I don't completely disagree with the formation of Space Command, though I have always been puzzled as to why we needed a new branch (sort of - a "branchlet"). A new branch just seems needlessly inefficient and expensive.
Goddess knows that I don't agree with the current POTUS on many aspects, but I'm fully supportive of this one.
We're in the same place we were in the '20s and '30s..."Battleship Admirals" and "Infantry Generals" didn't understand how air power would change future warfare. It led to the creation of the Air Force in 1947, and the same sort of thing justifies the creation of Space Force today.
Knowing how to fly an aircraft has NOTHING to do with space operations. Yet if you look at the photos of the people in charge at Space Force, you see a curious thing...most of the commanders are pilots. All their experience, all their training, does not prepare them for space operations. What General Spaatz did over Germany in 1944 has nothing to do with gaining space superiority.
Two stories on that. When I was on active duty in 1976-1980, I was one of the on-duty operators for an early warning satellite. A number of pilots/navigators were assigned to us as a career-broadening assignment. These guys were bored out of their minds, and kept trying to get reassigned to a flying job. BTW, our branch head, the deputy squadron commander, and the squadron commander were all pilots. The squadron commander used to tell us stories about flying F-51s in Korea.
Had nothing to do with what we actually *did*, and he was legendarily clueless about the actual operations of the spacecraft. But he had wings, and, to the Air Force, that meant he could do anything. Gahh. And, of course, if two persons were in line to assume command, the pilot would get the job.
Second story was related to the Columbia disaster. There was a lot of idiocy making its way on the aviation social media back then, by pilots who did NOT understand how space works. "I would have slow-flied Columbia down to minimize the heat friction." You *can't slow-fly an orbiting vehicle, and the reentry heat isn't caused by friction. "They should have just flown up to the Space Station...it was only a few miles higher." Changing the orbit to that magnitude would require about as much fuel as the additional launch.
Now, of course, these were not (necessarily) Air Force pilots. But I'm sure there had been the same comments made.
So a separate Space Force was needed to give space operations some independence, to provide for space-saavy people to move up in rank rather than assigning the first Air Force pilot who needed a career broadening assignment.
I'll give a third example. I was loaned to the P-8 Poseidon project at one point, to help develop a new warfighting system. Thing were going OK, until the Navy decided they didn't NEED to put that capability on the P-8. They could just foward the data back to the CONUS and process it there.
How were they going to get the data back to the CONUS? By the same communications satellites that would be toast in the first six hours of a shooting war. The Navy just didn't understand that those assets would be the first targeted.
The main drawback to the current setup is that Space Force is not an separate service. There's no "Secretary of the Space Force," the SecAF does both jobs. As mentioned, it's similar to the Navy and Marine Corps relationship. How well does that work for the Marines? Note the Gyrenes are still flying Sea Cobra helicopters, a design tracing back to the Vietnam War. If the Navy was told to give up its F/A-18s in favor of A-4s, you'd have another mutiny on your hands. The Marines just soldier on.
Consider: If Space Force needs a new satellite, but the F-35 program needs modifications...who do you think will get the budget?
So, yes, we need Space Force as a separate service. It'll probably take another Billy Mitchell to get one, and you know what happened to him.....
Ron "Soap Box Off" Wanttaja
www.flyingmag.com
