The Space Force, Like Trump, Is a Consummately American Grift
In space, no one can hear you thank them for their service. In that sense, and probably no other, enlistees in the United States Space Force — an actual thing we Americans are doing now — will be making a big sacrifice.
On Thursday, Vice President Pence confirmed in an extremely live-tweeted speech that President Trump’s long-rumored Space Force will form by 2020 as the sixth independent branch of the U.S. armed forces. Veterans of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard will no doubt be excited to make another service the butt of their jokes.
Like most things America produces in 2018, the Space Force is merely a marketing concept for a futuristic product that, contrary to what Pence says, may or may not ever exist. Think Theranos, the now-disgraced Silicon Valley firm whose “Edison machines” were poor at blood-testing, but terrific at pumping billions out of investors — largely on the endorsements of their celebrated board members, including retired general James Mattis, who resigned from Theranos’ board only once he was tapped to be Trump’s secretary of defense. Mattis will now oversee the Space Force’s creation. Having already proven he can sell grunts and civilians alike on multiple indeterminate wars across the Asian landmass, he’s just the Don Draper for this job.
What, exactly, does one need to create an entire military branch?
The United States hasn’t added a service since the Air Force in 1947, and that wasn’t out of nowhere: It was built wholesale out of the Army Air Corps and by drawing officers from the other services — and by taking a hard look at the war America had just waged. By then, aircraft had been used by militaries in war for more than three decades.
But spacecraft? Not so much. We have managed for half a century to marshal missiles that travel through space on the way to earthly impacts, as well as satellites that gather intelligence, wage “electronic warfare” and coordinate military action in myriad ways. These assets are spread throughout the Air Force, Navy, U.S. combatant commands, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and several other agencies. The least bad argument for creating a Space Force is that it would somehow unify all these efforts.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/what-is-space-force-709857/
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