Trump sounds serious about Space Force
WASHINGTON — For President Donald Trump, space may not be the final frontier, but the next one.
On Tuesday, as he awarded the U.S. Military Academy football team the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, in recognition of West Point’s victories against the other service academies, Trump noted that the military is currently divided into five branches.
“We’re actually thinking of a sixth and that would be the Space Force,” the president told assembled guests in the Rose Garden.
“Does that make sense — the Space Force … because we’re getting very big in space both militarily and for other reasons, and we are seriously thinking of the Space Force.”
In March, at a visit to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego, the president made similar remarks in what was taken as an offhanded suggestion. But since then, space appears to have caught his fancy.
During a campaign speech in Michigan on Saturday night, Trump broke off from a standard paean about the accomplishments of past Americans to conflate NASA and the private organizations that are using federal facilities for their private space developments.
“By the way, excuse me, do you see how our space program is going?” he asked. “A little different, and we are letting those rich guys that like rockets — go ahead, use our property, pay us some rent, go ahead. You can use Cape Canaveral.” President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony Tuesday to present the Commander-InChief trophy to the Army West Point Black Knights football team in the Rose Garden. When he wasn’t talking about the team, he was talking about space.
He recounted the “amazing” instance in February when two reusable boosters returned to Cape Canaveral after lifting a SpaceX rocket into space.
“We have reinvigorated our space program to a level that nobody thought possible in this short period of time. NASA is back, and Mars is waiting for us, you know that,” he said Saturday. Both then and on Tuesday, Trump quickly segued to praise for the military.
Trump’s conversations reflect a serious concern for the military and national security: the use of space as a staging area for world conflict. Russia and China, both adversaries, have developed missile and satellite technologies that U.S. officials believe could threaten American assets.
Satellites in space are central not just to domestic communications but to any military action in the future.