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4/11/20, 10(23 PMTrump is Right: America Needs a Space Force

Page 1 of 12https://nationalinterest.org/print/feature/trump-right-america-needs-space-force-107751

Published on The National Interest (https://nationalinterest.org)

Home > Trump is Right: America Needs a Space Force

December 28, 2019 Topic: Security Region: Americas Tags: Space, Military, China, Warfare, Air Force

4/11/20, 10(23 PMTrump is Right: America Needs a Space Force

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Trump is Right: America Needs a Space Force Why is having a separate branch of the military focused solely on outer space a vital national interest?

by William Giannetti

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THERE WAS a short but solemn White House Rose Garden ceremony on

a warm, late August day in 2019. In attendance was President Donald

Trump; his head of the National Space Council, Vice President Mike

Pence; Secretary of Defense Mark Esper; and U.S. Air Force General

John Raymond. The proceedings were a “big deal,” said the president

during his remarks, and a bold, “landmark moment” for America’s

armed forces. And with that, the o!cial party stood at attention as

Chief Master Sergeant Roger Towberman reverently unfurled a gold

crested white flag. General Raymond took charge of America’s 11th

combatant command, and after some polite applause from a few

onlookers, U.S. Space Command was reborn.

First established in 1982, during the days when President Ronald

Reagan dreamt the Strategic Defense Initiative’s lasers would blast

Soviet ICBMs from the firmament, Space Command led global space

operations in the post-Vietnam era. But in 2002, the Pentagon

decommissioned it following a post-9/11 consolidation of

responsibilities. The then-unfurling flag, not long after Apollo 11’s

fiftieth anniversary, revealed Space Command’s recycled emblem. The

future of the Space Force at that moment looked uncertain. America, it

seemed, had just taken a giant leap backward.

Looking back as recently as 2018, the times certainly have changed. In

March of that year, at San Diego’s Marine Corps Air Station Miramar,

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President Trump dramatically ordered the Department of Defense

(DOD) to establish an independent U.S. Space Force as the sixth branch

of America’s military. Invoking the new National Defense Strategy for

Space, he declared, “Space is a warfighting domain, just like the air,

land, and sea.” Reflecting on her confirmation hearing in 2017, former

Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said that one could not even

utter “space” and “warfighting” in the same sentence. A fascinating

debate played out in the press not long after the president’s

announcement. Sadly, it exposed Washington’s boundless

parochialism. But it also underscored that our satellites are indeed

vulnerable, and that America should do more to defend itself from an

attack.

The White House’s push on this front was warranted, more than most

Americans might have realized at the time, given advances in China

and Russia’s counterspace programs—from hunter-killer spacecraft,

to missiles that obliterate satellites in low Earth orbit and high-

powered lasers that blind their optics. Old-style “big bus” space

systems (so-called because they are the size of city buses) developed by

tried-and-true aerospace firms like Lockheed Martin or Boeing are

now, as U.S. Strategic Command’s General John Hyten put it, “big, fat,

juicy targets.” The Air Force Association (AFA) believes air and space

power are inextricably linked—a notion that incongruously harkens

back to a bygone era when the Army stubbornly clung to its belief that

ground commanders knew how to employ air forces better than Airmen

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did. Granted, the AFA’s hesitation to embrace the concept of a Space

Force should give all servicemembers some pause: its founding implies

the most significant reorganization of the U.S. military since President

Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947. The

president’s statement, and the ensuing argument for either side, left

Americans nervously wondering if space war was upon us. But, now

that the media is atwitter with umpteen hearings and impeachment

inquiries, space issues have temporarily faded from view. This does not

wipe away the fact that space is still a dangerous place to be, so for just

a moment, let us explore why having a separate branch of the military

focused solely on it is a vital national interest.

FIRST, WE must return to the beginnings of the U.S. Air Force. The

process to establish it began not long after World War I, and it

continued for almost three decades. It was a cause championed by

pioneering men like General Henry “Hap” Arnold, who muscled the air

power agenda through the War Department and influenced legislation

like the Air Corps Act of 1929. However, while the Act codified the Army

Air Corps and set today’s Air Force on its earliest foundation, the case

for Airmen independence was far from a done deal. So, in the waning

days of World War II, General Arnold convened a special committee to

assess air power’s strengths and weaknesses during the allies’ air

campaign against the Third Reich. The result was the United States

Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS)—a massive, 216 volume document

that is an exemplar of 1940s “big data,” impressively arrayed with

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concise bar charts and hand-drawn, three-dimensional graphs. It fully

tallied the 1.6 million tons of bombs dropped on Europe over 765,000

bomber runs and 929,000 fighter sorties. The USSBS, in short, is the

Air Force’s raison d’être, laying out a strong case why air power should

have its own branch of the military.

An equivalent study to justify a U.S. Space Force does not exist. Space-

based capabilities for imagery intelligence began in the mid-1950s with

the Corona Program, but their existence was a very closely guarded

secret until the early 1990s. The National Geospatial Intelligence

Agency (NGA—formerly known as the National Photographic

Interpretation Center, or NPIC) and the National Reconnaissance O!ce

(NRO), which oversees and develops U.S. satellites, were state secrets

until the Clinton administration declassified them. A USSBS-like study

to measure how much intelligence these organizations’ satellites

produce is an impossible task, but the influence that intelligence has

had on global a"airs and U.S. strategy—from monitoring Soviet arms

control agreements to the discovery of secret nuclear facilities in Iran

—cannot be overstated. The machines that generate the nation’s

intelligence are obviously well worth an independent Space Force’s

protection.

More importantly, now that the nation’s military and economic sectors

are so tightly intertwined, the case for a Space Force goes beyond

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protecting America’s space-based intelligence sensors. While the

Global Positioning System (GPS) has been synonymous with precision

munitions for many years, it also happens to be how the world and its

financial markets keep time. Inside gps satellites lie atomic clocks with

either cesium or rubidium cores, which tell time by measuring the

minutest oscillations of the elements’ atoms. GPS systems are quite

literally the beating heart of our economy, and the slightest variation,

or imbalance in it, could cause disastrous consequences to financial

transactions worldwide.

What we do have are four di"erent non-partisan commissions funded

by American taxpayers over the last two decades—including one

headed by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—that

basically agree on one thing: a change in the nation’s approach to space

is necessary. Leadership inside the space domain is terribly disjointed.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and DOD are far

from the only space operators in the room. An estimated sixty o!ces

claim influence or authority on space-related policy and systems

acquisition issues, according to a Government Accountability O!ce

(GAO) report. Secretary Wilson, who prided herself on slimming down

Air Force bloat by slashing regulations and revitalizing squadron

readiness for combat, appeared predisposed to disentangling this mess.

Along with former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, she was rumored

to oppose the formation of a “Space Corps,” which would have been

headed by a four-star general but controlled by the Department of the

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Air Force—similar to how the Department of the Navy oversees the

Marine Corps. Republicans and Democrats along the way locked horns

over what to call the new service. “The Democrats want ‘Corps’ and the

gop wants ‘Force,’ said Todd Harrison, director of the Center for

Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project. “They

should just call it the Space Defense Force. That would reassure allies

that it’s not about o"ensive military power or destroying other

people’s stu" in space. It’s about defending our national assets from

space.”

Some o!cers with more practical expertise in space matters managed

to make their voices heard above the partisan din. “It simply defies

logic to keep that domain in the Air Force — akin to having the infantry

in the Navy,” wrote Terry Virts, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and

former commander of the International Space Station, in an August

2018 Washington Post editorial. “Air and space are completely unrelated

domains, and the equipment, techniques and culture required to

operate airplanes are entirely di"erent from those required to launch

and operate in space.” It turned out Wilson, an Air Force Academy

graduate, had other ideas. A sprawling bureaucracy comes with a Space

Force, she said, not to mention an improbably high $13 billion price tag.

Wilson resigned her post in May 2019 to become president of the

University of Texas at El Paso. As she left the Pentagon behind for the

Lone Star state, the former secretary in her resignation letter pledged

to be “an Airman for life.”

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AS OFFICIAL Washington battles over turf and ties itself in semantic

knots, billions in space-based equipment and infrastructure lay

vulnerable still. The fact remains it will take an irascible space operator

—not an Airman—with Hap Arnold’s skill, charisma and devotion to

pull every space organization currently in the DOD, the Executive O!ce

of the President and the Intelligence Community under one roof. While

there are generations of Airmen who have advanced from company

grade to general o!cer in the space career’s ranks, only one might

someday become the Space Force’s first commandant. This o!cer will

orchestrate the consolidation of active duty, reserve and Air National

Guard space resources, bridge the gaps between private sector space

launch companies (like SpaceX or Blue Horizon) and the NRO, and

possibly assume responsibility over weather squadrons, on top of the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Moreover, the U.S.

Coast Guard saves boaters in danger, but a space search and rescue

organization for astronauts or spacecraft in peril is lacking. A Space

Force might someday be ideally suited for these missions. Legislation

that governs commercial and government conduct in the space frontier

is also sorely in need of a refresh. If the 1967 Outer Space Treaty was

brought up to the twenty-first century’s reality, the Space Force could

help either rewrite or enforce the law.

The Space Force could also lead the development of small satellites—

some the size of household microwave ovens—that could pursue a

satellite’s attackers in the same way then-Major General Claire

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Chennault’s Flying Tigers defended our heavy bombers from Japanese

fighters over Western China and Southeast Asia. On any given day at

Vandenberg Air Force Base, one Airman might track more than sixteen

thousand satellites from 186 countries, as well as man-made objects

and pieces of debris traveling at 17,500 miles per hour that come

perilously close to tumbling into our big bus systems. Space operators

of the future could reduce errors of a sort by revolutionizing space

situational awareness—or even asteroid defense for that matter—with

artificially intelligent applications that might warn of or predict

catastrophic collisions.

AFTER ALMOST twenty-eight years of continuous combat since Desert

Storm, the Air Force has proven air dominance and global mobility are

its business—pure and simple. The service, however, is reconciling

with the war-torn force it has today with the one it wants for

tomorrow. If 9/11 has taught us anything, it is that the future of air

warfare is inexorably unmanned. The Air Force has a fighter pilot gap,

and yet wants to scale up fighter squadrons by 24 percent, from 316 to

386, between 2025 and 2030. What this might cost, says the GAO, is

unknown. But the Navy’s growth plan o"ers a clue. Over the next thirty

years, it wants to increase its fleet by 25 percent for $800 billion. Our

Airmen should spend as much time as possible honing tactics and

improving the readiness of their fighters, bombers and cargo aircraft.

America’s space operators ought to be a"orded the same kind of

opportunity, with academies where they learn the history, heritage and

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importance of space. An organizational structure should also reflect the

new service’s priorities and character, as well as a distinct career path

that grooms o!cers and enlisted personnel to be the leaders of their

unique domain.

China has a Strategic Support Force which amalgamates space, cyber

and electronic warfare into one organization. Could Space Command

follow this Chinese ‘Space Force’ model, and evolve painstakingly into

something similar? Could General Raymond, a career space and missile

o!cer, pull every player, from the public and private sectors, under

one roof? Only time will tell. One thing is certain: America needs a

Space Force now, and it is still up to Congress to amend Title 10, which

lays out the roles and responsibilities of our Armed Forces. Let the Air

Force focus on its tomorrow, so that perhaps one day the Space Force

can set forth and protect America’s future. Congress has the authority

to set the legislative schedule and make the laws that keep our nation

safe from harm just as lawmakers of Hap Arnold’s day did. Given our

adversaries’ advances over the last decade, hopefully, space protection

—provided by the U.S. Space Force—will rise to the very top of its list.

William Giannetti is a defense contractor and an U.S. Air Force Reserve

o!cer. The views in his article do not represent those of the U.S.

Government or Air Force.

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