 |
| Redlands Daily Facts, September 23, 1959, page 1. |
On March 13,
2018, President Trump floated the idea that he might create a new branch of the
military – the “Space Force.”
The reaction
was predictable. At his next campaign
rally, supporters lustily chanted “Space Force! Space Force!” in unison, as
though a “Space Force” would be the
“Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.”
[(see
my earlier piece about the best thing BEFORE sliced bread)].
Critics and
the “Resistance”, on the other hand, reflexively mocked it as something dumber
than comic-book crazy. Even such formerly
serious news giants as Time and Fortune, as well as the Huffington Post, didn’t pull any
punches. HuffPo “hilariously” proclaimed that “Trump’s Call for a ‘Space
Force’ Makes Him the Laughingstock of the Galaxy.”
Fortune magazine compared Trump’s
“Space Force” proposal to a long-forgotten, failed sitcom from the late-1970s,
“Space Force.”
You can watch an episode of “Space Force” TV series here. It’s kinda funny.
Gene
Roddenberry said that Star Trek was pitched as “a Wagon Train to the stars”. “Space
Force”, on the other hand, could have been pitched as an “F-Troop in space.” I’m no
military or space expert, but I think it’s safe to say the existence of the
show is otherwise irrelevant to the “Space Force” debate.
Even the
once proud Time magazine dispensed
with providing any historical context or reasoned analysis, opting instead to recount
Stephen Colbert’s comedy routine, blow-by-blow, as though it were serious news.
Colbert joked that the Space Force came from an idea
President Trump “got from a Buzz Lightyear Happy Meal
toy.”
He then played a clip of President Trump waxing on about the
new sixth arm of the military. “We may even have a Space Force,” Trump said in
the clip. “Develop another one. Space Force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have
the Space Force. … Think of that. Space Force!”
“Yes, think of that,” Colbert said. “But not too hard, ’cause
it’s stupid.”
“We don’t need Space Force,” he added. “Please wait until
NASA finds life before you try to kill it.”
Well, if
current military force structure is a guide (and I assume it is), it is clearly
not “stupid” to have military forces dedicated to defense in space. The three major services already have their
own, separate commands devoted to space warfare; the United States Army Space
and Missile Defense Command, the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems
Command, and the Air Force Space Command.
The United
States even has a history of combining many of the separate space functions
under a joint command. From 1985 through
2002, the United States Space Command (which sounds suspiciously similar to
“Space Force”) oversaw space defense.
Those responsibilities were transferred to the joint United States
Strategic Command in 2002 at the direction of then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
All of which
doesn’t really answer the question of whether “Space Force” is as great as the Trump-rally
chanters seem to think, but it does clearly suggest that the “Space Force,” in
and of itself, isn’t as fanciful or “stupid” as Colbert and the “Resistance”
like to make it out to be.
But the
resistance may be right about one thing – “Space Force” originated in a comic
book – or at least a comic strip.
 |
| “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” The Bakersfield Californian, October 13, 1942, page 13. |
Buck Rogers
described himself as a “Space Force Pilot” in an episode of “Buck Rogers in the
25th Century”, published in October 1942, the earliest reference to
“Space Force” I could find.
A few years
later, the Navy Captain and prolific author, Walter Karig wrote a sci-fi novel,
War in the Atomic Age, in which the “Space
Force” played a part in futuristic warfare.
An image from the book shows a “Space Force” pilot remotely guiding a
cruise missile or drone with the help of a video feed, in a manner similar to
that used in the modern Air Force.
 |
| Captain Walter Karig, USNR, War in the Atomic Age, Wm. H. Wise & Co., Inc., New York, 1946, page 38. |
Life
imitated art about a decade later when rocket expert/science fiction author, Willy Ley, advocated for the
creation of a “space force” to break through the creative gridlock caused by Ley
three space programs run separately by the Army, Navy and Air Force..
A single program wrapped into a new
space force with one man in charge is the shakeup that is
necessary. It will take drastic
simplification of organization.[i]
In addition
to having been a leading member of the German rocket association that solved
the problem of liquid rocket propulsion in the late-1920s, Ley worked as a
consultant to the United States government for fifteen years after leaving Nazi
Germany in 1935,[ii]
after which he turned his talents to writing pop-science and science fiction.
But despite his new career, his suggestion was serious. Within less
than a year, the powers-that-be took his advice (to some extent), consolidating
most of the space-related mission within the Air Force, which was a “jolt” to
the Army and Navy.
 |
| Paducah Sun, September 23, 1959, page 4. |
While the
Air Force’s prominence in space defense for several decades may have put the
idea on the back burner, the perceived need for a separate “Space Force” never
disappeared.
In 1965,
space expert Erik Bergaust noted:
It may still take a few years before the Air Force will
change its name from USAF to USSF, but a U.S. Space
Force is more than a gleam in the eyes of our Air Force leaders.[iii]
 |
| Space Force History and the Plattsburgh Air Base, AdirondackAlmanack.com, August 16, 2018. |
In 1980, U. S. News & World Report suggested
that the Air Force might someday become the “Space Force.”
 |
| Honolulu Star-Bulletin, July 7, 1980, page 11. |
Shortly
afterward, elements of the three major military branches and civilian
consultants advocated the creation of a separate “Space Force”.
 |
| Naval War College Review, Volume 34, Number 2, March-April 1981, page 48. |
A separate U. S. Space Force
would be in a much better position to increase and certainly to consolidate the
military space budget. [iv]
 |
|
Military Review, the Professional Journal of the Army,
Volume 65, Number 7, July 1985, page 48.
|
For future US space planning and operations, a separate US
space force should be seriously considered. [v]
 |
| The Daily Spectrum (Saint George, Utah), January 13, 1984, page 5. |
C. Richard Whelan, a California military and aerospace
consultant, thinks the time has come for establishing a U. S. Space Force.
In the years
after the creation of the joint United States Space Command in 1985, all phases
of warfare became increasingly reliant on space-based technology.
 |
| Santa Maria Times, December 18, 1998, page 1. |
The
increased value of space defenses brought the “Space Force” debate back to the table during the Clinton administration.
 |
| Florida Today (Cocoa, Florida), March 6, 2000, page 1. |
On Capitol Hill, and at the White House and the Pentagon, the
debate is expanding over whether to carve a separate U. S. Space Force that
mostly would come out of the U. S. Air Force’s hide.
Ironically,
while the Air Force is under threat of having much of its mission taken out of
its hide, the Air Force itself was carved out of the Army’s hide more than
seven decades ago. You know all of those
airplanes you see in the WWII movies? – apart from the Navy planes taking off
and landing on the carriers, all of those planes were in the Army Air Corps –
there was no Air Force.
The Air
Force came into being in 1947, less than fifty years after the invention of the
airplane, and barely thirty-five years after Lieutenant Jacob Earl Fickel of
the 29th U. S. Infantry, who conducted some of the earliest air warfare
experiments with Glenn H. Curtiss in 1910, stressed the importance of becoming proficient
in the new art of warfare:
It is a certainty that the next war is going to be fought
with armies having aeroplane forces and the first great battle will be a battle
in the air. The aeroplanes will not all
be on one side, and as they will be used for advance scouting they will meet
before the armies come within distance of them.[vi]
It took more than three decades to carve out a separate Air Force. Some
observers think that advancements and changes in technology and warfare in the
ensuing seventy years merit at least consideration for carving out a
separate "Space Force".
In 2016, the
former head of Space Command gave a
sober assessment of the United States’ readiness in space:
So is the US moving quickly enough to respond to the new
threats in space? “I would say the answer was no,” said Gen. Willam Shelton,
former head of Space Command. “Could we
provide active defense of our own satellites? The answer’s no.”
In 2017,
Representative Mike Rogers (R-Alabama), the chairman of the House Armed
Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, proposed
a “Space Corps” (to be separate part of the Air Force, similar to how the
Marine Corps is part of the Navy):
Rogers' argument is that the US military is losing ground to
Russia and China in space by having its space programs within the Air Force,
when the Air Force's primary focus is on fighter jets like the F-35. "The
Chinese literally have a space force today. Yet the Air Force would continue to
force space to compete with F-35s. And we know who's going to win that
competition," Rogers said.[vii]
The idea
even enjoyed
some bipartisan support:
"I am thrilled that the Space Corps idea is gaining
traction at the White House. Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN) and I have worked
tirelessly on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Strategic Forces
subcommittee level on the need for a Space Corps outside of the Air Force for
over two years now," Rogers said in a statement to CNN. [viii]
But the
proposal was removed from the military budget before it was passed.
Today,
President Trump has upped the ante, proposing a fully separate branch of the
service – Space Force.
Is it
necessary?
I don’t
know.
Is it
bat-stuff crazy?
I’ll let the
Generals and the politicians hash it out.
[i] The Daily Oklahoman, January 10, 1958,
page 5.
[ii] The Daily Oklahoman, January 10, 1958,
page 5.
[iv] “2001:
A U. S. Space Force”, Lieutenant Colonel Dino A. Lorenzini, U. S. Air Force and
Major Charles L. Fox, U. S. Air Force , Naval
War College Review, Volume 34, Number 2, March-April 1981, page 62.
[v] “Space,
the Army’s New High Ground,” Colonel Jan V. Harvey, US Army, and Colonel Alwyn
H. King, US Army, Retired, Military
Review, the Professional Journal of the Army, Volume 65, Number 7, July
1985, page 48, referring to endnote 24, “The Secretary of Defense announced
presidential authorization of a unified US Space Command, 30 November 1984.”
[vi] The Bridgeport Times (Bridgeport,
Connecticut), May 1, 1911, page 2.