Trump Directs Pentagon To Create Space Force Legislation for Congress (wsj.com)

President Donald Trump signed a directive on Tuesday that ordered the Department of Defense to create a Space Force as a sixth military branch. From a report: With a directive signed Tuesday, Mr. Trump was positioning the Space Force much as the Marine Corps fits into the Navy, officials said, with the result being lower costs and less bureaucracy. The plan would require congressional approval. Mr. Trump is to propose funding in his proposed 2020 budget, and spell out a goal of eventually establishing the Space Force as a separate military department, a senior administration official said. "Space, that's the next step and we have to be prepared," said Mr. Trump, who added that adversaries were training forces and developing technology. "I think we'll have great support from Congress."

The order Mr. Trump signed, Space Policy Directive 4, calls for a legislative proposal by the secretary of defense to establish a chief of staff of the Space Force within the Air Force. That officer would be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to an outline. There also be a new under secretary of defense for space to be appointed by the president. The proposal calls for the Space Force to organize, train and equip personnel to defend the U.S. in space, to provide independent military options for "joint and national leadership" and "enable the lethality and effectiveness of the joint force," according to the administration's outline.

Comments

Re:Maybe not a bad idea...

[Penguinisto]

Yes and no.

Any bureaucracy is going to spring forth from any new entity created within government. That much is a given.

However, the USAF can focus on everything in the atmosphere. Satellites (and let's not forget the two space shuttles the USAF has) can go to its own branch and not cause too much of an issue. With its own Chain, the Space Force can bypass the pilot-heavy-to-the-point-of-religion circle-jerk that Big Blue's chain of command has always been, and get its initiatives through without having to fight a metric shitload of "geez, can't we just buy a more expensive fighter instead?" officer corps.

As it stands now, the only way to get around that is to have the project be a Black one, where it avoids having to deal with all the bullshit politics found in the normal channels (see also those two space shuttles I mentioned earlier.) With its own branch, they can set themselves up to be more efficient towards their own initiatives... which has the hopeful happy side effect of helping to expand human entry into space (and if not, at least helping NASA out a bit more, considering the near-starvation budgeted political plaything that NASA has become.)

Incidentally, there is still that little treaty every superpower signed back in the 1960s that prohibits (physical) weaponization of space, so any new initiatives will have to have a reconnaissance role, or at least a veneer of peaceful human/scientific endeavor.