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Title: The US Doesn’t Need a ‘Space Force’
Source: Originally appeared on The American Conservative.
URL Source: https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2018/0 ... -us-doesnt-need-a-space-force/
Published: Jun 19, 2018
Author: Daniel Larison
Post Date: 2018-06-19 06:59:07 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 89
Comments: 4

Trump announced that he is ordering the creation of a “Space Force” as a new branch of the military. Among other problems with this proposal is that creating a new branch is entirely unnecessary:

But the idea has faced resistance from senior Pentagon officials. Last fall, Rogers and Coopers’ proposal was scrapped after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein said it would lead to unnecessary costs and bureaucracy.

“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 functions,” Mattis said in October in a memo to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Nothing could be more wasteful and redundant than creating a new branch of the military for space. There is no compelling reason to create a new branch of the military. It would mean expanding an already bloated military budget while breaking apart an existing branch just for the sake of doing it. The idea is already running into resistance:

Further militarizing outer space for the purposes of fighting wars there is a very dangerous proposition that the US should flatly reject. Peter Wismer explains why:

The laws of war try to make sure that the consequences of a war are generally restricted to the countries fighting the war. A war in space could never achieve that. It would affect the global community and create significant damage to all. The United States would be the country to suffer the most because its dependence on space is by far the greatest, as it possesses the most satellites.

It is in the interest of the United States and the rest of the world to make sure that space never becomes a war-fighting domain. We can achieve that by continuing to make sure it is neither permissible nor opportune.

Congress should see the president’s proposal for the dangerous and foolish thing that it is and refuse to support it.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter. This article is reprinted from The American Conservative with permission.

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#1. To: Ada (#0)

The US Doesn’t Need a ‘Space Force’

The Galactic Empire will rule over all! ;)

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke

BTP Holdings  posted on  2018-06-19   7:27:57 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: BTP Holdings (#1)

In days of olde, people of the times of Columbus said he would sail off the edge of the world. Better to stay home.

Cynicom  posted on  2018-06-19   10:12:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Ada (#0) (Edited)

Space Forces mentioned in the PNAC document - YouTube, 4 minutes

Published on Jan 14, 2015

... the PNAC “Rebuilding America’s Defense” document. It was the blue print for the past 15 years.

Besides the prediction of 9-11, One of the things that interested me was where they described creating United States Space Forces to control the space commons. It’s 15 years later now, and I decided to check out if its been created yet. It has. ...


August 2015 - April 13, 2016:

[General] Hyten announces Space Enterprise Vision
http://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/719941/hyten-announces-
space-enterprise-vision/

By Air Force Space Command Public Affairs / Published April 13, 2016

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AFNS) -- Gen. John Hyten, the commander of Air Force Space Command [AFSPC], announced the command's Space Enterprise Vision [SEV] April 12 [2016] at Peterson Air Force Base. The SEV is the result of an AFSPC-commissioned study ... The August 2015 SEV study addressed the findings of several previous studies ... The SEV also recognizes that acquisition and programmatic decisions can no longer occur in mission area stovepipes, but must instead be driven by an overarching space mission enterprise context.


A Primer On The Raging Battle For A New Pentagon Space Corps - The Drive | The Warzone | July 12, 2017

The War Zone’s own Tyler Rogoway has explored these steadily emerging issues in depth, including in December 2016, where he wrote:

... For years, anything but kinetic anti-satellite weaponry remained on the dark fringes of the defense world. Now these concepts and capabilities are emerging into the mainstream. These range from ... using space junk to create cheap communications satellites [to] destroy[ing] enemy satellites without creating terrible debris fields that [would] limit future access to space. ...


Congress Close to Approving a New Space Army - gizmodo.com [4um Ref.]

7/08/17 Filed to: STAR WARS

... The idea of preparing the US for war in space has found supporters off-and-on for several decades. Talk began to heat up again back in 2007 when China demonstrated an ability to destroy a satellite with a weapon from Earth. ... the Air Force’s secretary and chief of staff are opposed to the [Congressional] plan. One reason is that we already have the Air Force Space Command and the military believes that the creation of the Space Corps would just cause more complications. Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters that “this will make it more complex, add more boxes to the organizational chart, and cost more money.” ... “If I had more money, I would put it into lethality, not bureaucracy,” Wilson said. ...


Breaking News - U.S. Warns Russia & China With New Weapon Technology Development - YouTube, 11.5 minutes

Published on Apr 18, 2018

@ 9:31 Re: DEWs. "We need to have mega-watt class Directed Engergy Weapons in space for Space Defense."

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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

GreyLmist  posted on  2018-06-21   1:27:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: All (#3) (Edited)

A Primer On The Raging Battle For A New Pentagon Space Corps - The Drive | The Warzone | July 12, 2017

The War Zone’s own Tyler Rogoway has explored these steadily emerging issues in depth, including in December 2016, where he wrote:

... For years, anything but kinetic anti-satellite weaponry remained on the dark fringes of the defense world. Now these concepts and capabilities are emerging into the mainstream. These range from ... using space junk to create cheap communications satellites [to] destroy[ing] enemy satellites without creating terrible debris fields that [would] limit future access to space. ...


Article excerpts continued:

The Space Corps plan only became widespread public knowledge in June 2017, when the House Armed Services Committee included the provision in their draft of the annual defense budget for the 2018 fiscal year. At the time of writing, it only exists in the House’s version of the proposed legislation, which lawmakers would have to reconcile with the Senate’s own draft bill before it could become law.

To rewind quickly, here are the key components of the existing House plan. It calls for the creation of a Space Corps no later than Jan. 1, 2019. ... The [Space Corps] plan, which could see the first new U.S. military service since the creation of the Air Force in 1947, is the brainchild of chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Alabama Republican Mike Rogers, as well as the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee.

Rogers has faced criticism from his own colleagues, many of who felt the proposal had come out of nowhere without the appropriate discussion and debate. ... Rogers has been incensed by the criticisms and calls to slow down his plans. He said that if anyone was in the dark about the proposal, it was [their] own fault, since he had started work on the idea back in September 2016. During the markup meeting nine months later, the Alabama lawmaker also pointed out that the idea of restructuring the military space chain of command first came up in 2001 under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In addition, the [GAO] Government Accountability Office, a top federal watchdog, had conducted at least three separate reviews of the options, proposing among other things a companion to the Missile Defense Agency for space issues. ... he followed up his complaints with a threat to cut the Air Force out of the chain of command altogether.


ROGERS/COOPER ON NATIONAL SECURITY SPACE BRIEFING | Armed Services Republicans
https://armedservices.house.gov/news/press- releases/rogerscooper-
national-security-space-briefing

Jul 19, 2017 Press Release

The GAO [Government Accountability Office] provided a historical perspective on the remarkable overlap on the recommendations to fix the national security space enterprise. The time for study is over: we must now act to effect change based on the repeated recommendations. The consensus of the prior studies and reviews is that we must fix these problems. We believe the Space Corps is that fix. The status quo and further delay are indefensible.”

Despite over 20 years of studies, reports, and commissions – some dating back to 1982 – the DoD has not significantly reorganized to address these challenges.


What Trump’s Space Force Announcement Means - Defense One | June 18, 2018 https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2018/06/what-trumps-space-force-
announcement-means/149093/

Creating a standalone service for space isn’t something the president can do on his own; he needs congressional authorization.

The concept of a standalone service for space received some top-level support under Donald Rumsfeld and in the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act. More recently [Jul 19, 2017 - Ref. armedservices.house.gov source above], Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. — the chairman and ranking member of House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces panel — pushed the House to include a Space Force amendment in its version of the 2018 NDAA. The provision was ultimately axed in negotiations with the Senate.

But today’s announcement goes beyond what Rogers and Cooper sought, which was a Space Corps whose commander would answer to the Air Force Secretary, just as the Marine Corps answers to the Navy Secretary. A Space Force, however, would be independent entirely from the Air Force, potentially with its own Secretary.

The chief study that Space Corps (or Force) proponents cite for the necessity of such a thing is a May 2017 Government Accountability Office [GAO] report that concluded that the way the Air Force was buying space capabilities was leading to cost overruns and schedule delays.

The military has been expanding its outreach to commercial satellite providers to offer secure communications capabilities and, potentially, to host intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads, [!!!!] ... The military was in the process of evaluating the entire space force concept in terms of feasibility and structure. Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan’s office was conducting what [is] described as a broad study due in August.

A potentially more interesting study, due in September, was to be completed by the Center for Naval Analysis. “Their job was to create a roadmap for how to create an independent service for space. They’re supposed to be coming up with the plan for how to do this. They [c]ould give it to Congress to consider for next year’s NDAA,” said [Mr.] Harrison [who directs the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project.


The Militarization of Space. Do We Really Need a Space Force? - YouTube, 11 minutes

Published on May 8, 2018

President Trump recently called for the creation of a space force to deal with the future warfighting in space. It turns out, this already exists, space is already well militarized.

[@ 2:02, "What kinds of weapons are you allowed to put into space?" ... @ 5:03, "You're not allowed to launch nuclear weapons into orbit but that doesn't mean you can't try out other weapons." ... @ 6:04, "The Brilliant Pebbles system was proposed in the 1980s" ... @ 6:28, "Earlier this year, an engineer at China's Air Force Engineering University suggested the idea of launching a satellite that could zap nearby space junk with a powerful infrared laser." ... @ 8:14, The Space Force/Corps by 2019 - proposed and passed by the House of Representatives in 2017 for Fiscal Year 2018's NDAA legislation-process but was stopped in the Senate. Wikipedia Refs. linked below with further info.]


[1967] UN Outer Space Treaty - Wikipedia

a treaty that forms the basis of international space law. The treaty was opened for signature in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on 27 January 1967, and entered into force on 10 October 1967. As of April 2018, 107 countries are parties to the treaty, while another 23 have signed the treaty but have not completed ratification.


[1984] Strategic Defense Initiative Organization [SDIO] - Wikipedia

set up in 1984 within the United States Department of Defense to oversee development. A wide array of advanced weapon concepts, including lasers, particle beam weapons and ground-and space-based missile systems were studied, ... A number of these concepts were tested through the late 1980s, and follow-on efforts and spin-offs continue to this day. ... By 1986 ... Only the Space Based Laser seemed to have any hope of developing in the short term,


[1987] Brilliant Pebbles - Wikipedia

Since the late 1970s, the Soviets had used ground-based lasers to "paint" United States satellites on a number of occasions, in some cases temporarily blinding them. The APS report noted that the amount of energy needed to do this was very low, far less than the amount of energy needed to destroy a missile. ... Brilliant Pebbles was a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system proposed [in] 1987, near the end of Cold War. The system would consist of thousands of small missiles, not unlike conventional air-to-air missiles, which would be placed in orbits so that hundreds would be above the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union launched its Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet, the pebbles would detect their rocket motors using infrared seekers and collide with them. Because the pebble strikes the ICBM before the latter could release any multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) warheads, each pebble could destroy several warheads with one shot. ... President Bill Clinton's new Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, immediately began downgrading the Pebbles system. ... Fighting in Congress through the early 1990s led to Pebbles' cancellation in 1993.

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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

GreyLmist  posted on  2018-06-21   3:34:04 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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