Does America really need a Space Force?

Trump wants to militarize space. What would that even look like?

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo, Alex Wong/Getty Images, Ratana21/iStock)

President Trump announced on Monday that he has directed the Department of Defense to begin plans to form a U.S. Space Force to stand as a sixth branch of the armed forces. "When it comes to defending America," he said at a meeting of the National Space Council, "it is not enough to have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space. So important."

The notion of a Space Force has long been bandied about in Washington. Last year, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama called for the formation of a space corps within the Air Force as a precursor to an independent service branch. (The Air Force, itself, was similarly established from the Army Air Corps.) The idea was shot down by Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who opposed the measure on the grounds that the military was trying to "reduce overhead," and that a new branch would do just the opposite. Someone, however, must have made Trump think all of this was his idea. And now it's policy.

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David W. Brown

David W. Brown is coauthor of Deep State (John Wiley & Sons, 2013) and The Command (Wiley, 2012). He is a regular contributor to TheWeek.com, Vox, The Atlantic, and mental_floss. He can be found online here.