VP Pence Lays Out Trump's Vision For Establishing a US Space Force (nbcnews.com)

Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday laid out details for President Donald Trump's proposed new branch of the U.S. military responsible for protecting national security in outer space. From a report: In a speech at the Pentagon, Pence said the new Space Force would be established by 2020. "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. And so we will," Pence said. "Space is, in his words, a war-fighting domain just like land and air and sea." He added, "History proves that peace only comes through strength, and in the realm of outer space, the United States Space Force will be that strength in the years ahead." The Space Force would ultimately become the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces and would be equal to the other five, Pence said. The Department of Defense has prepared a report laying out the phases of creating the new branch, which will ultimately have to be reviewed and approved by Congress.

Comments

BUY SPACEX

[Spy Handler]

Elon is gonna become the biggest defense contractor on earth

Re:BUY SPACEX

[Daetrin]

Don't you mean the biggest defense contractor _off_ earth?

What about the deep see force.

[fish_in_the_c]

We should have military dominance of the deep sea as well. I mean almost NO one can go there. We need to establish a base on the moon and a colony on mars for 'security'. After all, all that nothing is a real threat.

Re:What about the deep see force.

[apoc.famine]

Want to know how I can tell you haven't had many repeat sexual partners....?

Re:What about the deep see force.

[Insanity Defense]

1984 - "Excess" productivity transferred to continuous war so the "lower classes" can be kept poor and down trodden rather than getting an increased share in worldly goods. Nationalism cranked up to keep them accepting their poverty from the resulting continuous war.

It wasn't ALL Big Brother.

You idiots.

[Rick Schumann]

Know what will happen because of this? Every other nation on the planet that has a space program will now be compelled to do the same. Likely won't be long before there are nuclear warheads in orbit from one country or another. So much for peaceful space exploration. More fucking Dominionist shit from Pence and the Trump administration. I hope Congress votes it down.

Re: You idiots.

[Rick Schumann]

This isn't a video game.

Re: You idiots.

[Rick Schumann]

Also who wants to live in a world that seems to be locked into a continual cycle of war or threat of war? Would be nice if we'd evolve past this bullshit.

Re: You idiots.

[Areyoukiddingme]

Dominionist is the wrong term, more like apocalyptic.

You seem to be unaware of what Dominionists want. A significant percentage of Dominionists interpret Biblical version, in particular Revelations, to mean that it is their duty to intentionally induce an apocalypse in order to precipitate the Second Coming of Christ. They're the Dominionists who grew out of Pentecostalism, and sometimes self-identify as adherents of "Kingdom Now" theology. Their goal is a global Christian theocracy, and they think the sole path that gets them what they want is a global holocaust, because they interpret Revelations as prophecy, and believe the prophecy demands it. These people are properly called Dominionists because they self-identify as such, in writing.

Re:You idiots.

[vux984]

It's worse than that. China has already demonstrated they can and will shoot down an orbiting satellite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And the only take aways anyone with half a brain would have are:

a) a space based weapons platform would be a sitting duck.

b) the orbital debris from any sustained orbital conflict will make earths orbit completely inhospitable for decades. A bit of scrap the size of a pencil eraser moving at 8 km/s is going to do a number on anything in its way.

You can't "dominate" orbital space the way you can dominate air or land. All you can do is render it completely inhospitable for everyone.

Re: You idiots.

[jythie]

This was only true when conquest was cheaper than trade. This pretty much ended with the late industrial revolution, which is why today you only really see war of conquest in the most impoverished regions.

Why not use the USAF?

[b0s0z0ku]

Why not use the USAF instead of creating another parallel bureaucracy? Better yet, why not merge all of the branches (cut out the Coast Guard and put it back under DoT control) and share as much bureaucracy as possible?

It's not like we don't have domestic issues (crumbling roads, health care, education, etc) to spend money on. Cut taxes, cut the debt, or start spending money on things that benefit people other than military contractors.

Re:Why not use the USAF?

[Anonymous Coward]

What, then they couldn't ask for a 20% increase in defense spending. This is like Bush creating DHS. Creating new agencies or military branches are a great way to funnel cash to your buds, not the previous guy's buds. There is a good argument that there is already too much duplication among the existing branches.

There is also the issue that most of the modern problems in international relations cannot be solved by killing people better. Imagine a world where schools, hospitals, and economic development were the lead in American influence in the world instead of bullets and bombs.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What about the uniforms?

[mmmVenison]

Will there be redshirts? Oh my god I hope there are Redshirts.

Mexico?

[ZipprHead]

Is Mexico going to pay for this too?

Big beautiful rockets...

[Drethon]

We'll have big beautiful rockets! And the Martians will pay for them.! And they will be flown by the most elite astronauts, but the true elites are all of you right here who voted for me! And...cough...sputter

Sorry, can't keep that up.

Re:Yeah, that's one smart move

[OrangeTide]

The US doesn't even have the rockets to launch anything like a nuke. Russia has man rated rockets to launch them.

Never in history has anyone taken a manned rocket to detonate a nuclear warhead. I can't say that it was never on the drawing board, but it seems like a bonehead idea.

The US's ICBMs fly up to around 1100 km before reentering to strike their targets. That's just above the maximum altitude of the old Shuttle Orbiter, and well beyond the typical operational altitude for most Shuttle missions (320 km).

Can Russia fly higher? probably. But is that a requirement for nukes in space? clearly not. In fact the highest test explosion was at 540 km, and yet about half of the known tests were under 100 km.

Re:"History proves that peace only comes through s

[ShanghaiBill]

Germany was quite peaceful in 1939, thanks to its strong military and authoritarian government.

Yet Germany lost the subsequent war.

The biggest "winner" of both world wars was the country that had done the least to prepare for them: The United States of America.

After WW2, America switched to much higher military spending, and higher levels of preparation. Results: Korea - tie, Vietnam - lost, Afghanistan - lost, Iraq - lost.

The problem with high military spending, is that it makes it easy to initiate stupid wars.

This, so much This.

[rsilvergun]

Trump is more than a bit of a clown, but Pence scares me. He actually believes the crap he spouts. If the media was doing it's job his radical religious beliefs would have been front and center during the campaign. If he had his way we'd go back the the 50s with mandatory prayer in schools (yes, that was a thing until a SCOTUS decision shut it down).

Re:money to burn

[PopeRatzo]

so this isn't a huge expansion of the defense budget, more a realignment of existing expenditures.

Horseshit. There's already been a $120 billion increase in the defense budget this year, and the DoD has already requested another $12 billion just to begin the process of realignment. Have you ever heard of an additional government agency that didn't cost more money? How much do you think it cost just to put on Pence's little ceremony today announcing the Space Force? How much will the grand military parade Trump is planning for November cost taxpayers (and China)?

It's main proposed purpose is to protect the US (and it's allies) from space based attacks which are not primarily of a physical nature but more technological.

OK, so we're going to be protected from the Klingon empire. Noted.

It's not like this is way out there either as China has already made claims about some of their satellite based 'defensive' capabilities.

You know that additional $120 billion that we're spending on the military this year? It's almost entirely borrowed from China. Goddamn, man, do you not see the folly of going into debt to the country so you can build defenses against that country?