Star Wars? Trump proposes military space force

WASHINGTON: America should create its own separate military space force, President Donald Trump mentioned in an offhand remark that would change the course of US space policy.

But don’t expect Captain Kirk ordering phasers set on stun, Battlestar Galactica or ray guns blazing in orbit in the near future, space experts said. And some said a military space force may make it harder to keep Earth’s orbit a place of peace.

Saying his national security strategy “recognises that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea”, Trump said at a San Diego Marine Corps base that he’s considering “a space force” that would be the equivalent of the Air Force, Army and Navy.

Trump said at first he wasn’t serious when he floated the concept, but “then I said what a great idea, maybe we’ll have to do that”.

This is more about boosting reconnaissance and cyber security than fighting in orbit, said Sean O’Keefe, who was both Nasa administrator and Navy secretary under President George W. Bush.

“Trump’s own defence secretary and Air Force secretary argued vociferously against it when members of Congress pushed it last year,” O’Keefe said.

“You can emphasise more help for the military in space without going to the massive organisational change and expense,” he said.

“It could be a bureaucratic nightmare,” said O’Keefe, a professor at Syracuse University.

He said some people may argue that a space force would “compromise the sanctity of considering space to be off limits from warfare”.

Ever since the Space Age started with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, there has been a military and national security aspect to space, even though there are treaties and a United Nations committee that explicitly talk about keeping space a place of peace.

In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower established two separate space programmes – a civilian one that became Nasa, and a military one.

Nasa is much more public, but the military programme is just as big.