US Space Force: What you need to know

The name “Space Force” sounded like a punch line right from the start. It had hints of youthful names and Hollywood smiles. Space cadet. Spaceballs. Marvin the Martian Q-36 explosive room modulator.

Despite blowing up Twitter Snark and inspiring upcoming Netflix comedy With Steve Carell – It’s set to Debut May 29th, and the first trailer debuted in the United States on May 5 Space forces Advocated by President Donald Trump is serious business.

The basic concept is a call to arms for a new way of dealing with military matters in orbit. No, that doesn’t mean celestial soldiers zoom around with laser beams. Moonraker style. It has a lot more to do with the use and protection of satellites, which are essential for modern warfare, especially for high-tech countries like the United States and some of their potential adversaries.

The Space Force is already striving to attract America’s best and brightest service providers who are nowhere near as science fiction as it seemed a few years ago. It is first recruitment video fell on May 6th and Officials say there has already been an “avalanche of applicants”. “

Here’s some important information about what’s going on with Space Force and how that vision becomes a reality.

What is Space Force?

Space Force was founded on December 20, 2019 and will be put into operation in the Pentagon language for 18 months – or “got up” – i.e. by mid-2021. According to the fact sheet of the new branch, his tasks include the “development of military space experts, the acquisition of military space systems [and] Maturation of the military doctrine for space power. “The 2020 National Defense Approval Act Provided $ 40 million to get things going.

At the top Gene. John “Jay” Raymond, the country’s first chief for space operations – and that’s exactly what first member of the space forces.

It is the sixth branch of the U.S. military and in this sense corresponds to the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. This has a bureaucratic nuance: The Space Force falls under the Air Force secretary, much like the Marines fall under the Navy secretary.

In this initial phase, it relies heavily on this sibling. What was now the Space Force was the existing Air Force Space Command, and space-related Air Force personnel will be converted in the coming months. Eventually, the new branch will consolidate US missions. (The Army and Navy currently have their own operations).

What has Space Force accomplished so far?

It started somewhat uncomfortably in January when Trump unveiled the Space Force logo that took a lot of social media grief for its striking resemblance to the Starfleet Command logo from the Star Trek series. There were also the ribs that appeared when Space Force glanced at the pretty earthy camouflage pattern of his uniforms. “The USSF uses current Army and Air Force uniforms, which saves the cost of developing / manufacturing a new uniform,” said the Space Force. “The members will look like their local colleagues with whom they will be working.”

In a nutshell, what the new branch is about: On March 26, the Space Force did what it called its own First start of the national security room, send into orbit a military communications satelliteThe network built by Lockheed Martin is part of a six-satellite network of encrypted, interference-proof systems.

The next launch of the secret X-37B spacecraft with experiments for NASA and the military is discontinued for May 16.

In April, the U.S. Air Force Academy’s final year class included officers deployed directly to the Space Force in 2020. Of the more than 960 graduates, 86 are The first officers of the Space Force. Although approximately 16,000 Air Force Space Command military and civilians were assigned to the new division, Raymond said to the officers, “They are numbers 3 through 88.”

As of May 1, members of the Air Force who were already on active duty Volunteer for the transfer to the Space ForceThese transfers are expected to start in early September. Those entitled to transfer include officers and members in areas such as space operations, cyberspace operations, geodata information, signal information and target analysis.

“This is a historic time to be in the space business,” Raymond said in a statement.

How did Space Force start?

The idea of ​​a cosmic military branch attracted widespread attention after Trump, who first used the term “space force” in a public address to the Marines in March 2018, pushed aside.

“We’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space, and I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force,” Trump said during the speech. “I wasn’t really serious and then I said, ‘What a great idea. Maybe we have to do that.'”

Three months later, Trump made it clear that he was serious. At a session of the National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, the Department of Defense was instructed to begin forming a sixth branch of the military.

“It’s not enough just to have an American presence in space,” Trump said. “We have to have American dominance in space.”

The President is not authorized to set up military service himself. This is a task for Congress that last did this in 1947 when President Harry Truman signed it turned the air force out of the army.

In October 2018, the National Space Council approved six recommendations to the president that should become part of Trump’s fourth space directive. The recommendations lay the groundwork for the Space Force by establishing a new, unified space command and procurement agency for space technology and initiating an interacting review of space capabilities.

In addition, during his speech announcing the plan, Pence said that the Space Council would work with the National Security Council to reduce “bureaucracy” regarding the rules of engagement in space. This could be interpreted as looking for a way to circumvent the existence of the International Space treaty that all activities in space are peaceful.

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It wasn’t by accident, was it?

Law. Before the Space Force in 1985, there was a U.S. space force that was founded by President Ronald Reagan and that had some controversial ideas about it space-based defense. Space Command merged with US Strategic Command in 2002 following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In February 2019 Trump signed the Space Policy 4and called for the creation of a space force unit that would be under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Air Force. The directive, however, set the goal of eventually converting the new division into an independent military division.

Trump became official in August 2019 restored the US Space Command as a department within the Department of Defense. It was one of eleven combat commandos, each of which oversees a specific geographic or functional area – for example, the European Command and the Cyber ​​Command. This revival, the president said, was a step in creating the Space Force as a new military branch.

What exactly is the military planning?

The U.S. military has been involved in space-related projects for decades. In the 1960s, at the same time that NASA was working towards a moon landing, the Air Force even had one parallel manned space program with our own astronauts, although none of them have ever started, as far as we know.

More recently, the Air Force, Navy and Army had their own units that focused on elements of space operations. A Pentagon memo from Defense one stated that the Trump administration’s original proposal for a sixth military division prompted the Space Force to deploy the Naval Satellite Operations Center, the Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, parts of the Air Force Space Command, and the like 1st Army Space Brigade, which was specially developed for “providing the decisive combat power” and comprises two astronauts who are basically loaned to NASA.

Today, a significant portion of the U.S. military activity related to space is in the United States Air Force Space CommandThe company is headquartered in Colorado, has over 30,000 employees worldwide and opens facilities in Florida and California. The command manages missions such as satellite communications, missile warning systems, surveillance of space activities, and projects like that mysterious X-37B room area.

The Air Force even monitors the Global Positioning System – that is, the machinery behind the GPS that records the routes you take every day.

Why do we need it?

Trump administration officials argue that space is a “war domain” and that other world powers like Russia and China are already treating it as such. This sentence reflects something some in the air force have been saying for a few years.

It’s about a lot. Much of our economy and lifestyle in the 21st century – from banking and weather forecasting to television services and GPS – depends on satellites working 24/7. The military also depends on them. But space is a bit like the Wild West right now, with a wide mix of governmental and commercial satellites that all sit on ducks.

We even saw an example of target practice: 2007 China has launched one of its own satellites – Mission accomplished on your own – and littered with potentially destructive space debris. Many saw this 2007 operation as a veiled representation of military power.

Are everyone on board with Space Force?

Definitely not. Since Trump was set aside in March 2018, the idea of ​​a space force has been a constant target of ridicule on social media, talk shows and sometimes even on CNET.

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Seriously, some analysts said creating a new military branch would weaken other branches and lead to internal military disputes.

“When you create a new bureaucracy, this bureaucracy usually focuses on its own goals. This is where the problems arise,” said Dan Grazier, a military fellow at the Project for Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information SpaceNews in 2018.

Trump’s former Secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson was less than enthusiastic about the idea when it first aired. Wilson signed a memo that estimated that launching a space force over a five-year period would cost $ 13 billion. This number was rejected by Pence and other Space Force boosters. Grazier argued that the cost could be significantly higher.

But what was once a “not really serious” idea soon gained serious momentum, and even Wilson later said publicly that it was “fully in line” with the plan.