President’s Space Force struggles to gain warp speed

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump wants a Space Force, a new military service he contends is needed to ensure American dominance in space. But the idea is gaining little traction at the Pentagon, where the president’s defense chief, Jim Mattis, argues it would add burdensome bureaucracy and unwanted costs.

The Pentagon acknowledges a need to revamp its approach to defending U.S. economic and security interests in space, and it is moving in that direction.

The administration plans to announce next week the results of a Pentagon study that is expected to call for creating a new military command — U.S. Space Command — to consolidate space warfighting forces and making other organizational changes short of establishing a separate service, which only Congress can do. Any legislative proposal to create a separate service would probably not be put on the table until next year.

Mattis, who said before Trump’s “Space Force” announcement in June that he opposes creating a new branch of the military for space, said afterward that this would require “a lot of detailed planning.”

Mattis is allied on this with key Republicans on Capitol Hill including Sen. James Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who opposes a separate Space Force but is open to creating a Space Command. The command would coordinate the use of space forces of existing services, such as those that operate military satellites, but would not be a separate service.

Mattis’s chief spokeswoman, Dana W. White, said Friday he believes that consolidating space functions will “ensure we move at the speed of relevancy. Space is a joint warfighting domain that the U.S. must dominate.”