NASA's Secret Past
NASA’s Secret Relationships with U.S. Defense and Intelligence Agencies, George Washington University
“Furnishing cover stories for covert operations, monitoring Soviet missile tests, and supplying weather data to the U.S. military have been part of the secret side of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) since its inception in 1958, according to declassified documents posted for the first time today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University.”
Fascinating, especially various documents (four options mentioned by Harold Brown in 1977 about Shuttle) and U2 cover story including suggested landing and brief display at Moffett Air Force Base in 1956.
Too bad NASA doesn’t have a huge black budget like the other secret orgs.
That’s what must be paying for the secret base on the far side of the moon. 😉
Digging up the monoliths
OK, rather than me trying to deal with the issue of what a space force is for I’m going to reference a very nice two part article that appeared in the Journal “Over The Horizon” A journal that deals with examining issues of warfare domains and strategies. Perhaps this will explain it better.
Part 1 https://othjournal.com/2019…
Part 2 https://othjournal.com/2019…
And from a slightly different angle there is this.
https://news.usni.org/2018/…
“Space Force admirals will create a service that promotes whole-of-nation space development and considers space commerce protection as a mission co-equal to warfighting.”
And I bet they will do it all at cost plus, fixed fee, sole sourced, development contracts with enough escalator clauses to reach Luna.
Sadly, most of “Space Force” so far has been arguing over the spoils – who gets a new HQ complex, who gets to pick uniforms, etc. This is taking resources away from training, from equipment recapitalization and putting it into administrivia, new mahogany offices, etc.
And this entire salivating over “Naval thinking” vs “Air Force thinking” is nuts. In the 1800s a ship sailed over the horizon and was not seen for often weeks or months, today every ship (and most submarines) and all aircraft are in constant communication with the Pentagon and the chain of command. I would wager that few ship captains make major decisions without coordinating with the boss, no one wants to embarrass them by having them know about something last. NO senior military leader wants to make a mistake and forever rule out a promotion. As far back as Vietnam we had Colonels orbiting over battles in their helicopters, second guessing the Lieutenants and Captains on the ground.
The Navy (in my experience) is a bit more authoritarian but is not that different from the Air Force. The military is a LOT like NASA, both organizations are very risk averse.
That’s not a particularly accurate impression.
The Air Force didn’t adopt an independent rank structure for three years after independence. The USSF had a draft plan for rank insignia and structure, but then Congress intervened, so it’s not really fair to put the delay and complications on the military.
Probably worth noting as well, that the service is not just waiting around for “things to happen,” it’s been carrying out its mission since Day One…of course, things are being refined along the way. But for instance, it now has organized its existing forces into eight “deltas” that carry out eight missions: 1) Space domain awareness, 2) Space electronic warfare, 3) Missile warning, 4) Command and control, 5) Cyber operations, 6) ISR, 7) Navigation warfare and satellite communications and 8) Orbital warfare. Things like space launch, and various support functions are still to come. All of this is being carried out now. They aren’t waiting for uniforms and insignia to be designed.
This kind of takes me back to the days of Stargate SG-1 a bit. Stargate had a close relationship with the USAF and strived for a degree authenticity in representing the US Armed Forces (and the Air Force in particular). It also did something really great in that every season gradually built up the technology of fictional universe from very grounded, real world-level beginnings (actual Stargate excluded of course). Every advanced was “earned”. The reason I bring it up is when Stargate Command (later “Homeworld Command”) in the last two seasons when they operated a small flotilla of “X-304” space battleships, the personnel was all Air Force and the captain of the ships were “Colonels” (rarely Generals).
In the fictional universe, “Stargate Command” operated a secret command of the Air Force, akin to US Air Force Space Command, and when the secret of the Stargate program became known to other governments and multinational oversight was instituted (along with the formation of Homeworld command), it was elevated, in Stargate Universe, to be part of the “Department of Homeworld Security”, and a joint civilian-military thing.
These shows were all done with close coordination with the Air Force, and they kept the Air Force ranks as it the producers “evolved” Stargate Command from being this small thing in the basement of Cheyenne Mountain into a multinational planetary defense department, So maybe there is some inkling, institutionally, into how the Air Force would go about the mitosis-like process.