Seriously -- what is the need for a "Space Force?" What service does it provide that could not have been provided at a cheaper cost by the Air Force? .
Because the Air Farce is run by fighter jocks. Missileers were treated like stepchildren. One of the things X-37 is doing is paving the way for space based solar power, as wanted by Coyote Smith and others. The Air Force even balked at the idea of GPS and cruise missiles. Dewayne Day at The Space Review often writes about how space advocates had problems getting their own priorities out there.
The Clementine mission was made possible with SDI advances. I think that—in the past—folks on the Left viewed all this as just so much war mongering. Yet it was the Soviet R-7, not the B-52, that brought the future to us.
The problem is this: In the same way the Marines still get the dregs of the budget while still being under the heel of the carrier groupies that run the USN— Space Force is still part of the USAF.
I support Space Force because the military bloat is with the carrier groupies. Let us say there was a valid need to strike target X. When carrier groups telegraph punches, and when they lose every war game to submariners, it shows the fact that the Pentagon still thinks we are fighting the battle of Midway. Space should have done to the carrier what the carrier did to the battleship.
Space needs its own Billy Mitchell.
In terms of bloated military budgets—the reason Nikita pushed for missile development was because he knew it was *cheaper* to focus on missiles than to compete with the USA blue water navy for blue water Navy—or bomber for bomber. What broke the USSR was moving away from space and building conventional assets.
The Cold War/WWII idea of having bases, beans bodies all over the place—the expensive logistics? That costs you money. R-7 made money for Russia.
What is stupid is China building carriers now. Once their sailors build a constituency, they may try to get more money away from their space advocates. The fighter jocks are the problem. Cut them, give the A-10 to the Army, and use F-35 money for SPSS like Coyote Smith wants.
The taxpayers always got more return on space anyway.
If we must kill a branch—it should be the USAF. They took so very much money that the other services made note. So when space advocates came around, their duties were divvying up in other branches so as to keep them silenced, so that tanks planes and ships stayed the focus, and space advocates ranked below the janitor and got the broom closet.
