an independent Space Corp isn’t exactly new. Nor is this the first time the military’s space activities have been considered for expansion in the recent period. The Space Force concept had its first hearing in 2000 as a recommendation from a military-reform commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld. At the time, Rumsfeld was a retired ex-defense secretary and White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford. The reform was eventually rejected but was the first real attempt to create an organizational structure within the armed forces devoted to space.
Back in July 2017, the House of Representatives passed bill H.R. 2810 to amend the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In the end, however, the naysayers in Congress won the day, pointing out creating a new military branch would be premature and could just add more bureaucracy that would only hinder development in the area. By November, it was clear that a Space Corps would not be on the agenda of the next defense budget.
However, far from killing the idea, Congress already has the groundwork for the set-up of a future Space Corps. According to Todd Harrison, defense budget analyst and director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the issue of a Space Corps “is not dead at all” and the groundwork within the current NDAA exists for it to “come back up in the future.” This is an important point from the president’s perspective. Trump does not have the power to create an additional branch of the military. Only an act of Congress can do that. Trump will have to work with the tools available in Congress to get his Space Force project off the ground.
First of all, it’s worth noting that space is quickly becoming an arena that the US is interested in securing for the sake of its citizens’ safety.
Commercial ventures into space may soon be a reality with private entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk making significant headway with promoting commercial space travel. Activities of other international programs such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and the Dutch company Xcor highlight just how close the world may be to regular space travel by the civilians.
If this does end up happening, the need to protect space travelers will fall on the shoulders of their respective governments.
With the technological development pushing the world increasingly toward space activity, it seems only a matter of time before US defense equips itself for the challenge as well.
More importantly, however, the initiation of the Space Force highlights two important trends in United States defense, both of which have been tracked by observers for some time now.
The first important point is the growing “independence” of new-age warfighting systems and methods within US strategy. This is not a new phenomenon, and has already occurred several times in the military’s history.
To concretize what this independence looks like in action, the integration of air power into the armed forces serves as a great example. Americans have been using airplanes in combat ever since the Lafayette Escadrille volunteers flew in World War I over one hundred years ago. The epic air battles in both theaters of the Second World War hardly need retelling. The average American will likely be surprised to learn that the Air Force as it exists today is a pretty new institution, relatively speaking.
The contemporary Air Force was not founded until 1947 at the behest of President Truman. Until then, air power was seen, at least at the top decision-making levels, as an accompaniment to the other branches. The idea of a differentiated Air Force was akin in some ways to suggesting a separate Rifle Force. Long arms are tools used by all military personnel whether they be Army infantry or Navy SEALS. They are applied according to respective tactical needs.
Similarly, before the 1947 National Security Act that created the USAF, there were “fliers” attached to the Navy, Marine Corps, and the Army. And that worked just fine. World War II demonstrated both strategically and technologically what today we take for granted: air power is not only an appendage of other fighting units but its own theater of operations. By founding Space Corps, the administration is essentially making a similar assertion regarding space.
The question of course is: Does the US really need a Space Corps? The answer depends on what you mean by “need.”
Perhaps a coherent answer can be derived from the second US defense trend underscored by Space Force, namely the expansion of unconventional weaponry deployment in the armed forces. American administrations have been taking gradual steps in this direction for decades. The most recent milestone was at the Directed Energy Summit last March. The summit gave a podium for Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Michael D. Griffin, to lay out his case for expanding America’s directed energy capabilities.
Griffin’s point was not just a tactical or qualitative argument, as in “my weapons are better, and here’s why,” but rather a more general assertion as to the direction US defense needs to take. According to Griffin, the United States needs to achieve superiority in a “categorical” sense, by obtaining weapons that are fundamentally different than the ones used by the military today. “We will not win in a man-to-man fight,” Griffin said, referring to potential conflict with other great powers. “We have to have the technological leverage. That realization was responsible for the creation of my office, to elevate the role of technology maturation and deployment, and I believe it is responsible for the renewed interest in directed energy weapons.”
More than anything else, Trump’s recent announcement confirms the adoption of this strategy. The US cannot make do with better weapons systems—a faster fighter, a more powerful tank—but must have types of platforms that no one else has. The creation of Space Force was a no-brainer for an administration looking to fully actualize this policy model.
Weapons systems deployed from space have some very important advantages over conventional ones. They can probably be summed up in three points.
First off, a platform located in space cannot be attacked by an Earth-based enemy. This means that such a weapon would be immune to retaliatory action or preemptive strike from many of the adversaries the US faces. Second, space weapons can be positioned to target any point on Earth very rapidly. Consider that simple meteorological satellites typically orbit the globe upwards of fifteen times a day. This would allow the military to cut response time to many crises in any location to a few hours at most. Lastly, weapons in outer space can harness the power of gravity to deliver tremendous destructive power, both cheaply and efficiently. Consider for instance the space-to-ground weapon reportedly under development dubbed the famed Rods from God device that would drop tungsten rods with relative precision onto targets on Earth.
These telephone-sized projectiles would hit the ground at ten times the speed of sound and would be capable of penetrating hundreds of feet into the surface.
So, back to the question Is a Space Force necessary? From this perspective, yes, a space-based military force would give the armed forces a distinctive, categorical edge over most if not all its adversaries.
Still, the idea of a Space Force has faced more than a bit of opposition within the administration. The argument is similar to those posed by the critics in Congress when it came to adjusting the NDAA last year. An independent Space Force will be costly. It will be complicated. It will upset much of the current efforts to simplify things in the armed forces. Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote in a letter to the House and Senate armed services committees, “I oppose the creation of a new military service and additional organizational layers at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting efforts.”
