Space Force: All Your Questions Answered About Trump’s New Military Branch Proposal
Last Thursday, Mike Pence announced Donald Trump’s new Space Force proposal in which a brand new military branch would be created so that the United States is able to fight and win wars way out in space, but just what does this proposal entail and what exactly is Space Force meant to be?
The United States Space Force is slated to be a new branch of the military that Trump would like to see operational by 2020, and would be the equal of other branches of the military like the Marines and Air Force. While Congress would still need to approve Space Force as a shiny new addition to the might of America’s military machine, The Guardian reports that Trump is still perfectly within his rights to march forward with his plans of preparation, despite any objections.
If approved by Congress in the end, Space Force would be the newest branch of the military since the Air Force came into being after World War II. Space Operations Force are reported to be an “elite group of war fighters specializing in the domain of space,” and Mike Pence has said that the White House plans to create a Space Development Agency and United States Space Command, with the government eventually creating a post for an assistant secretary of defense for space.
If you’re wondering why Donald Trump and Mike Pence are calling for a Space Force, it is because they feel there is a very real and substantial threat from countries like China and Russia, who could certainly create weapons that would destroy satellites and other infrastructure out in space.
This is not out of the realm of possibility as China annihilated one of their own satellites back in 2007 to test the might of their weapons. Russia, also, has developed a special missile that is fully capable of tracking satellites out in space and destroying them.
However, despite these threats, critics like Bernie Sanders believe that the White House should be focusing more on what is actually happening here on Earth, and taking into account the lack of health care in the U.S. before they start concentrating on space.
“Maybe, just maybe, we should make sure our people are not dying because they lack health insurance before we start spending billions to militarize outer space.”
Vice President Mike Pence said the administration is already working with leaders in Congress to include funding in next year's budget for Space Forcehttps://t.co/Rjzn7ywFex
— POLITICO (@politico) August 10, 2018
If you’re wondering how much the new Space Force proposal would cost, this is still unclear as the Pentagon has not yet come up with a figure. Congress would have to approve the funding for this new military branch, and while there is plenty of support for the proposal there are also plenty who disapprove of it.
So while Space Force is still a very new idea, with Donald Trump and Mike Pence fully behind it, it is a proposal which may actually come to fruition one day if enough members of Congress end up supporting it.
