VP Pence Lays Out Trump's Vision For Establishing a US Space Force (nbcnews.com) 528
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday laid out details for President Donald Trump's proposed new branch of the U.S. military responsible for protecting national security in outer space. From a report: In a speech at the Pentagon, Pence said the new Space Force would be established by 2020. "As President Trump has said, in his words, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space -- we must have American dominance in space. And so we will," Pence said. "Space is, in his words, a war-fighting domain just like land and air and sea." He added, "History proves that peace only comes through strength, and in the realm of outer space, the United States Space Force will be that strength in the years ahead." The Space Force would ultimately become the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces and would be equal to the other five, Pence said. The Department of Defense has prepared a report laying out the phases of creating the new branch, which will ultimately have to be reviewed and approved by Congress.
BUY SPACEX (Score:5, Interesting)
Elon is gonna become the biggest defense contractor on earth
Re:BUY SPACEX (Score:5, Funny)
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What about the deep see force. (Score:5, Funny)
We should have military dominance of the deep sea as well. I mean almost NO one can go there. We need to establish a base on the moon and a colony on mars for 'security'. After all, all that nothing is a real threat.
Re:What about the deep see force. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah sure let's militarize every gods-be-damned thing, as if we aren't already living on the War World. Endless cycles of war, what a great way to live!
Exactly.
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I'm fine with all countries having space forces.. as long as they operate far from earth... and all other forms of military are disbanded.
Re:What about the deep see force. (Score:5, Interesting)
1984 - "Excess" productivity transferred to continuous war so the "lower classes" can be kept poor and down trodden rather than getting an increased share in worldly goods. Nationalism cranked up to keep them accepting their poverty from the resulting continuous war.
It wasn't ALL Big Brother.
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The Navy? Submarines can go pretty deep if they need to. There is no critical infrastructure on the moon or mars. But there is in space and the deep sea! Full-spectrum dominance is a real thing.
I am not sure what your comment is on about.
Re:What about the deep see force. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Navy? Submarines can go pretty deep if they need to. There is no critical infrastructure on the moon or mars. But there is in space and the deep sea! Full-spectrum dominance is a real thing.
I am not sure what your comment is on about.
Modern Submarines have a maximum depth of somewhere between 2400-3000 feet. Any further, and the pressure will crush the hull. Compare that with an average ocean depth of 12,000 feet.
Re:What about the deep see force. (Score:5, Funny)
Want to know how I can tell you haven't had many repeat sexual partners....?
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I think if you think this is bullshit then you haven't been following the topic for any amount of time. Yes, Trump is good at grabbing headlines but this topic precedes Trump by many years. Right now every branch has to manage their own use of satellites without any centralized thought to management, technological direction, or overlap. We already have a presence in space with assets to protect and a strategy to develop. The army doesn't provide the boats nor airplanes why should it be different for satelli
Re: What about the deep see force. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. Major communication infrastructure is in the deep sea as well. If the only way to protect our interests is to display strength, the military is going to need a serious budget increase.
You idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Militarized space (Score:4, Informative)
Likely won't be long before there are nuclear warheads in orbit from one country or another. So much for peaceful space exploration.
First, nuke in orbit aren't necessary when you can deal damage by the sheer kinetic energy when de-orbiting things. There's a reason why controlled deorbit aim for the Nemo point.
(Also nukes in orbit would be violating several international treaties, but I wouldn't be surprised if some rulers decided to wipe their asses with those)
Now, the most important part : You might have not noticed, but despite several decade of space conquest, there hasn't been much actual *fighting* going on in space. Most of the weapons sent into space where for the specific use of survival among the wild-life if the return capsule gets lost in the middle of nowhere (some of these lost cosmonauts where complaining of hearing wolves and bears dangerously close to the capsule during night-time, while waiting to make contact with the retrival team).
The thing which space has been used a LOT for is for intelligence and spying.
The first thing that is going to happen if other countries try to militarize their space program is high resolution camera pointing at all the place that the US won't allow to be photographed with their own satellites plus ability to jam any communication satellite that adversaries might be relying on.
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Space Race 2.0?
Every other nation on the planet that can have an aggressive posture in space will. See China shooting down a satellite.
Do you think there is something wrong with Full-spectrum dominance if so what is it? "Space Force" was inevitable as soon as the costs to get to space were lowered.
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Shhhh.... you're spoiling SpaceX's plan for future profitability!
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Re:You idiots. (Score:4, Interesting)
Bollocks. You can't hide nukes in orbit. The US already has anti-sat weapons too.
This would be a major escalation of it happened.
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You can't hide stuff up there.
Re: You idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
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PEW PEW PEW!
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Spaaaaaacccceeeeee Fooooooorrrrccccceeeeee!
PEW PEW PEW!
I saw that, too!
LOL!
Re: You idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: You idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: You idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble is....who (which nation) stops first and puts themselves into danger in the hopes that the other nations follow the example, vs continuing the race and eventually overcoming the weaker nations?
Re: You idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not saying we (as in the US) have to overcome weaker nations, but if WE (as in the US) stop our build up first, we become one of the weaker nations that other stronger nations would be very tempted to overcome.
Unless everyone verifiably puts down their weapons at the same time....the first one to put them down alone eventually becomes a loser to the others.
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<sarcasm>Nuclear weapons = peace</sarcasm>
FTFY
Re: You idiots. (Score:5, Informative)
Dominionist is the wrong term, more like apocalyptic.
You seem to be unaware of what Dominionists want. A significant percentage of Dominionists interpret Biblical version, in particular Revelations, to mean that it is their duty to intentionally induce an apocalypse in order to precipitate the Second Coming of Christ. They're the Dominionists who grew out of Pentecostalism, and sometimes self-identify as adherents of "Kingdom Now" theology. Their goal is a global Christian theocracy, and they think the sole path that gets them what they want is a global holocaust, because they interpret Revelations as prophecy, and believe the prophecy demands it. These people are properly called Dominionists because they self-identify as such, in writing.
This, so much This. (Score:4, Interesting)
Dominionists think God is working through Trump (Score:3)
The right wing in America aren't thinking about policy, they're letting feelings get the better of them. Republicans have vastly
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Hey bro, what is Revelations?
Allegory for the fall of Rome that many modern-day Christians interpret as prediction of a still-to-come event.
The AC is pointing out that it's called Revelation, not Revelations.
Step into a Southern church sometime and you will even hear the pastor say "Revelations".
Re: You idiots. (Score:4, Interesting)
Pentecostalism, which is the predecessor of modern-day Dominionism, arose out of folk churches.
They very literally believe - as did medieval scholars - that enough biblical exegesis coupled with faith and self-abnegation will allow them to engage in divination.
Never mind that such practices are expressly condemned in old testament texts, and would have been (relatively) heretical even to the batshit english puritans who settled the east coast of North America. The current Dominionist belief structure reflects a post-enlightenment level of absolute savagery, albeit dressed up in a nice suit for Sunday, but still red in tooth and claw.
Dominionists slough off proscriptions against divination as "old testament" and claim that the personal relationship with the numinous supersedes both older rules (which, granted, were intended to maintain control over belief change) and (the scary bit) logic and reason. They claim that only 'experiential faith' is valid, and all other forms of religious observance are shams.
The truly scary bit is that the notion experiential faith expressly incorporates the validity of revelatory experiences - and the mandate that revelatory experience is to be taken as truth, and challenges to it represent heretical behavior that requires prosecution in the name of holiness. Such a system has no internal checks and brooks no challenges, and is an ideal basis for an authoritarian state. For if A has a revelation and reveals it, B and C are bound to obey it, whether it is to their benefit or not.....
Thomas Paine, who I revere, has this to say about this sort of revelation-trumps-all thinking in Part2/Sec20 of Common Sense. He was responding to earlier forms of socially-sanctioned illogic occasioned by the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 40s, led by Jonathan Edwards and
"Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which, bye the bye, it is impossible to prove), is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another person is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it, or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells, for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases the proper answer would be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God." This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of the Age of Reason; and which, while it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation."
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I'll have to look them up tonight. I've never heard of them, but from what you describe it sounds like complete heresy. Nothing in Revelations indicated that the end times can be or will be brought about by man. In fact, it says "no man knows the hour or the day" indicating it will be on God's time table. I often wonder how these groups call themselves Christians when there is nothing in scripture to substantiate what they believe.
One little ditty from Revelation that seems to be conveniently skipped by the American religious right these days is the following one in quotes. The Mennonites are keenly aware of this prophecy and it is the one that is turning out to be most current.
"The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
I was modded
Re: You idiots. (Score:4, Informative)
The only plus side from this is it may lead to technology to colonise beyond Earth... that's the only plus side I see.
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Re: You idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
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What if there is an existential alien threat they know about but haven't told the public about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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You mean, if the US doesn't do this, that means China will refrain from doing it?
Yeah, didn't think so.
They haven't yet but it was inevitable it would start eventually. I just wish it could have happened after my natural lifetime.
Re:You idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse than that. China has already demonstrated they can and will shoot down an orbiting satellite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And the only take aways anyone with half a brain would have are:
a) a space based weapons platform would be a sitting duck.
b) the orbital debris from any sustained orbital conflict will make earths orbit completely inhospitable for decades. A bit of scrap the size of a pencil eraser moving at 8 km/s is going to do a number on anything in its way.
You can't "dominate" orbital space the way you can dominate air or land. All you can do is render it completely inhospitable for everyone.
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Agreed.
a: absolutely true
b: The ablation cascade - e.g., the diffusion into a more evenly distributed quantity of orbiting bits moving very fast - would kill spaceflight for hundreds of years, at best. There's nothing that can protect a launch vehicle moving through such a cloud of small pieces, at least not now. It makes Asteroids look dead simple....
c. Why militarize space when it can be commercialized? I for one want to spend a vacation in a weightless space station. That would be amazing....
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Did he say that we were breaking out of the 'Outer Space Treaty' that was signed into effect in 1967 by the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union (as well as India, Pakistan and China later on)? That treaty forbids putting weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, the Moon and other celestial bodies.
If the U.S. has them they are by definition NOT WMDS. If anyone else has them a pea shooter can be called a WMD. So no problem, only nations other than the U.S. can possibly be in violation of the treaty.
Why not use the USAF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not use the USAF instead of creating another parallel bureaucracy? Better yet, why not merge all of the branches (cut out the Coast Guard and put it back under DoT control) and share as much bureaucracy as possible?
It's not like we don't have domestic issues (crumbling roads, health care, education, etc) to spend money on. Cut taxes, cut the debt, or start spending money on things that benefit people other than military contractors.
Re:Why not use the USAF? (Score:5, Insightful)
What, then they couldn't ask for a 20% increase in defense spending. This is like Bush creating DHS. Creating new agencies or military branches are a great way to funnel cash to your buds, not the previous guy's buds. There is a good argument that there is already too much duplication among the existing branches.
There is also the issue that most of the modern problems in international relations cannot be solved by killing people better. Imagine a world where schools, hospitals, and economic development were the lead in American influence in the world instead of bullets and bombs.
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Many in the DoD are against the new Guardians of the Galaxy force (haven't been able to recruit a talking raccoon). Most likely what will happen is the DoD will bury the new force in study committees, plan proposals, etc. in that dork leaves office. Hopefully, we won't be left with a religious nutjob like Pence. And even if they do stand up a new force, the Air Force and the Navy will be gunning to reabsorb it over time.
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Jack of all trades are the master of none. With enough specialization the justifications to expand or reduce a particular asset of the military becomes large enough to be under its own authority and budget and command structure. What works for the Army (the backbone) does not work for the Marines (the tip of the spear) likewise what works for the Air Force may not work for a potential (IMO inevitable) Space Force.
As access to space becomes cheaper the strategic importance grows as does our nations dependenc
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Because if you keep using the USAF for space things, Trump doesn't get his name in the history books as the guy who created it.
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The calls for a separate branch specific for space have been around a lot longer than Trump.
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Because EVERY armed service has a branch at Peterson AFB or Vandenberg AFB.
But Also South Korea, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
It makes sense to move all those offices under one unified comand.
BUT for Reasons of politics the Army and Navy refuse to let it be the USAF.
So Space Command "To Protect Out Orbits Whether The Need It or Not!"
Re: Why not use the USAF? (Score:2)
Why? Well Bush 2 did it with the TSA. Look how effective that's been. It's the way you do things on Capitol Hill nowadays.
Pork pork pork...
Wow, best comment here (Score:2)
Thanks for the rational and insightful commentary, it's a shame that people are so dismissive of a "Space Force" just because Trump proposed it, or they lack understanding of the modern world... especially as you say China (not sure if Russia will be a very advanced threat in space for some time yet).
Grrrr! Impetuous boy! (Score:2)
Error (Score:2)
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Space Marines (Score:2)
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I think, as most social media posts show, that we've already got far too many space cadets.
Only good for one thing (Score:3)
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No, you're forgetting the most important thing: It would put Trump's name in the history books as the guy who created the Space Force.
This was predicted by George Friedman (Score:2)
... of (now) Geopolitical Futures, in his book "The Next 100 Years." It even describes, as an example, a plausible space-related war taking place around 2050, between the US and Poland on the one side and Turkey and Japan on another. In the description the war is on the ground but a technological breakthrough happens in which the US figures out the way to efficiently beam energy collected from solar panels in outer space to the earth, working from its large orbital space station.
It's an interesting bit of s
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Well, if Erdogan is anything to go by, Turkey won't be fielding anything bigger than a couple of muskets in a few years.
Yeah, that's one smart move (Score:2, Insightful)
Start an arms race in the ONLY fucking military area you're NOT superior than the rest of the planet combined. You could simply lean back and be Number 1. On water, land and sea, nobody can hold a candle to your military power and in space there's the Outer Space Treaty [wikipedia.org] that everyone who could even remotely matter signed and heeds.
The US doesn't even have the rockets to launch anything like a nuke. Russia has man rated rockets to launch them. China has man rated rockets to launch them. The EU... doesn't nee
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Start an arms race in the ONLY fucking military area you're NOT superior than the rest of the planet combined
I wouldn't say that....the USAF and NRO has a lot of space assets.
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The US doesn't even have the rockets to launch anything like a nuke
You mean besides the almost 400 Minuteman III ICBMs? Did we forget how ICBMs actually work? Or the Minotaur V?
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I think that was the plan all along. Space Race 2.0 isn't going to be very interesting unless we start out behind the Russians like we did last time.
I don't think that we'll have a "winner" in this race until someone has an operating Mars base. For defensive purposes, naturally.
Re:Yeah, that's one smart move (Score:5, Informative)
The US doesn't even have the rockets to launch anything like a nuke. Russia has man rated rockets to launch them.
Never in history has anyone taken a manned rocket to detonate a nuclear warhead. I can't say that it was never on the drawing board, but it seems like a bonehead idea.
The US's ICBMs fly up to around 1100 km before reentering to strike their targets. That's just above the maximum altitude of the old Shuttle Orbiter, and well beyond the typical operational altitude for most Shuttle missions (320 km).
Can Russia fly higher? probably. But is that a requirement for nukes in space? clearly not. In fact the highest test explosion [wikipedia.org] was at 540 km, and yet about half [wikipedia.org] of the known tests were under 100 km.
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Trust me, to launch a nuclear warhead in peace time into an orbit, you DO want man rated equipment. You want a rocket that has a chance of exploding on the way up that is as close to zero as you can possibly get. First, because it could be kinda hard to all the residents of Florida that America's Wang just got uninhabitable due to fallout.
And then there's that unfortunate "what goes up, must come down" part where you could make it halfway around the globe before your rocket fails and it lands where it makes
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ICBMs are designed to hit a target anywhere in the world, which in general means they can put a payload into low orbit if needed. And the payloads are all several times the mass of the nuclear warheads, due to countermeasures against interceptors. You could easily launch a warhead in a package that let you choose when to de-orbit.
So, yeah, sure, you might have some 'splainin to do if you did something that simple, but we certainly have the rockets.
What about the uniforms? (Score:5, Funny)
Mexico? (Score:5, Funny)
Is Mexico going to pay for this too?
Time to tell the truth about the SGC? (Score:2)
Time to tell the truth about the SGC?
Big beautiful rockets... (Score:5, Funny)
We'll have big beautiful rockets! And the Martians will pay for them.! And they will be flown by the most elite astronauts, but the true elites are all of you right here who voted for me! And...cough...sputter
Sorry, can't keep that up.
Needs approval of Comgress ... (Score:3)
... how's that working out for the Wall?
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Construction started April 11....
however I strongly suspect Congressional approval would eventually be needed to continue or finish the thing
Re:Needs approval of Comgress ... (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed [washingtontimes.com].
[July 1 2018] Trump's border wall not worth government shutdown, say lawmakers
money to burn (Score:3, Insightful)
We got people who can't afford to go to the doctor, but these jackoffs want to play outer space.
Deficits exploding, but they're acting like we got money to burn. Wages going down for working people, and these geniuses think they're going to put jackbooted space troopers on Mars. Probably have a big Trump parade up there, too.
I mean, Pence is a guy who thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old and there's no evolution, but he's spearheading a Space Force that's going to be paid for with money borrowed from China, with whom we just started a trade war. Oh, we are so fucked.
Re:money to burn (Score:4, Informative)
Almost the entirety of the "Space Force" exists today but they are spread across multiple DoD and Intelligence groups so this isn't a huge expansion of the defense budget, more a realignment of existing expenditures. Over time it could even save money through consolidation. It's not even like this is a new proposal it's just the first time the Executive Branch bothered listening.
It's main proposed purpose is to protect the US (and it's allies) from space based attacks which are not primarily of a physical nature but more technological. There looking to develop better defense of satellite and earth based communications, GPS systems and physical space based equipment as well as develop tech that may be able to interfere with those same systems as used by the 'enemy'.
It's not like this is way out there either as China has already made claims about some of their satellite based 'defensive' capabilities.
A lot of these projects are already funded but due to various agencies priorities the money doesn't necessarily get spent in those areas. This will create an agency that ensures the money appropriated for space based defense gets spent on space defense.
Re:money to burn (Score:5, Interesting)
Horseshit. There's already been a $120 billion increase in the defense budget this year, and the DoD has already requested another $12 billion just to begin the process of realignment. Have you ever heard of an additional government agency that didn't cost more money? How much do you think it cost just to put on Pence's little ceremony today announcing the Space Force? How much will the grand military parade Trump is planning for November cost taxpayers (and China)?
OK, so we're going to be protected from the Klingon empire. Noted.
You know that additional $120 billion that we're spending on the military this year? It's almost entirely borrowed from China. Goddamn, man, do you not see the folly of going into debt to the country so you can build defenses against that country?
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Have you ever thought what happens to the dollar if the US 'wipes" it's debt? Which countries are going to buy it's treasuries? And if China should sudde
Finally (Score:3)
We can nuke it from orbit!
Ronny Ray-Gun will finally get his Star Wars (Score:3)
Build A Stupid Fence (Score:3)
Suck, suck, suck (Score:3)
Forget nukes, will there be giant vacuum cleaners?
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The president of the country that has to rely on the Russians to launch their astronauts to the ISS
Manned flights for two new US-based systems (from Boeing and Space-X) to take our people to the ISS begin in less than a year.
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Germany was quite peaceful in 1939, thanks to its strong military and authoritarian government. It was all those other, weaker countries that had that nasty war, mostly because they weren't strong enough to repel invaders.
Trump is a big fan of that German ideology, so it makes perfect sense he'd want to replicate their history here.
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Uh. No. Peace through strength has been around ever since there was military strategy. Sun Tzu had some good thoughts about it.
"If their forces are substantial, prepare for them; if their forces are strong, avoid them."
"The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting."
"In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace. The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is matter of life and death, a road eit
Re:"History proves that peace only comes through s (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany was quite peaceful in 1939, thanks to its strong military and authoritarian government.
Yet Germany lost the subsequent war.
The biggest "winner" of both world wars was the country that had done the least to prepare for them: The United States of America.
After WW2, America switched to much higher military spending, and higher levels of preparation. Results: Korea - tie, Vietnam - lost, Afghanistan - lost, Iraq - lost.
The problem with high military spending, is that it makes it easy to initiate stupid wars.
Only if it involves WMDs (Score:4, Interesting)
It only happens if the US issues formal notice that it is withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty. The Outer Space Treaty forbids weapons of mass destruction anywhere above the Earth, to include installations on other celestial bodies. Warmongers like to try to claim this only forbids nuclear bombs, and therefore allows kinetic bombardment. This is some bullshit of the highest order. A megaton explosion is mass destruction regardless of how it was initiated.
As you note, the OST only outlaws WMDs in space, but low size kinetic or energy weapons - i.e. satellite destroyers - are not banned. And yes, taking out an enemy's GPS satellites would be a terrible idea due to the Kessler Syndrome it would lead to, but it's not explicitly or implicitly against the treaty.
Similarly, you could put armed guards on your station or moon base without violating the OST.