United States launches the Space Force

OPINION:

On Jan. 14, Air Force Gen. John Raymond was sworn in as the first commander of the newly-created United States Space Force (USSF). He is someone to be envied as well as someone with whom we should commiserate. 

Gen. Raymond should be envied because, as the first USSF commander, he has been given the kind of opportunity for deep strategic and philosophical thinking that is so rare that its occurrences may be centuries apart. The last time it occurred was almost a century ago, when Col. Billy Mitchell gave voice to the strategic thoughts that became the heart and soul of our modern Air Force.

He is someone with whom we should commiserate because he is going to have to break many bureaucratic rice bowls in order to put his thoughts in motion. The bureaucratic battles he will have to fight will not be of short duration and the struggle for congressional funding will be constant.

The law creating the USSF gives Gen. Raymond enormous discretion for innovative thinking. It says that the USSF shall ensure safe operations in, from and to space, provide independent options to national leaders and enable the lethality of our joint forces. Emphasizing USSF’s combat role, the law says, “The Space Force includes both combat and combat-support functions to enable prompt and sustained offensive and defensive space operations and joint operations in all domains.” That is, essentially, a blank slate for Gen. Raymond to write on.

Gen. John Hyten, formerly commander of U.S. Strategic Command and now vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is someone Gen. Raymond probably knows well. Gen. Raymond should begin his thinking with Gen. Hyten’s words of about a year ago, when he said that there was no such thing as air war, ground war, naval war or cyber war: there is just war. Thus, Gen. Hyten said, when you fight you may choose to answer one kind of threat or attack with a different kind of force in a different combat domain.

Gen. Raymond will begin with the legal authorization of his new command. The words authorizing combat and combat-support for sustained offensive and defensive space operations means, for starters, to protect and defend U.S. and allies’ satellites on which we are dependent for secure communications, navigation, detection of missile launches and reconnaissance (i.e., the CIA and NSA spy satellites which can create finely-detailed images of any part of the world and also intercept electronic communications).

To protect space assets such as those, the USSF will have to be able to track and kill both ground-based anti-satellite systems as well as hunter-killer satellites that can attack our constellations of defense and intelligence satellites. It will also be necessary to locate and defend against satellites and ground-based systems that can launch cyber attacks against our satellites.

Implicit in the authorization law is that the USSF will have to deploy weapons in space. It is long past the time that we should do so. In 2007, China successfully tested a ground-based satellite killer, destroying one of its own weather satellites. Other nations have reportedly orbited hunter-killer satellites. the USSF will enter the space-based arms race that Congress has refused to recognize.

The next step in strategic thought will have to enable the USSF to defend the United States and allied nations from weapons that travel through space to their earthbound targets. The Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency has the mission to shoot down ICBMs launched by adversaries at the United States. Its ground-based interceptors are few in number and of unproven reliability. 

The USSF should be planning to deploy orbiting weapons, such as a modern version of the Reagan-era “Brilliant Pebbles” system, to kill enemy missiles passing through space. That would include the new Russian and Chinese hypersonic weapons for which Russian President Putin says there is no answer. He’s wrong: A modernized “Brilliant Pebbles” orbiting system could be a highly effective defense if it is deployed. 

In sum, the USSF will have to deploy weapons that can dominate the space domain in wartime and in the Second Cold War that is now being fought against Russia and China in the silence of space. 

One of the biggest battles the USSF will have to fight will be to gain some planning and budgeting control over other services’ space initiatives. Both the Army and the Navy have devoted considerable assets to such initiatives. Having redundant capabilities is both foolish and wasteful, but neither the Army or the Navy will willingly surrender any of their prerogatives to the USSF.

Space exploration for military purposes will be resisted by NASA, but there is room for cooperation. Joint missions to the moon should engender cooperation because NASA has always drawn its best astronauts from the military’s ranks. For joint missions, new astronauts should be drawn entirely from the USSF, and the USSF can share in their costs.

Very soon, the USSF will have to be prepared to reach the moon to defend U.S. interests from space. At the very least, it will have to provide a credible threat against any attempt by another nation to build a moon base that could threaten the United States.

The biggest constraint on Gen. Raymond’s plans will, as usual, be Congress. In the final analysis, it all comes down to a phrase NASA made famous: No bucks, no Buck Rogers. 

• Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush administration, is the author of “In the Words of Our Enemies.”