WakeForestRanger
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In fact, the military has conducted operations in space for a long time, says Terry Virts, former commander of the International Space Station and a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force.
For Virts, the debate is "not advocating for somehow militarizing space. That happened 50 years ago," he tells Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd. "Every nation on Earth that has a significant military has some space component to it. What I'm advocating for is really making it more efficient and a more effective way to organize the military."
Most of the country's military operations in space are handled by the U.S. Air Force Space Command, a division of the Air Force that employs about 36,000 people at more than 130 sites around the world. One of the Space Command's main priorities is to operate GPS, weather and communication satellites, Virts says.
"A big part of what Space Command does is called space situational awareness," he says. "They track objects in space and keep track of what other countries are doing in space. There's a lot of what happens in space that directly affects combat operations in the Army or Air Force or Navy."
I'm just curious why we need a separate branch of the military instead of expanding the mission within the Air Force command.
We don’t. The Air Force was handling this mission just fine.
I'm just curious why we need a separate branch of the military instead of expanding the mission within the Air Force command.
We don’t. The Air Force was handling this mission just fine.
Is it? How do you know? What metrics and authority do you have to support this assertion?
Other than the pathological TDS, I don't understand the ridicule of the President in this thread. Beyond the traditional domains of Land, Sea and Air, the evolving domains of Cyber and Space are a big deal. If you don't think dominance in Space is important right now, what happens if an adversary, near peer or otherwise, takes out your communications and Global Positioning satellites, severely degrading your navigation and comms capabilities? What if they are able to destroy ICBMs and SLBMs from space, thereby eliminating our nuclear deterrent capabilities, etc., etc.
Why was the Air Force created in 1947? Wasn't the Army handling that mission just fine, winning World War 2 in multiple theaters of operation and all? Might it be possible that a military branch focused on a single, critical domain (Space) could be advantageous over lumping that responsibility on a branch of the military, the Air Force, that is already tasked with handling strategic air mobility, tactical air support, strategic bombing, land based ICBMs, air delivered nuclear weapons, etc.
There is plenty of stuff to fairly criticize the administration about, but this isn't it.
We definitely need a cyber-space branch in the department of defense, I'm not sure an actual space force is urgent.
Trump ended the cyberspace department
Seems like an overreaction. What "ridicule" are you talking about? People seem to saying they agree that there's a valid need, but don't agree that we need a huge expansion of government bureaucracy to meet that need.
Even your own post admits that existing branches of the military were already active and successful in the Air before the Air Force was established. Maybe we aren't at that point yet to start a Space Force.
I know you're a Trump guy, but this doesn't seem necessary to jump all over his detractors when we basically agree with him but want to do it within the existing budget and military bureaucracy.
Louis makes the point above.