On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence joined Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in a speech offering a first look at the plan to develop a U.S. Space Force. As the Trump administration envisions it, Space Force would be a sixth branch of the military. That would add a lot of bureaucracy and require congressional action.
While there are real threats to U.S. assets in space, the bureaucracy-heavy route might not be the best way to make us safer.
Some of those important U.S. interests in space include satellites that provide key warnings in missile defense systems, gather intelligence and guide precision munitions. As countries like China and Russia advance their capabilities and seek to undermine existing U.S. technology as opposed to building costly but more conventional assets, ensuring national security does tie back to a defense of military assets in space. These are some of the areas that Space Force would supposedly address.
There are, however, other ways to safeguard these assets that don’t involve adding a branch to the U.S. military. One option was an idea floated by the Pentagon as an interim measure of establishing a combatant command led by a four-star general that addressed U.S. interest in space – just similar commands oversea actions in other regions.
There is precedent for such a command within the existing infrastructure of the military as a Space Command already operates as part of the Air Force. Instead of seeking to eventually replace the command with a new branch, the military could simply keep the command structure. That way real concerns on space defense could be addressed by a dedicated and coordinated command.
Not only would taking this less showy route avoid some of the bureaucratic hurdles that creating a new branch would entail but it would also cut down on the likelihood of increased duplicative efforts.
After all, the last time a new branch was created (the Air Force in 1947) other branches continued to maintain aviation activities. If a new branch for space operations were created, given the history of U.S. armed forces bureaucracy, it is unlikely that existing branches would simply transfer their operations focused on space to a new authority. The result would be costly duplication of efforts leading to less coordination at tax payer expense. Additionally, Space Force might compete with other government programs outside of the military such as NASA again raising questions of duplication of government efforts and expenditures.
Indeed, Mattis himself acknowledge the wasteful duplicative efforts of the military in 2017 directing the Department of Defense to consolidate overlapping operations. In a memo, Mattis explained, “I recognize the military services have unique competencies in the specific operating domains… However, we have sometimes allowed our focus on service uniqueness to extent into business operations, leading to duplications of efforts and costs we can no longer afford.”
In all likelihood, the creation of Space Force would only exasperate this problem.
For President Trump, however, addressing these real concerns might not be as important as having Space Force as a rallying cry. Already the president is interested in selling Space Force gear to supporters and championing the project as a way to make America safer – without getting into the ever-important details.
