Curious how this would affect private ventures like SpaceX?
It probably means more money for the space industry and other government contractors, which includes SpaceX.
House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
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Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#12This seems weird and premature. We will probably need a "Space Corps" eventually , but doing it now when the technology is still in its infancy, instead of being able to leverage the manpower of an existing service, seems unhelpful. Making the Air Force its own thing, instead of part of the Army, was a good decision in 1945 but would've been dumb in 1912 too.
Actually, I think they should go the opposite way: they should eliminate the Air Force, and make it part of the Army again. The AF was split off because of the Cold War, and is just a relic of that time. No other modern military force has a separate "air force", because having it separate only complicates things when conducting a conventional ground war. For a while the Air Force even thought they were going to make…
> No other modern military force has a separate "air force"
The UK has the same high level structure as the US (A “Naval Service” including Navy and Marines, an Army, and an Air Force.)
It's a fairly common structure.
The Chinese PLA actually has more services (Ground Force, Air Force, Rocket Force, Navy, Strategic Support Force.)
There probably are modern militaries where one of the top-level divisions isn't something like an air Force, but they aren't dominant among modern, large-scale forces.
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#13Sounds like somebody at USAF Space Command wants a promotion.
This seems decades late. The USAF has no manned space capability. The U.S. Government once owned the Space Shuttles. They had astronauts. The USAF once had a Space School. That's all gone. Now, they just buy commercial rocket launches.
If anything, the reorganization the USAF needs is to lose the close air support mission, and the A-10 Warthogs, to the Army. The USAF keeps trying to kill off the Warthog, and doesn't want to get involved with smaller fixed-wing aircraft for close air support. The Army needs that low-level aerial firepower. They need it from affordable aircraft they can use in quantity, not rare, overpriced F-35s. There's an old deal between the Army and the USAF, the "Key West Agreement", that the Army would stay out of fixed-wing aviation and only use helicopters. That needs to be looked at again.
(The Marines have their own air, and it works out well for them. Marine air and ground forces tend to coordinate better than USAF/Army combos.)
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#14Uh... what?! The bill would order the Defense Department to establish the new corps by January 2019. It would be a distinct military service within the Department of the Air Force, in much the same way the Marine Corps operates as a service within the Department of the Navy. The Secretary of the Air Force would oversee both the Air Force and the Space Corps, but the new chief of staff of the Space Corps would be a ne…
if i had to guess, i'd guess this is 'out of' lobbying by big govt contractors who want another budget pool, and MIL insiders pushing for this.
Right now airforce satellites for star-wars type initiatives and airforce refueling tankers all fall under the same budget, while serving very different organizational needs. conversely this is why 'innovation' arms/skunkworks get created... because the mothership moves too slow and has too many competing priorities and budgets to innovate and get out of its own way.
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I think they should go the opposite way: they should eliminate the Air Force, and make it part of the Army again. The AF was split off because of the Cold War, and is just a relic of that time. No other modern military force has a separate "air force", because having it separate only complicates things when conducting a conventional ground war. For a while the Air Force even thought they were going to make…
> No other modern military force has a separate "air force", because having it separate only complicates things when conducting a conventional ground war. Besides the US: Turkey, Syria, Russia, Israel all off the top of my head have air force and ground army (along with, at least, a navy) separate under one "Armed Forces" command. What modern air forces operate as part of the army, rather than separately (as most nav…
The big one is China, where all the services are technically branches within the People's Liberation Army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Liberation_Army
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#16SciFi usually base military in space based on the navy, I wonder if this was considered or even makes a difference?
I'm guessing that the sci-fi practice was due to the sociological similarities between spacecraft crews and ship crews on isolated, long-term voyages. At present, the US Air Force has been responsible for most high-tech concerns including cyber warfare and space warfare, so it probably was the least organizationally disruptive to bring the new branch in alongside the AF.
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#17Militarization of space notwithstanding, this could be great news for the spaceflight industry as a whole. A lot more contracts handed out for launches and orbital infrastructure, as well as "normalizing" space travel would encourage investment in an industry that has been mostly dominated (and still is) by government entities.
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#18... because we have to defend the ehh hmmm satellites against cough ehm ehhh other satellites. Nothing like a fourth branch of the armed forces to increase the biggest military budget in the world [1] by another few dozen percent. [1] From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... 1. US 611 bn 2. China 215 bn 3. Russia 69 bn
Aren't those all about the same as a percentage of gdp?
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#19SciFi usually base military in space based on the navy, I wonder if this was considered or even makes a difference?
Stargate being a notable exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Program#Stargate_Comm...
Which reflects how in real life the Air Force does have more to do with space than the Navy.
Re: House panel votes to split Air Force, create new U.S. Space Corps
#20... because we have to defend the ehh hmmm satellites against cough ehm ehhh other satellites. Nothing like a fourth branch of the armed forces to increase the biggest military budget in the world [1] by another few dozen percent. [1] From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... 1. US 611 bn 2. China 215 bn 3. Russia 69 bn
Aren't those all about the same as a percentage of gdp?
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