Opinion | Donald Trump’s plan for new Space Force is wrong response to US concerns about China and Russia
US war planners would have the most to lose from the proliferation of counterspace weapons in arsenals controlled by Beijing and Moscow
Like so many things, US President Donald Trump’s proposal to create a new branch of the American military – a Space Force – began as something of a joke. It was widely derided among the US national security cognoscenti until, like so many things, it snowballed into something with legs. Even if we still don’t know what exactly the proposed Space Force will be, it has turned into a cri de coeur for Trump and many of his supporters.
The United States won’t operate this new force any time soon, but Trump’s proposal has sparked a great debate on the merits of the idea. The facts should be apparent, but aren’t. First, the United States Air Force already covers space as one of its domains; a US Air Force Space Command already exists. Second, the bureaucratic overhead and ensuing red tape would likely, in the short term at least, prove deleterious to US efforts in space.
Watch: Trump vows to give US ‘dominance in space’
Third, if there’s an obvious short-term beneficiary of a Space Force, it’s the US defence industry, which would no doubt find itself inundated with new contracts for space-related military materiel. Fourth, sustained Space Force talk is likely to spur US adversaries, including China and Russia, to accelerate their own efforts to explore creative uses of space to gain an advantage in a future armed conflict.
This final point has been cited by some proponents of a dedicated US space branch. But there’s nothing about China and Russia that would require the United States to overhaul its military bureaucracy. American intelligence agencies are clear on the parallel and ongoing development of a range of weapons that make use of “space” – the vacuum outside the earth’s atmosphere, which hosts, among other things, US military satellites.
“We assess that, if a future conflict were to occur involving Russia or China, either country would justify attacks against US and allied satellites as necessary to offset any perceived US military advantage derived from military, civil or commercial space systems,” said a report published this year by the US director of national intelligence, Dan Coats.
“Of particular concern, Russia and China continue to launch ‘experimental’ satellites that conduct sophisticated on-orbit activities, at least some of which are intended to advance counterspace capabilities,” it continued.
Watch: Trump announces ‘Space Force’ to get ahead of China in space