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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
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PRO-CON
Bill Ingalls/NASA
A Delta IV rocket carrying the Parker Solar Probe lifts off Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The probe will venture closer to the
sun than any other spacecraft.
Is the proposed Space Force
really necessary to our defense?
PRO: New service, done
right, will move US ahead
W
ASHINGTON — There is
an honest debate to be had
over whether the United
States needs a separate armed
service that’s focused on space. But
President Donald
Trump’s critics are
having none of it.
Instead, they
have responded to
the very notion of
a Space Force with
dismissive ridicule,
James Jay
suggesting that he
Carafano
wants a corps of
ray-gun equipped
Buzz Lightyears shouting: “To
infinity and beyond!”
That’s not what he wants, and
the concept deserves to be treated
quite seriously. A Space Force, done
right, could be well worth having.
No one doubts that Americans
— civilians as well as military per-
sonnel — are heavily dependent on
what we have in space.
Assets “up there” do everything
from make the internet work to
detect the flight path of ballistic
missiles. Our space-based assets
inform our weather forecasts and
help guide us to our destinations
with GPS.
Just as there is no doubt about
our reliance on the things we’ve put
in space, so there is no doubt that
these valuable assets are vulnerable
to everything from cyberattacks to
satellites being shot down by hostile
powers. And no serious analyst
questions the growing capability of
Russia and China to wage war in
space.
One more consideration: It’s
getting crowded up there. Space is
becoming increasingly accessible
to an increasing number of nations
— and even some non-state actors.
The honest debate we need to
have is whether it makes sense to
redesign the government’s byzan-
tine space-program organizational
chart so that control of the acquisi-
tion, deployment and operation of
space assets is consolidated under
an independent military service?
To be honest, there are good
arguments for both sides of the
question.
One key consideration is “oppor-
tunity costs.” Are the time, effort
and resources required to pluck
the various space-related programs
from the other services — and some
civilian agencies — worth the bene-
fits to be gained by consolidation?
It’s a fifty-fifty proposition, but
there are some good reasons to
argue this is a good idea.
Space is a physical warfighting
domain. Just as troops spar across
foxholes, ships clash on the high
seas and jets stage dogfights, mili-
tary assets will physically compete
in outer space.
For thousands of years, military
wisdom has held that if you want to
fight and win in a physical domain,
you ought to have a core of profes-
sionals who are schooled, experi-
enced and expert in that domain.
If there is logic in having
domain-specific air, space and sea
services, there is logic in having a
space service.
A space force also offers the
opportunity to rationalize man-
agement of all the military and
intelligence assets the U.S. has and
to synchronize that with our civilian
programs.
The third and perhaps most
important argument is that this
will send a powerful and
unmistakable message to
the world that American
intends to be a world-class
space power — for a long
time. It’s time for America
to think big again — to
step ahead rather than watch
others catch up.
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Americans
were fired up by the imaginative
possibilities of what the U.S. might
do in space.
The fact that so many mockers
are not fired up by the notion of a
Space Force suggests the time is
more than right for this initiative.
Americans need to dream again
about owning the stars.
If Trump gets this right, we
won’t see a war of the satellites.
What we will see is America
leading the way to ensure that the
freedom of the commons extends
from the seas to space itself.
That’s a vision worth reaching
for. Now that President Trump
has made the decision to step out,
Americans should stop closing
their eyes to the possibilities in the
heavens. Instead, they ought to be
discussing how best to look upward.
A Heritage Foundation vice pres-
ident, James Jay Carafano directs
the think tank’s research into issues
of national security and foreign
affairs.
CON: It’s another Trump
idea that belongs on a
Hollywood launch pad
W
ASHINGTON — Through-
out the history of the repub-
lic, American presidents have
come up with some rather cockamamie
ideas and programs.
Gerald Ford’s
“WIN” buttons —
“Whip Inflation Now”
— come to mind. And
there was Richard
Nixon’s outfitting
Secret Service guards
at the White House
Wayne
in Prussian-style
Madsen
ceremonial uniforms.
That silliness did not
last very long.
Harry Truman and George H.W.
Bush constructed horseshoe pitches on
the White House grounds. Both were
removed by their successors because
neither Dwight Eisenhower nor Bill
Clinton was into tossing horseshoes.
Although some money was spent
on these presidential follies, none
come even close in cost or absur-
dity as Donald Trump’s creation
of a U.S. Space Force.
Not only was the Space
Force unwanted by Secretary
of Defense James Mattis and
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but
immediately, the Trump 2020
re-election campaign announced an
online vote on a logo for the Space
Force, which coincided with selling
Space Force merchandise to fund the
campaign. A former White House
Ethics Office director cried foul about
merchandising Space Force items for
Trump’s re-election. That in itself
deserves a belly laugh. When did
Trump and his cronies ever pay atten-
tion to ethics?
In 2017, Mattis, in a letter to
Senate Armed Forces Committee
chairman John McCain, stated his
opposition to a space force. Mattis
wrote that such an additional military
service would create “additional orga-
nizational layers at a time when we
are focused on reducing overhead and
integrating joint warfighting efforts.”
Trump, whose only experience
in uniform was “playing army” at a
private military school in New York,
would have none of it. Mattis and the
generals and admirals were overruled
by the president. The Space Force was
to be formed and the military brass
would just have to learn to like it.
It appears that the only officials
VS.
who boost the Space Force are Trump
and his sycophantic vice president,
Mike Pence.
Funding for the Space Force did
not even make it into the National
Defense Authorization Act for fiscal
year 2019.
The U.S. Air Force — which
has had responsibility for space
defense ever since the days of Ronald
Reagan’s own stroll down “dumb idea
lane” with the “Star Wars” anti-ballis-
tic missile system — is fuming over
the creation of the Space Force, seeing
it as a professional slap in the face.
While Trump sees space as the next
battlefield for U.S. “star troopers,”
American and foreign diplomats are
alarmed. They point to the 1967 Outer
Space Treaty, signed by the United
States, the Soviet Union and the
United Kingdom during the height of
the Cold War.
This treaty specifies that space and
celestial bodies, including the moon,
Mars and the asteroids, are to be
explored and exploited by the treaty
signatories for peaceful purposes only.
Signatories agreed “not to place
in orbit around the Earth any objects
carrying nuclear weapons or any other
kinds of weapons of mass destruction
nor install such weapons on celestial
bodies or station such weapons in
outer space in any other manner.”
The 1967 treaty ushered into
being an entirely new legal construct,
known as space law, which deals with
everything from orbiting man-made
satellites to potential mining on the
moon and asteroids.
Trump’s Space Force upends
the treaty, the legal structure that
surrounds it, and portends a future of
military confrontation, not coopera-
tion, among our planet’s nations in
outer space.
As millions of Americans go with-
out health and nursing home care and
as repairs to the country’s crumbling
infrastructure are sorely needed,
now is not the time to invest in some
campy sci-fi movie extravaganza like
the Space Force. It should be tossed
into the presidential trash heap, along
with Ford’s WIN buttons, Nixon’s
Prussian uniforms and Truman’s and
Bush’s horseshoes.
Wayne Madsen is a progres-
sive commentator whose writings
have appeared in U.S. and European
newspapers.