President Trump is considering developing a “Space Force” military branch

President Donald Trump has been talking about his big plans for the U.S. since even before he began his term, and now his ideas have officially transitioned from simply world-changing to definitely out of this world. The President wants to build a “Space Force” that will handle all space-related tasks and ventures apart from all other branches of the U.S. military, and it could be done sooner rather than later.

This is based on online reports where the president himself was said to have remarked that his new national security strategy involves considering space as a theater of war. As such, the idea of creating a so-called Space Force came to be, which would act as a separate branch of the military and would operate primarily outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.

According to President Trump, space is no different from the other areas wherein the military currently operates its main branches. “Space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea,” he explained. “We may even have a Space Force, develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have the Space Force.”

Upon first learning of this new plan for a Space Force, you might think that it was some kind of joke. Interestingly, it appears that it did start out that way, at least according to the POTUS himself. He’d said that he originally coined the term Space Force itself as a joke, and he did so during discussions about U.S. government spending and private investments in space. “I said, ‘maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force,’ and I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘what a great idea,’ maybe we’ll have to do that,” clarified Trump to an audience of Marines. (Related: DARPA is focusing on space as a the new great battlefront.)

Creating a designated branch of the military to handle all space military-related matters would be a massive undertaking, and would likely require many years of hard work. But in case the President is truly serious about his pronouncements, he’ll have some support. Back in June of 2017, a contingent of lawmakers created a proposal that centered around splitting the U.S. Air Force into two different branches. The first one would be the one dedicated to normal air force duties, meaning aviation. But the second one was going to be the one for space-related ventures.

At the time, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., issued a statement that made it clear how such actions should be viewed by the general public. “This is just the first step,” he said. “We will not allow the United States national security space enterprise to continue to drift toward a space Pearl Harbor.” Whether or not actual plans for the eventual space military branch already existed at the time, or if the machines, weaponry, and other equipment necessary to begin operations is already available hasn’t been made clear yet.

Do you think it’s necessary for the military to have a separate branch that takes charge of all space ventures from here on in? Would you prefer it over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which is the de facto space agency of the U.S. at the moment? These are the kinds of questions that need to be asked if this Space Force will ever become a reality.

Read more about future space missions at Space.news.

Sources include:

CNBC.com

CBSNews.com