This will go nowhere. But one can always hope, right?
If anything a Space Force should be an offshoot of the Navy. The Air Force has no experience running long term isolated platforms.
Quote from: JBF on 04/05/2017 12:32 pmIf anything a Space Force should be an offshoot of the Navy. The Air Force has no experience running long term isolated platforms.Wrong. Thule, Shemya, Cavalier, Texas Towers, DEW line, etc
Any new Space Force would not be the offshoot of any of the existing services. It would be entirely separate, drawing appropriate personnel from all the services to fill the needed skill sets to get started. Eventually it would be staffed by new people drawn from civilian life in the same way that the existing services are staffed today.
Quote from: edkyle99 on 04/06/2017 04:03 pmBy the way, to the suggestion that the Air Force has no experience with "long-term isolated platforms": How about generations of GPS constellations? How about early warning sats in GEO and beyond that have lasted more than two decades? What about the Vela nuclear detection satellites that orbited one-third of the way to the Moon? That was pretty isolated! I think this thread segued into a weird discussion based upon the belief that somehow this would involve crews of human beings operating in space, and the Navy is better for that than the Air Force. That's not what is being proposed at all.But reality rarely slows down discussions in the policy section anyways, so I don't know why we should be surprised.
By the way, to the suggestion that the Air Force has no experience with "long-term isolated platforms": How about generations of GPS constellations? How about early warning sats in GEO and beyond that have lasted more than two decades? What about the Vela nuclear detection satellites that orbited one-third of the way to the Moon? That was pretty isolated!
Those are nothing compared to submarine operations and were always within driving distance of assistance.
The United States Space Marines has a nice ring to it! When I was a kid my best friend was an Army guy-millions of little soldiers, etc. I touted the Navy-my reasoning being they had not just ships ranging in size from PT Boats to Battleships, but also their own Air Force on the carriers, subs that could fire missiles off, and of course their own Army in the form of the Marines. Seriously, I may probably be in the minority here but I think the government has every right to have a non-commercially-driven ability to put and operate things in space, including manned and unmanned military assets if needed. Territorial greed will indeed follow humanity into the heavens, and sooner or later some entity is going to get greedy... Hopefully we can put that time off for quite awhile, but who knows? Of course, this is what reading to much Heinlein at an early age can do to you.
How would SAC fit in? It's pretty heavily involved in space ops, which you can't just separate it out of it's air ops. Does Rep. Rogers Intend for the NRO to be under this command? There are reasons it exists as a civilian (sort of) operation.