Pence floats a new space race
Plans call for military Space Force to ‘prepare for the next battlefield’
As more and more countries finally develop the capability to leave Earth’s atmosphere, Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday the United States needs to “prepare for the next battlefield”: space.
“Not all of (these countries) share our commitment to freedom, to private property and the rule of law,” Pence said during a Thursday news conference at the Pentagon that was livestreamed. “So as we continue to carry American leadership in space, so also will we carry America’s commitment to freedom into this new frontier.”
Shortly after Pence’s speech, Secretary of Defense James Mattis delivered a plan to Congress to develop the country’s first new military branch in 70 years: the U.S. Space Force.
“This report reviews the national security space activities within the Department of Defense, and it identifies concrete steps that our administration will take to lay the foundation for a new Department of the Space Force,” Pence
said.
It’s unclear what form the Space Force would take or how much it would cost.
Congress must authorize the creation of a new military branch, but Pence seemed confident Thursday that it would do so by 2020. He added that President Donald Trump would ask for funding authorization next February.
After Pence’s speech, Trump exuberantly tweeted “Space Force all the way!”
Idea gets mixed response
But the idea was met with mixed response from political leaders.
U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, RTexas, told Fox Business Network on Wednesday that a Space Force was a necessity.
“I don’t think we can afford not to do this,” Gohmert said. “Since I was a little kid in the ’60s, it appeared clear to me that, despite movies like ‘Alien’ where corporations owned space, I thought, ‘We can’t allow corporations to own space.’ ”
The government needs to control space, he added “because whoever controls space can control planet Earth.”
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, had a different take on the matter, however. On Thursday, he tweeted his frustration with the idea, calling it “silly and dangerous.”
Pence “just announced a new military branch — a ‘Space Force,’ because no R(epublican) is willing to tell (the president) it’s a dumb idea,” he said. “Although ‘Space Force’ won’t happen, it’s dangerous to have a leader who cannot be talked out of crazy ideas.”
If approved, the Space Force would be the first new military service created since the Air Force in 1947. But a military operation dedicated to space is not a new idea.
Just last year, some Congressional members proposed the creation of a “Space Corps” within the Air Force. But the Pentagon — including Mattis — opposed the idea, and, ultimately, it was stymied.
By comparison, Trump’s plan would create a whole new branch, with a group of elite warfighters, led by an “assistant secretary of defense for space” — a civilian position that would report to the Secretary of Defense.
A new battlefield
Trump directed the Department of Defense “to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces” just seven weeks ago.
But Congress will need to debate whether the space force should be an independent branch or be controlled by the Air Force, U.S. Rep John Culberson, R-Houston, said in a statement.
“America must not surrender the high ground of outer space to any other nation in the 21st century and beyond,” he said. “It is essential that America protect our vital telecommunications infrastructure in outer space.”
During his Thursday news conference, Pence said there are “growing security threats emerging in space” that America needs to be prepared for.
Those threats, he added, come largely from China and Russia, which are, for example, developing hypersonic missiles, technologies to track and destroy satellites, and “an airborne laser to disrupt our space-based system.”
“Recently, our adversaries have been working to bring new weapons of war into space itself,” Pence added. “And just as we’ve done in ages past, the United States of America ... will meet the emerging threats on this new battlefield with American ingenuity and strength to defend our nation, protect our people, and carry the cause of liberty and peace into the next great American frontier.”
China barred from station
Russia has been a U.S. ally in low Earth orbit — where the International Space Station flies — for 20 years. The two nations worked together to build the space station, and the Russians have been transporting U.S. astronauts to the space station since 2011, when the space shuttle program was shuttered.
China, on the other hand, is barred from the station. In 2011, longtime Chinese government critic U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, RVa., spearheaded a move prohibiting the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA from collaborating with China on any scientific activities. The prohibition was dropped into a Congressional spending bill that year. It has since become known as the Wolf Amendment.
“As President Trump has said, in his words, ‘It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space,’ ” Pence said. “And so we will.”