The Air Force is trying to “gold-plate” and derail President Trump’s plan for a new Space Force military service with its $13 billion cost estimate, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said Thursday.
The public should “not get too concerned” with estimates and proposals for the Space Force because Congress has not yet seen a finalized plan or decided what the military service will actually look like, said Rogers, a House Armed Services subcommittee chairman, who was speaking at the Aspen Institute.
The $13 billion estimate by Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson was leaked this month as the Pentagon works up a legislative proposal and a funding request for the new service to hand Congress in February. A top budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the initial Air Force estimate appeared to be inflated.
“There is two things we are watching for and that’s gold-plating and slow-walking, that’s what you try to do when you want to kill something and you can’t stop it, you slow it down until you can figure out how to kill or you start throwing out numbers that make everybody go, ‘Oh, well we can’t afford that,’” Rogers said. “That’s exactly what’s going on now with that $13 billion number.”
The Air Force currently handles most space operations and Wilson was originally strongly against handing over the responsibility to a new space service. Last year, she helped kill a proposal by Rogers and Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., for a Space Corps inside the Department of the Air Force.
But Wilson has publicly backed the idea after Trump began touting the new service in speeches in March.
“It is my view that the president has brought space into the spotlight. He’s made it kitchen table conversation and that benefits this country,” Wilson said on Wednesday.
Trump is now calling for a completely separate Space Force service, the first new branch of the military since 1947, and dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to the Pentagon last month to make the public announcement.
Cooper, who also spoke at the Aspen Institute, said “give me a break” when describing Wilson’s $13 billion cost estimate. He said the service might be in a more difficult situation now than under the original Space Corps proposal.
“This is an attempt to work cooperatively with the Air Force so they can do their job better and our proposal for Space Corps would have kept it within the Air Force not a direct attack on the Air Force the way the president’s proposal is,” Cooper said.
But both Rogers and Cooper said it remains undecided whether Trump’s vision for a sixth branch of the military or their Space Corps will become a reality.
“They can propose anything they want to. Congress is going to decide what it’s going to look like in the end. So I would not get too concerned with these different proposals that are tendered,” Rogers said. “There is no administration proposal yet. All the president said was ‘I want a separate and equal Space Force.’ That could be what we proposed last year.”
