“Given the DoD’s poor job of presenting how we would move people and what criteria would be used, the congressional pushback is expected,” says one Space Force proponent.

“I don’t trust the Air Force, on its own, given its existing structure to properly prioritize space,” Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith says.

The day before Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahn appears before the HASC, Chairman Smith hammers White House Space Force.

Military space programs have to navigate a maze of 60 agencies. Creating a Space Force may not make things simpler.

The “separate but equal” sixth service (don’t forget the Coast Guard) will be created in stages, because, as Pence finally admitted publicly, it “requires Congressional action.” And, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, admitted today, if Congress passed the relevant laws in a year that would “unprecedented.”

We’ve already got soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines and Coasties. If President Trump gets what he wants, we may now have spacemen — but the Senate may say no.

House Armed Services Committee pushes through most of the Trump administration’s budget requests, absent some of the usual fights. But the return of sequester looms large in 2020.

  UPDATED: Adds Changes To Air Force Space Command CAPITOL HILL: Principal DoD Space Advisor. Gone. Air Force’s new A-11 space staff. Kaput. Defense Space Council. Dead. And that’s really just the beginning of what the Senate and House Armed Services Committees hath wrought to national security space in the National Defense Authorization Act. The… Keep reading →

Over the past two years, America’s near-peer competitors have reorganized and integrated their air, deterrent, missile defense, cyber and space forces to make them more effective. But U.S. competitors aren’t just reorganizing; they are building and fielding capabilities that create new vulnerabilities for the U.S. in space. As Gen. Jay Raymond, head of Air Force… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Space Corps. It sounds cool. You get visions of space marines and pilots saving the universe. In their latest blast against the Air Force, though, Reps. Mike Rogers and Jim Cooper are more, well, down to earth. They argue that the failings of big-ticket programs such as OCX and FAB-T offer ammunition that a Space… Keep reading →