Do we need another military branch?

mscard88

mscard88

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Space Command, what ya thinking? Seems the Air Force is handling it ok, but the Pres and others want another military branch. Thoughts?
 
I tend to agree with you about the AF handling it ok. Who are the "others"?

I can see this getting political...
 
Makes sense to me, lots of stuff up there, most major nukes end up up there for a little bit, GPS, etc.


Besides that’s where the future is going to be going, might as well get a stronghold now, rather we do then china or something.



That said I think we really need to downsize the army, we don’t need boots on the ground on every continent, we don’t need that to make our power felt
 
I’m all for it, as long as an old fart like me can enlist. I always wanted to be a space cadet.
 
Besides why should the Air Force have space anyway? In Star Trek, it was obviously a Navy operation given the rank structure and all.
 
SkyDog58 said:
Besides why should the Air Force have space anyway? In Star Trek, it was obviously a Navy operation given the rank structure and all.
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But the rank structure in Star Wars seems mixed. They had admirals, but wasn’t Han a general?

I think we should adopt a whole new set of ranks for the space corps. Pawn, Knight, rook, ....
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I tend to agree with you about the AF handling it ok. Who are the "others"?

I can see this getting political...
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Oh it's already political. Others include The President, Senators, etc, and I'm sure the other branches would love to take away some or all of it from the AF.
 
The question is: "What current or future need is not being met at this time?"

Unless someone can come up with a real justification for another military branch, there is less than zero reason to add another parallel bureaucracy.
 
Currently, our military budget is only as large as the next 10 largest military budgets combined. We need to spend more than the entire rest of the world, and this is a good way to move in that direction.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Currently, our military budget is only as large as the next 10 largest military budgets combined. We need to spend more than the entire rest of the world, and this is a good way to move in that direction.
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Indeed

We should have a non world police policy

But if we put boots on the ground, we should own it, as in make it another territory/state. With how screwed Iraq is after we “helped” them, we should just go all in and make it part of the US, send over senitors, Chicago PD, Starbucks and all.

Otherwise we don’t need all the nonsense, if another country decided to get froggy just level it with air and navy and send in special forces to hunt down and “fix” the leaders.
 
Half Fast said:
But the rank structure in Star Wars seems mixed. They had admirals, but wasn’t Han a general?

I think we should adopt a whole new set of ranks for the space corps. Pawn, Knight, rook, ....
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I don’t think these guys are gonna go for Queen
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I tend to agree with you about the AF handling it ok.
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AF was indeed doing a great job. But then we were bought out by FedEx and they really screwed us up.

Took a great company and turned it into a very nasty bureaucracy.

I wouldn't want them running anything now!!!
 
mscard88 said:
Space Command, what ya thinking? Seems the Air Force is handling it ok, but the Pres and others want another military branch. Thoughts?
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I don't often agree with our current president, but this is one case where I do.

Imagine it's D-Day...6 June 1944, and there are thousands of US Navy boats and ships off the Normandy coast. They're all commanded by Army officers.

That's the situation we have in space, today. If you look at the photos of the Air Force officers in command of space operations, the overwhelming majority of them are wearing wings. They're pilots, not space professionals. There's nothing about pilot training or operational flying that remotely prepares someone for the realities of space operations or space combat. These men and women are put in charge of space operations as "career broadening"... i.e., a job they can occupy while waiting to get back into the cockpit or to command an aircraft operation. In other words, it's not about putting the most-qualified persons in charge, it's about finding jobs for out-of-work pilots.

The Air Force has a pilot retention problem, but it's also had a long-term problem retaining the engineers important for space system development and operations. They're second-class citizens; their promotion prospects are hazy because if two people are up for a space-system job, the pilot is going to get it regardless of personal qualifications.

Saw that myself, just before getting out of the Air Force in the '80s. We were operating early-warning satellites. Our squadron commander was a non-pilot engineer, who spent his entire career developing missiles and spacecraft. He was replaced by a man who had a degree in Animal Husbandry. He had zero technical understanding of how things worked in space. But he'd flown F-51s in Korea!

Since the Air Force is so airplane-centric, space gets the aftmost mammary gland when it comes to budgets. When the F-35 runs into technical issues, it's easy enough to slide funds from space to pay for it.

The US is critically reliant on space. The Vice President referenced recent Chinese and Russian efforts in space relative to space control. Before I retired, I had access to the same intelligence data. We need major, MAJOR upgrades to support space system survivability, but the Air Force refuses to allocate resources from aircraft to space programs.

So yes, there needs to be separate Space Force.

Ron Wanttaja
 
I’d have to see the uniform before signing on.
 
frfly172 said:
I’d have to see the uniform before signing on.
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(TL; DR - career AF space guy thinks issue is complicated and doesn't have an opinion either way)

I spent about 30 years involved in Air Force space system acquisition and operations, and also had close insight to what is going on in the other services and agencies. Have not been that close to it the last five years, but have been watching this debate in other forums since it came up earlier this year.

First, the others are Army, Navy, DARPA, MDA, DISA, and the intel community. All currently or in the past have flown their own spacecraft. Some, like DISA, advocate for the systems and secure the funding, and use the AF as their agent to acquire and operate.

Second, while the Army and Navy may use space assets, they are in supporting roles to their main role such as helping the Navy defend our nation at sea. The Air Force, and only the AF, has the role to protect our nation in space.

Third, "space" in this context is much more that spacecraft. It includes ground support facilities, command and control infrastructure, space-related R&D, and so forth.

The advocates of a separate force say that as long as defending the nation in space is part of the AF, space will take a back seat to aircraft, and also point out what Neal De Grasse Tyson said in the CNN clip...that it is a natural evolution just like when the Army Air Corps evolved into the USAF. Advocates also say there is duplication in what the AF and the other services and agencies do.

Detractors will point out, as some above have already, that a new service will just create more bureaucracy without really solving a problem, and the debate about what systems get built will always be at the DoD level anyway and will always be among ground, air, sea, and space, regardless of which service advocates for it.

Oh, and there's this new buzzword getting all the attention (and a lot of money)... cyber.

All that being said, I haven't formed an opinion one way or the other; I can see both sides. For years "space" and "air" and ICBMs co-existed just fine in the AF. Then Gen McPeak came along and smashed ICBMs into space and did long-lasting harm IMO, both to careers and the mission. Leather jackets and nomex flight suits for people who sit in air conditioned rooms all day. Give me a break.
 
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They want it to double the USAF budget.

Spin it off, cut USAF budget in half, both get to immediately start whining thru can’t afford to do their missions.

It’s nothing more than a stock spilt where you go another trillion or ten in debt.
 
wanttaja said:
I
So yes, there needs to be separate Space Force.
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So you’re saying the mega-pilots can’t figure out how to manage the mission they KNOW (F-35) and their mismanagement of that is a reason to make a new bureaucracy that will bother to learn things?

Efff that. Starve it to death until it learns how to set priorities correctly and becomes willing to change and learn something to accomplish the mission it signed up for, even fought and begged for.
 
“Let’s reward incompetent debt spending by doing more of it! Let’s add another column of massive waste to the negative side of the balance sheet!”

WTF. Seriously.
 
denverpilot said:
So you’re saying the mega-pilots can’t figure out how to manage the mission they KNOW (F-35) and their mismanagement of that is a reason to make a new bureaucracy that will bother to learn things?
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No, I'd advocating putting the management and operation of space systems into the hands of people who know how to build and operate space systems. If our relationship with China ever expands beyond harsh words, our ability to command and communicate with our forces will be gone, as will our capability to see what is happening beyond our own borders.

And I'm not using "beyond harsh words" as a euphemism for a shooting war. If the Chinese start destroying the US's on-orbit assets, the US won't respond with military action. In any case, any threat of a shooting war will be meaningless as we won't be able to issue orders or know where the targets are.

Last major space program I worked, we had a procession of three military officers as program managers (each served 18 months). All were pilots. None with space experience. They worked their 18 month hitches and went back to the cockpit...what experience they'd gained wasted, as far as space was concerned.

All were advised by a civilian SETA (Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance) contractor; an engineer experienced with space contracting and development who advised the O4s and O5s and stayed through the entire period of the program. I'm saying get rid of the pilots and hand the oak leaves to the SETA contractor.

Or...for that matter, eliminate or greatly reduce the military trappings. The military structure exists a framework to throw people into life-threatening combat situations. Space Command won't see those. Will need some aspects of a military structure in the event of shoot-back systems for satellite defense and other active systems.

Ron Wanttaja
 
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