USA TODAY International Edition
President signs order to launch Space Force
Trump defies skeptics of new military branch
WASHINGTON – The Space Force moved closer to liftoff Tuesday after President Donald Trump signed a directive to create another branch of the military whose mission would be to monitor the heavens and protect the USA from attack.
During a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump said he views the new military branch as part of his responsibility to protect the nation.
“I was put here for security, whether it’s Space Force, which I’m doing today, or whether it’s borders,” the president said.
Money for the program will be included in the administration’s proposed budget for 2020 that will come out next month, the White House said Tuesday morning. That seed money is likely to be less than $100 million.
Eventually, an undersecretary of defense for space would be named, and the program – which would start as a division of the U.S. Air Force – would become the sixth armed service, joining the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard.
The idea has been a hard sell in Congress, where concerns about cost and redundancy stymied efforts to create another military branch.
The Air Force, which oversees the Space Command, also initially resisted the branch, saying it was unnecessary and bureaucratic. In September, a memo from Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson placed the five-year cost of establishing the new branch at about $13 billion.
The White House expects the cost to be far less. The Pentagon would consolidate functions “to minimize duplication of effort and eliminate bureaucratic inefficiencies,” Trump’s directive says.
The branch would include uniformed and civilian workers supporting space operations for the military, the White House said.
The creation of a Space Force would happen over several phases and could take years to complete.
But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a political ally of Trump, wasted little time in trying to capitalize on the announcement.
“Today, I am formally sending a request to @realDonaldTrump to place the headquarters for the Space Force Combatant Command here in Florida @NASAKennedy in Cape Canaveral,” DeSantis tweeted. “This is part of Florida’s history and is a logical fit for our state.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., made a similar pitch in December.
Lawmakers ultimately will determine the fate of the proposed force, because they must decide whether to authorize the creation of a military branch and whether to approve money for the plan.
Former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said starting a new military branch is a bad idea.
“The ‘Space Force’ as a separate military service entity would still compete with all the other defense-related priorities for resources and leadership attention,” said O’Keefe, a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “There’s no reason to believe that space-related programs would fare any better than they do today under the U.S. Air Force recognizance.”