If the Senate has its way, Gen. John Raymond will lead the new joint US Space Command, the existing Air Force Space Command, and the new Space Force. If this sounds both confusing and daunting, that’s because it is.

The HASC ‘Space Corps’ will be much cheaper than the Trump Administration’s plan for a Space Force, says CBO.

The $750 billion defense policy bill sticks with the administration’s topline, but huge fights loom with the House version. Prepare for a long, hot summer.

SDA Director Fred Kennedy steps down, amid turmoil within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin.

“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 Trump Administration’s Space Force proposal is “a canary in a very toxic space environment that is warning us about the challenges —  military competition, a sense of vulnerability, increasing capabilities for counterspace operations — that we are just not dealing with very well,” says Jessica West of Canada’s Project Ploughshares

SASC wants the Air Force and DoD “to come back to the oversight committee every single month” to explain how they are standing up the new Space Force — if it is finally approved by Congress.

CSIS’s Todd Harrison, who supports the proposal, says his odds on the Space Force being fully approved by Congress this year are currently “slightly less than 50 percent.”

The sea services have their own space specialists, but those personnel don’t only work on space — so who stays and who goes?