Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., is a reliable ally of President Trump on Capitol Hill, but he is opposed to the president’s plan for a new Space Force military service.
That could be a problem for Trump’s blockbuster announcement this month that he has directed the Pentagon to create a sixth branch of the military focused on space security.
Inhofe is the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee who has been chairing hearings and acting as the committee leader in the absence of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The Senate committee is responsible for Pentagon policy and helps set the size, structure, and composition of the military in annual authorization bills. It will almost certainly need to buy into Trump’s Space Force for the new service to lift off.
“This is one of the rare cases where I kind of disagree with him and I am concerned about it. There’s a lot of disagreement,” Inhofe told the Washington Examiner. “We’re doing [space operations] very well. We have an old saying that ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,’ and I think it’s operated pretty well with all the services taking care of their own concerns in those areas.”
“We don’t need one more huge bureaucracy,” he said.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, a committee member who was traveling with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday, also came out against the Space Force, according to an interview with the Anchorage Daily News. Other Republicans on the Senate committee have been hesitant to back the proposal.
“I’m listening but I’ve got questions,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the seapower subcommittee.
The Space Force faces its first major legislative test with the committee this summer.
Inhofe and other lawmakers from the House and Senate armed services committees will debate space policy and whether to take steps toward the new service as they hammer out a final 2019 defense policy bill.
The House is proposing the creation of a new subunified military command for space under U.S. Strategic Command and a new numbered Air Force to handle the operations. The intention is to lay the foundation for Space Force and then fully authorize it in next year’s National Defense Authorization Act.
“You know what we have, you know what they have,” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the House Armed Services chairman, told the Washington Examiner. He was referring to the two NDAAs.
The two committees will negotiate what ends up in the final NDAA bill. But the Senate version of the NDAA includes nothing about segregating space operations, which are now almost entirely handled by the Air Force.
“I think the indication, since it wasn’t in the bill, is that it’s not a top priority,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the Senate committee’s top Democrat.
Other Senate committee Democrats have opposed the idea or said they have doubts.
“From all of the people I’ve talked to in the military, they didn’t feel like we needed a separate Space Force at this point,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said.
Mattis made the unusual decision to send Congress a letter last year opposing a House effort to create the new space service in the NDAA, and Air Force leaders warned it would create unnecessary bureaucracy.
The Senate committee also opposed creating the space service as part of the NDAA and helped shoot it down. Instead, the bill ordered the Pentagon to come up with a plan of how it would create the Space Force. That is due to Congress in December.
As lawmakers prepare to negotiate the next NDAA, senators may again be poised to block any major legislative moves toward making Trump’s new service a reality.
