On March 13, President Donald Trump gave a speech where he said the creation of a U.S. space force was a good idea. This gave new life to a recently defeated Congressional bill to create a space force out of the United States Air Force (USAF) despite strong Pentagon opposition. Why has the Pentagon and the USAF been so firmly opposed to the creation of a separate space force?
The conventional explanation is that it would add an unnecessary and expensive layer of bureaucracy at a time when the Pentagon and USAF budgets are stretched thin to meet global military needs. The real reason, however, is one that takes us a big step closer to disclosure of a USAF run secret space program.
Here is what Trump had to say about the creation of a space force in a speech at the U.S. Marines Corps Air Station Miramar, in San Diego:
In space, the United States is going to do Colonel [John] Glenn [the former astronaut] proud. We are finally going to lead again. … Very soon we are going to Mars… My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea. We may even have a Space Force. We have the Air Force. We’ll have the Space Force. We have the Army, the Navy.
According to House members proposing the creation of the space force, the USAF has been negligent in its responsibilities for “short-changing space programs.”
What the House members did not realize is that the USAF already has established a highly capable space force that has been operating secretly for at least two decades.
One might assume that such a space force would be located within the Air Force’s Space Command, which is among the USAF’s ten major commands. USAF Space Command has as its primary mission the “development and operation of military space and cyberspace technologies”.
However, while Space Command provides the advanced technologies for space operations, it is from another of the Air Force’s ten major commands that personnel for a secret space force is trained and deployed.
According to eyewitness testimonies it is Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) that provides personnel for a USAF run secret space program. Before examining these testimonies, it’s worth pointing out that AFSOC has been active since May 22, 1990.
It is headed by a three star USAF General (currently Lt. Gen. Marshall B. Webb) and its headquarters is Hurlburt Field, Florida. Currently almost 16,000 airmen are deployed with AFSOC, their nickname is “Air Commandos” and their motto is “Any place. Any time. Anywhere”.In short, Air Force Special Operations provides the trained combat personnel for special operations using advanced aerospace technologies and infrastructure developed by the USAF generally, and Space Command in particular. This is analogous to how the US Navy provides the ships and technologies, which deploy Marines as a specialized combat force anywhere around the world.
The primary mission of Air Force Special Operations Command is to provide Air Force units for U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), which is one of the Pentagon’s nine unified combatant commands. These combatant commands are organized into six regions covering the entire planet, and three functional areas of responsibility such as Special Operations and strategic nuclear weapons.
