All of our ICBMs are designed to fly through space.
Human civilization is just about a lock to destroy itself.
We probably already have, 4 more years of science denial and environmental deregulation would be the proverbial nail in the coffin.
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I’m down. Set phasers to FUN!
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How big does Space Force need to be before any meaningful part of space may be “controlled?”
You already had a lot of nuclear weapons, no big deal that we failed to renew nuclear weapons treaties, right? There’s no point in any limitation on types numbers or locations of weapons, right? Trump is absolutely right. We need to expand on all of this. And the Democrats in Congress mostly agree.
Republicans boast about war and Law and Order but the Democrats are just as much for it. You just have to scratch beneath the surface and it’s a very very thin surface layer. Either that or it’s all just theater, and people are just rooting for the home team. And then of course we will all just die if there’s a buck to made killing us.
A couple hundred billion dollars big anyway.
Where did I say any of this?
We’ve never had a Missile Force but we somehow still have a shitload of missiles. If the Air Force wasn’t a separate branch we’d still have a shitload of planes. I don’t see how moving desks around changes anything meaningfully. I’m all for slashing everyone’s budget and giving it to NIH or whatever.
You don’t think creating the Air Force or creating the Department of Homeland Security changed anything? Or the CIA? Or the NSA?
I don’t think even that comes close.
I was watching the Family Guy spoof of Empire Strikes Back the other night and there’s the one scene which goes:
Leia-Lois: “We’re evacuating into outer space with literally infinite directions in which to flee. However, we have decided that our transports will travel directly toward the fleet of Star Destroyers. Any questions?”
Rebel Pilot: “Yeah, um, is there someone from the military we can talk to? A man, perhaps?”
Even though the Empire has a massive armada poised above Hoth, it’s only controlling that relatively tiny bit of space right where they’re escaping. A few degrees this way or that at launch and the departing ships dodge that armada by a wide margin. You’d need what, thousands of ships and space stations in orbit all around the planet? Millions? It couldn’t be done no matter how much $$$ you threw at Space Force!
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I was sorta kidding. What you’d really have to do to dominate space is destroy enemy stations as soon as they got there and bomb any facilities the enemy uses to build or launch them.
The couple hundred billion is just what it’s actually going to be. It’s grift. It won’t control space. It’ll make us less safe.
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One thing that peeps forget about is that there are basically two reasons, besides traditions, to split up military into branches. The same principles applies to civilian organizations, including police and intelligence agencies, and to just about everything else, including business. The first is, of course, to gain efficiencies by sorting out distinct tasks. The army doesn’t need have to have expertise fighting in blue water/etc.
The second is maintaining organizational structure which features redundant and parallel chains of command up to the level of civilian control.
Hypothetically, if an army can’t fight at sea, and a navy can’t fight inland… it would most likely take both that army and that navy combined to pull off a coup. As long as the civilians who are supposed to be in charge of this army and navy can maintain separated chains of command, this isn’t likely to happen.
The sweet-spot is three separate chains of command. With three roughly ‘equal’ services, if any single service went bad, it could be crushed by the other two. In the US context, before the separation of the Air Force from the Army, to the extent that the Marines are part of the Navy, that 3-way split didn’t exist.
Above a three-way split, the costs of adding redundancy is usually going to swamp any additional such benefits. In the US context, to the extent that the Marines are (operationally) not part of the Navy, we are already paying that price.
And, of course… Adding a new Space Force at the root, so to speak, is/would simply just be a hideously expensive, and lol-tastical, vanity project for D.Trump.
I bet Trump just got off the phone with Bolsonaro.
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But, since I’m in quite a Democrat bashing mood today, let’s not forget that Obama and Clinton took exactly the same position in a very similar situation in Honduras.
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Balsonaro agreed to do Trump a favor, though
He agreed to do America a favor, Trump would never ask for personal favors.
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Meanwhile, Japan is spending $600M on the worlds largest neutrino detector.
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