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Military Space

Space Force Update Today

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 9, 2018
Filed under , ,
Space Force Update Today

Keith’s note: According to the White House Vice President Pence will visit the Department of Defense on Thursday and will be joined by Secretary of Defense Mattis at an honor guard ceremony and a DOD briefing. Following that briefing the Vice President will give formal remarks. Among the topics to be covered with be President Trump’s proposed Space Force.
Watch live starting around 11:15 am EDT
President Trump Links NASA To The Space Force, earlier post
Previous posts
Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Future of the U.S. Military in Space
“And while these steps have been vital to our national defense, they’re really only a beginning. They’re only a beginning of meeting the rising security threats our nation faces in space today and in the future. As President Trump has said, in his words, “It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space; we must have American dominance in space.” And so we will. (Applause.)”
President Donald J. Trump is Building the United States Space Force for a 21st Century Military
“I’m 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. – President Donald J. Trump”


NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

26 responses to “Space Force Update Today”

  1. james w barnard says:
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    An Air Force general suggests that a space force be set up as an Air Force Space Combatant Command. This would, at least for the present, keep from complete duplication of organization, personnel and cost that a totally separate force would entail, yet dedicate specific assets to space. That makes the most sense to me, but we will have to wait and see what the Vice-CINC has to say.
    Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      And Gen. Carlton Everhart of the USAF Air Mobility Command is all excited by the idea of sub-orbital point-to-point transport and space prepositioning. Talk about the high ground.

      DoD page,

      https://www.defense.gov/New

    • tutiger87 says:
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      Given how our present commander in chief thinks, he won’t stop unless it’s a separate force.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        Our Commander in Chief won’t care how it’s set up as long as it’s called “Space Force!” and they have their own “branding” (insignias, uniforms, and etc.). It’s all about appearances.

      • chuckc192000 says:
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        Please! If somebody didn’t remind him about it, he’d forget about it altogether (just like Reagan forgot about SDI).

    • tutiger87 says:
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      “Ensuring American freedoms in space”

      This is the type of stuff that made Klaatu show up with GORT.

  2. Daniel Woodard says:
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    The current system is working. The DOD must fight as an integrated force and gains nothing by adding further divisions.

    • David Fowler says:
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      It is not. Military space has been chronically underfunded and mismanaged by the Air Force.

      • Natalie Clark says:
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        The Air Force mismanagement and corruption is the main reason for the new space force. The Air Force won’t be able to take funds from Desinated space systems for use on other pet Air Force projects. It’s not surprising Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson doesn’t like the space force idea. Heather Wilson, a former Air Force officer who was once named one of the most corrupt members of Congress- the link below explains more.

        http://www.allgov.com/news/

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          If the Air Force and/or Secretary Wilson are corrupt the solution is not to create a Space Force, which would likely be just another corrupt entity. The solution is to elect and appoint honest officials and vote out or replace those who are not.

          • fcrary says:
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            Are you seriously suggesting that we reform the Department of Defense bureaucracy? We occasionally discuss how difficult it is to change NASA’s corporate or institutional culture. The larger and older an institution is, the harder that is to do. People have been talking about reforming the Pentagon since before that building existed. (In fact, a colleague has a copy of a World War Two memo on the subject, posted on his office wall. He claims it is the first use of the word, “gobbledygook”.) Admittedly, shuffling the organizational chart isn’t going to help either, but…

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            Exactly. The problem is that Pentagon-level bureaucracy is focused on internal politics, not practical value. Creating more sides to the Pentagon is not the answer. Eventually we would have the Circle, representing an infinite number of service arms. Maybe it should instead be reduced to a square, triangle, line, or even a dimensionless point.

        • tutiger87 says:
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          No. The main reason for a Space Force is that our present commander in chief’s ego needs something to cement his legacy.

          • chuckc192000 says:
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            Plus he needs to sell souvenirs with the Space Force logo on them to raise money for his campaign (or for himself).

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          You through that word around quite freely- “corruption “. Specificity would be useful.

  3. Neal Aldin says:
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    Bridenstine last week said that as a Congressman he has been supporting a Space Force for years and he still feels it is a critical need today. Trump probably does not discriminate between Bridenstine the Congressman and Bridenstine the Administrator.

  4. ed2291 says:
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    This seems like more dreamy talk about the future which will never be enacted or followed through with while we remain in stuck in low earth orbit where we have been since 1973.

  5. Jeff2Space says:
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    As for the pentagon versus hexagon thing, here is a historical account on why the five sided structure was chosen for the design:

    https://www.smithsonianmag….

  6. dd75 says:
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    “But wait – what will the #SpaceForce uniform look like?”

    Well if its camouflage it should be all black with white dots.

  7. Natalie Clark says:
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    The current system clearly isn’t working. I don’t hear NRO being up set and they’ve been sucking up to the PTrump administration. NRZo culture is such that they would not tolerate anything except being the lead organization. Therein lies the problem. You can’t fundamentally reorganize with the major culprit of the dysfunction leading it. NASA has its problems – but it’s nowhere near as screwed up as NRO.

    I’ve been to many meetings where technologies and data from operational systems are shown to high level government officials – most of the time the gov officials got excited about the results it was a NASA effort. Hence, NASA may have the most to lose and NASA is the most attractive to take under the space force umbrella.

    This whole space force seems to be very political and more interested in logos, propaganda, salesmanship, and money/power/control than actually having a plan to make things better. The space force idea runs the risk of making an already dysfunctional system even worse.

  8. cb450sc says:
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    That was the worst of Kirk’s uniforms, engineered to hide that he had gained some weight. Gotta love those original BSG uniforms with the buckles.

  9. mfwright says:
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    The more I read about this, I conclude this is mainly driven by desire to award costly contracts to favored friends and provide more general officer slots.

    The article posted by Terry Stetler of Air Mobility Command excited about sub-orbital flights seemed to miss the point that fast moving spacecraft will not have the big grey planes with the American flag on the tail:

    a visible sign of U.S. capabilities, Everhart said. “I call it grey-tail diplomacy,” he added. “The American flag on the tail tells our friends we’re there to help and tells our enemies to watch out.”

  10. fcrary says:
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    I finally found some actual details about the plan or report the Pentagon has submitted. Aviation Week (sorry, their site requires a free password, but at least it isn’t a pay wall) has a story that goes into some detail.

    NASA is not involved or mentioned. Not in any way, shape or form. Nor are astronauts involved or mentioned.

    The plan calls for forming three organizations (which they can do without congressional authorization.) They are:

    A “Space Development Agency” which would “be focused on experimentation, prototyping and accelerated fielding.” Funding from this would be shifted from existing space development work within the Department of Defense.

    A “Space Operations Force” which isn’t defined too clearly. Personnel would be drawn from existing services (oddly, “the special operations community” is given as an example; I don’t know if that’s the report or the Aviation Week reporter’s idea…) and would deploy to US commands in Europe and the Pacific by summer 2019. Whatever that means. (Integrating the use of space resources at the theater level?) Revised curriculum at service academies to assure trained personnel is also mentioned.

    A “U.S. Space Command” to be established by the end of 2018. This looks a whole lot like moving the Air Force Space Command’s place on the organizational chart. But they also recommend putting the head of the current Air Force Space Command in charge. The phrasing implies there would initially be two Space Commands (US and AF), but that they would be merged (at least that’s how I read it.)

    The fourth step, which will require congressional authorization, would be to merge those three organizations into a new, sixth, military service.

    So, no NASA, no astronauts, and quite a bit of moving around and merging existing, Department of Defense space activities. Whether that’s a good or a bad idea is debatable. But no one (at the Pentagon, at least) is talking about invading Mars or defending us against the Red Lectroids from Planet 10.

  11. Eric says:
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    We should just create this branch and call it Starfleet. We will then have a roadmap for the next millennium. It will be the last reorganization of the military. We’ll know where to build the academy. We’ll know what all the uniforms look like. Somebody in Montana needs to tell Mr. and Mrs. Cochran to name their son Zefram. We’ll even know that the flagship of the fleet will almost always be named Enterprise. There the process is greatly simplified.