Trump moves forward on Space Force; commercial space reorganization
In a speech by Mike Pence yesterday the Trump administration outlined its continuing plans to moves forward with a new military branch focused on space as well as a reorganization of the bureaucracies that regulate commercial space into a single Commerce Department agency.
Pence said the National Space Council and National Security Council will review space operational authorities “to ensure that our warfighters have the freedom and flexibility they need to deter and defeat any threat to our security in the rapidly evolving battlefield of space.” A lack of centralized leadership and accountability threatened U.S. ability to “advance our national security in space,” Pence said. “The time has come to stop studying the problem and start fixing it.”
The Trump administration in August announced an ambitious plan to usher in a new “Space Force” as the sixth branch of the military by 2020. Such a change, which the Defense Department has estimated would cost $13 billion in the first five years, must first be approved by Congress. Pence said at an earlier Washington Post forum that China and Russia have established similar space forces. “This is what our competitors are already doing. And the president is determined to make sure that America leads in space, as well, from a military standpoint,” he said.
…The proposed bill would also create the Bureau of Space Commerce under the U.S. Department of Commerce to liaise with industry representatives and organizations, according to a copy provided to Reuters. It also calls for $10 million per year for five years starting in 2020 to fund the commerce arm.
I am traveling up to Phoenix as I write this to be a talking head on a Science channel television show, so I haven’t yet reviewed carefully this proposal. Based on the quote above, the cost for the Space Force is absurd. This is an office, not a military force. At $13 billion it looks more like gold-plated pork.
Meanwhile, the proposed Commerce agency makes sense only if it truly replaces other bureaucracies. I am not yet sure that will happen.
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In a speech by Mike Pence yesterday the Trump administration outlined its continuing plans to moves forward with a new military branch focused on space as well as a reorganization of the bureaucracies that regulate commercial space into a single Commerce Department agency.
Pence said the National Space Council and National Security Council will review space operational authorities “to ensure that our warfighters have the freedom and flexibility they need to deter and defeat any threat to our security in the rapidly evolving battlefield of space.” A lack of centralized leadership and accountability threatened U.S. ability to “advance our national security in space,” Pence said. “The time has come to stop studying the problem and start fixing it.”
The Trump administration in August announced an ambitious plan to usher in a new “Space Force” as the sixth branch of the military by 2020. Such a change, which the Defense Department has estimated would cost $13 billion in the first five years, must first be approved by Congress. Pence said at an earlier Washington Post forum that China and Russia have established similar space forces. “This is what our competitors are already doing. And the president is determined to make sure that America leads in space, as well, from a military standpoint,” he said.
…The proposed bill would also create the Bureau of Space Commerce under the U.S. Department of Commerce to liaise with industry representatives and organizations, according to a copy provided to Reuters. It also calls for $10 million per year for five years starting in 2020 to fund the commerce arm.
I am traveling up to Phoenix as I write this to be a talking head on a Science channel television show, so I haven’t yet reviewed carefully this proposal. Based on the quote above, the cost for the Space Force is absurd. This is an office, not a military force. At $13 billion it looks more like gold-plated pork.
Meanwhile, the proposed Commerce agency makes sense only if it truly replaces other bureaucracies. I am not yet sure that will happen.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Pence at Space Council
10-23-2018
cued to approximately the start
https://youtu.be/JrtkjcGqGho?t=1128
–Pence talks solo for about 20 minutes, then they go to round-table commentary.
–the whole video is 2:30:00 in length
pivoting…. this is a very well put together blend of science-fiction & politics.
“The Politics of Starship Troopers”
Sargon of Akkad
10-18-2018
https://youtu.be/kVpYvV0O7uI
1:21:02
This is an office, not a military force.
That is something I’ve not seen given sufficient discussion. All the pro Space Force arguments I’ve seen lay out reasons why they believe certain space-related capabilities should be taken away from (primarily) the Air Force and given to a newly created organization. The assumption then seems to be that, since these capabilities have until now been exercised by the existing armed forces, this new organization must therefore be an new, independent, uniformed armed service, despite the fact that this new organization will not have control over any offensive weapons and will never place their personal in harm’s way — the two critical, defining characteristics of any armed force. Why should this new organization (if one is even required, and the problem can’t be solve via the much simpler creation of a unified command) not be a DOD sub-agency along the lines of the NSA, NGA, NRO, or MDA?
despite the fact that this new organization will not have control over any offensive weapons and will never place their personal in harm’s way — the two critical, defining characteristics of any armed force.
This may not be an accurate assessment of the Space Force.
Slightly OT, NASA made an announcement about lunar robotic missions and notice they are supposed to be launched and operated long before SLS/Orion/Gateway. It looks like an ambitious schedule for NASA but it does rely on the commercial sector to get things done, so we will see how it goes.
https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary!init.do?solId={2D390C4D-39F9-E880-34C8-C07DC523698E}&path=open
Robert said: “At $13 billion it looks more like gold-plated pork.”
It was supposed to look like that. The Air Force “plan” is a “Poison Pill” designed to frighten Congress into killing a change the USAF wants to stop from taking authority and budget away from it. As a reply to the President having DoD request a plan from the Air Force, the best description of it I’ve seen is “Malicious Compliance”. As I’ve said elsewhere, the Air Staff fed Secretary Wilson a plan that would use up all her credit in the WH, just to keep their own control over the MilSpace budgets they control.
The plans from the DoD side are far more realistic, and, not too surprisingly, are given little exposure in a media industry that also wants the idea of a Space Force started by Trump as President, and credited to him to vanish away with as much disregard for non-progressive politicians as possible.
Kirk said:
“All the pro Space Force arguments I’ve seen lay out reasons why they believe certain space-related capabilities should be taken away from (primarily) the Air Force and given to a newly created organization.”
Yes, they do, because they no longer believe that the Air Staff can cut its own agency costs out of their actions in regards the MilSpace budgets.
And Kirk said:
“…this new organization will not have control over any offensive weapons and will never place their personal in harm’s way — the two critical, defining characteristics of any armed force.”
No.
First, the weapons used are irrelevant to these discussions. The reasons they are used, in this case to preserve the MilSpace “force multipliers” that help make the US Armed Forces the strongest in the world, are what are important. Not only will many of these weapons be defensive, the first priorities will be to disperse functions among many more MilSpace assets, and make sure those can be replaced when they are disabled, whether by conflict or by simple mischance, as happens occasionally.
Second, the time when Space Force personnel will not be in harm’s way will be short. When the first decade of the Space Force has passed, a strategy of moving assets beyond the reach of potential opponents’s will begin to turn up short. This is because our opponents will operate far enough from Earth that moving beyond them will stretch speed-of-light communications from Earth so far that Space Force operators on Earth cannot do their work competently. Thus, they will have begin to move into Space themselves to stay close enough to their assets that their command/sensor data links are timely enough. Moving into Space will put them at risk, just as the assets they operate will be at risk. They will soon have to be escorted, by secondary and tertiary assets, operated by yet more Space Force personnel. The idea that there will be a fine distinction between offensive and defensive weapons at this point is ridiculous.
The idea that “if you ain’t a shootin’, you ain’t a fightin’ ” will become as useless as the scorn that ancient Greek poets used to heap on archers that only shot arrows from a distance, instead of closing with the enemy with a sword in hand, side-by-side with the armored hoplites.
It’s fine, as an academic exercise, to plan for the organization of forward deployed, spaceborne military operators, but it seems rather premature to create such an organization when official plans have us a decade from now sending a handful of astronauts to lunar NRHO once a year for a few weeks at a time.
Kirk said:
“…but it seems rather premature to create such an organization when official plans have us a decade from now sending a handful of astronauts to lunar NRHO once a year for a few weeks at a time.”
In a time when Congress will support no sooner activity from *NASA* than that, it is even more necessary to get an organization for military spaceflight that will ameliorate the pre-industrial resource allocation patterns of Congress sufficiently to move faster than NASA will ever be allowed to do. That is ultimately what Space Force is needed for, and the resistance to it in Congress will coalesce around the fact that Space Force will be pushing timescales that are less politically profitable for Congress than they have been used to with NASA, and with AF and NRO battlestar robots.
Kirk asked: “Why should this new organization (if one is even required, and the problem can’t be solve via the much simpler creation of a unified command) not be a DOD sub-agency along the lines of the NSA, NGA, NRO, or MDA?”
I think that we should look at this in a similar way as we investigated whether the Air Force should be separated from the Army branch. If we are not ready, then it may be premature to do so. On the other hand, could a separate branch do sufficiently better at protecting our assets than a distributed system or a sub-agency? It may or may not be worth an extra cost for the added protection.
The assets that the proposed Space Force are supposed to protect are not humans on future space stations but are communication, weather, and observation satellites as well as other orbital and non-orbital assets. Future human habitats may need protection, too, and maybe that is when a separate Space Force is more appropriate.
Because I do not have answers to such questions, I am rather ambivalent on the topic. There is clearly a problem, and some solutions seem clear, but the overall organizational solution is not as clear.