Note: This was written 2 years ago, it’s not too late to implement. The numbers are old, but just add a couple of trillion to this years numbers, thanks to COVID.
I will be honest with you, when President Trump and Vice President Pence began talking about a new military branch they wanted to call Space Force, I started laughing. Loudly. My first visions were of Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire’s beginnings, or even the Mobile Infantry fighting galactic bugs around the universe. Once my laughter subsided, I started thinking a little more about a separate but co-equal branch of the Department of Defense whose sole purpose was space defense, and then it dawned on me: we don’t really need a brand new, shiny Imperial Galactic Navy. All we need is the Colonial Marines (key gratuitous Aliens reference and some killer weapons).
I’m kidding about the weapons, Sulacos, and xenomorphs. But I’m serious about something else: the United States Space Corps. You may believe this is just as absurd, but stay with me for a few minutes.
First, a complete and separate military branch with a defense mission in space is too much during these times of soaring national debt and rising personnel costs in the DoD. According to Bloomberg Business News, the US budget deficit for the current fiscal year has already reached $898B. On top of that, the personnel budget alone for the DoD sits at $272.7B or 42% of the entire DoD defense budget for FY2018, according to RealClear Defense. From a completely fiscal standpoint, asking to carve out more money for an entirely new branch of the DoD is an absurd request until we can get all government spending under control. The personnel costs alone would be enough for Congress to say no.
Another reason we don’t need a Space Force is actually the biggest reason we should hold off and get spending under control: the government acquisition process is completely broken. The best and most prominent example of this is the F-35. This government boondoggle in the end will cost taxpayers over $400B for roughly 2,500 aircraft for all branches and has taken over 20 years to reach initial operating capability (IOC). This, by any stretch of the imagination, is completely absurd. By comparison, the F-22 took 19 years from the inception of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) in 1986 until it’s IOC in 2005, and cost the taxpayers $64.5B for 187 airframes. In the end, the acquisition of just 2 airframes for the entire Department of Defense has taken since 1986 and cost over $460B. This begs the question: what will the acquisition process look like with a brand new military branch trying to meet the defense needs of the entire country and 5 other military branches, while simultaneously trying to meet and defend against new and even faster threats emerging and evolving? Abysmal to put it nicely, and the process needs to be cut to less than 5 to 10 years if we want any hope of keeping up with our adversaries.
There is a better solution I think will meet the needs of the Department of Defense, meet the ever changing threats posed by our adversaries from earth in space, and begin to tamp down the consistently rising federal budget. I call it Space Corps. Ok, I can’t take the credit, but a bipartisan pair of Congressman from Tennessee and Alabama can. According to Popular Mechanics, back in 2017, Reps Mike Rogers and Jim Cooper, both members of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, proposed establishing a Space Corps as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2019. It would have been established on January 1, 2019, but never made it into the final John S. McCain 2019 NDAA. Instead, Trump seems to have commandeered the idea to try and push for a new Space Force. I believe that Rogers and Cooper were actually on to something.
As they told Popular Mechanics, “There is bipartisan acknowledgement that the strategic advantages we derive from our national security space systems are eroding. We are convinced that the Department of Defense is unable to take the measures necessary to address these challenges effectively and decisively, or even recognize the nature and scale of its problems.” They are exactly right. Our biggest threats externally are China and Russia who have both developed maneuverable satellites which have demonstrated their capability to move within close proximity to other satellites, for reasons both say are non-hostile, but could permit the disabling of other’s capabilities. The Russian Kosmos series of satellites have even been known to break off smaller sub-satellites whose missions are yet to be identified. The Russians also never registered these satellites with the UN before launching them, for reasons they will also not disclose. This capability by oure biggest adversaries could present strategic problems when it comes to war-fighting capability, especially when we think about the sat-comm and GPS systems required for most of our military technology to function in the battle space.
With a Space Corps under the Department of the Air Force, just like the Marine Corps falls under the Navy in an expeditionary capacity, we meet some basic fundamental tenets of our current national defense needs. We can have a branch of the military focused solely on the threats in space and the defense of our vital national interests there, without having to bloat the DoD and add a sixth side to the five-sided rubber room. The administrative functions of the Space Corps would fall to the USAF, preventing unnecessary duplication of efforts we see in the other branches. All the space agencies spread throughout the DoD can now be integrated into one branch that serves them all and the country, providing much needed “cap-space” for systems development. NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will still retain the job of exploration, development and experimentation, while simultaneously working with the DoD and commercial entities to create ever better and advanced launch systems and deep space exploration missions.
For this to come to fruition though, the DoD and Congress will need to come together and buckle down. Fixing the acquisition process needs to be priority number one. Without a drastically streamlined process that can meet the ever-changing and fast-paced requirements of space, we will be behind, and possibly blinded if or when wartime truly hits. We must focus the mission and prevent over extension of Space Corps’ main mission: national defense in space. We will also need to lead turn the many international agreements as they pertain to space defense. This could be the long pole in the tent if we don’t start negotiating now. Lastly, the fiefdoms that reside deep within the Pentagon will have to be destroyed in order to work jointly and provide this vital capability to the warfighter and the country. In the end, I believe a Space Corps is just the better option. The Death Star will have to wait.
Reality Politics 