New Delhi. In a major move towards enhancing American military might, President Donald Trump has launched space force, the first new US military service in more than 70 years.
Trump claimed a victory for one of his top national security priorities with the signing of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that includes the force, two days after being impeached by the House of Representatives.
It is part of a $1.4trillion government spending package – including the Pentagon’s budget – that provides a steady stream of financing for Trump’s US-Mexico border fence and reverses unpopular and unworkable automatic spending cuts to defence and domestic programmes.
“Space is the world’s new war-fighting domain,” Trump said during a signing ceremony at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. “Among grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we’re leading, but we’re not leading by enough, and very shortly we’ll be leading by a lot.”
Later on Friday, as he flew to his Florida resort aboard Air Force One, Trump signed legislation that will keep the entire government funded until 30 September.
Space force has been a reliable applause line at Trump’s political rallies, but for the military it is seen more soberly as an affirmation of the need to more effectively organise for the defence of US interests in space, especially satellites used for navigation and communication. The force is not designed or intended to put combat troops in space.
The defence secretary, Mark Esper, said: “Our reliance on space-based capabilities has grown dramatically, and today outer space has evolved into a warfighting domain of its own.” Maintaining dominance in space, he said, would now be space force’s mission.
The Space Force will be the sixth formal force of the US military, after the Army, Air Force, Navy, Navy Marines and Coast Guard.
Esper compared the Space Force’s creation to the landmark creation of a separate US Air Force in 1947, hived off from the Army after World War II in recognition that aerial war fighting was indeed a separate domain that would be important in the future.
The Defense Intelligence Agency warned in a report early this year that China and Russia have both developed “robust and capable” space services for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
“China and Russia, in particular, are developing a variety of means to exploit perceived US reliance on space-based systems and challenge the US position in space,” it said.
China already demonstrated it could shoot down a satellite with a ground-based missile in 2007.
