President Trump ratcheted up pressure on the Air Force this week with his surprise support of what he called a “Space Force,” but the new military service is far from a done deal.
The Air Force’s next steps could sway the likelihood as to whether it becomes reality.
House lawmakers are watching closely how the Air Force moves to improve its management of the lion’s share of military space operations and if it proves it can counter growing threats from Russia and China.
“They have an opportunity to reassure people that they can handle it and are willing to,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the House Armed Services Committee chairman.
The committee developed the proposal last year for a new space service inside the Department of the Air Force that would carve out and segregate the operations. Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., studied the issue and determined the Air Force was bungling the space mission and allowing security threats to grow.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Air Force leaders strongly opposed the idea, and it was defeated on Capitol Hill last year.
But Armed Services still managed to add a raft of Air Force space reforms into the National Defense Authorization Act signed by Trump in December.
The law designated Air Force Space Command as the sole military authority for space and slashed parts of the Pentagon space bureaucracy, including a deputy chief of staff, a space adviser and a space council.
The NDAA also requested that Deputy Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan complete an independent study and develop a road map for creating a new space service this year.
That Pentagon space review is ongoing. Kenneth Rapuano, assistant defense secretary, said the space service idea is getting “close attention” as part of the review.
“We made a lot of changes in last year’s bill when it comes to space, and I think what everybody is going to be watching for is how well the Air Force moves out to implement wholeheartedly what we did last year,” Thornberry said. “If they are reluctant for whatever reason to do that, then that will add fuel to the argument that they can’t deal with space, that they are too culturally dominated by air.”
Trump’s comments Tuesday during a trip to California that “we’ll have the Space Force” reignited the debate and handed new ammunition to the House as it pressures the Air Force.
The service was busy this week touting its work on military space operations. Air Force secretary Heather Wilson highlighted it at the top of public appearances on Capitol Hill and at a think tank.
Wilson said a new emphasis on space is among a couple of “big, bold changes” in the service’s 2019 budget.
“The first [change] is the acceleration of space superiority and a recognition that the United States of America and the U.S. Air Force is the best in the world at space capabilities and our adversaries know it,” she said.
Gen. John Raymond, the head of Air Force Space Command, told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the service’s budget request would increase the space budget by 18 percent, or $7 billion, over five years.
Meanwhile, House lawmakers are keeping up the pressure with the potential creation of a Space Force.
“In the interim, between now and when I think we are going to have a Space Force … the Department of the Air Force should make space a high, a very high, priority and fund it appropriately and give it attention,” Rogers said. “That means resources, a different acquisition construct, and maybe a space professional as the next chief of staff like Gen. John Hyten [the head of U.S. Strategic Command] or somebody else.”
Rogers said he was pessimistic the service could make the change, of course.
“Those would be great signals to the Congress they are finally getting it,” he said. “But I still think we are going to have to make this evolution to a separate segregated service.”
