While the Space Force makes sense in strategic and practical terms, the service’s creation marks an ominous signal for those hoping that space would always be a peaceful plane shared amongst all humankind.
Why did the United States establish its Space Force in 2019?
To answer that question, one must first understand the historical context of America’s role in space exploration over the past 80 years. Let us back up to the 1950s—and the true beginning of the Space Age.
The concept of sending artificial objects, and potentially humans, into space was well-understood by the turn of the 20th century. Early engineers such as Robert Goddard designed successively more powerful rockets. Before these rockets were used for breaching the atmosphere, they were put to much deadlier use during the Second World War—particularly under Nazi Germany, whose scientists developed the V-2 rocket and used it to rain terror upon Allied cities. After the war, these scientists and their rocket technology were vigorously poached by both the United States and the Soviet Union, and both sides incorporated them into their own space programs.
The Soviet Union’s launching of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 marked a searing moment in the public’s consciousness and the beginning of a new military age. Launching the Space Race between the Americans and the Soviets, Sputnik inspired the great powers to assert themselves in the heavens—which many assumed would be the last frontier of warfare, and the most consequential.
How the Space Race Began
Military historians contended that space would be the ultimate domain of war on Earth. These strategists followed a simple syllogism. The Romans had ruled the world in antiquity because they dominated the land, at a time when controlling the land meant controlling the world. Centuries later, the British had ruled the world because they dominated the sea at a time that controlling the sea meant controlling the world. The Americans, with their tremendous air force during the Second World War, ruled the world because they dominated the sky at a time when controlling the sky meant controlling the world. Sooner or later, the next great power to control space would control the world.
With this in mind, the Americans and the Soviets each committed immense resources towards enhancing their capabilities in space, racing one another to dominate the other there. The respective resource commitment manifested itself in ostensibly scientific pursuits—i.e. sub-orbital flights, then orbital flights, then rendezvous and docking, space walking, moon landing, and so on. Of course, though these scientific pursuits were ostensibly peaceful, the military applications were obvious—as was the fact that both nations used military pilots to conduct them.
But then something odd happened, seemingly in contrast with the heightened tensions of the ongoing Cold War. The Space Race fizzled. During the mid-1960s, the Americans pulled decisively ahead, and the Soviets faded. By the time of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing—which the Kremlin never managed to replicate, even today—the consensus was that the Americans had “won” the race.
Critically, as the Soviet Union fell further behind the United States, they warmed to international efforts to demilitarize space, reasoning that it meant the domain could not be used against them. In 1967, both the U.S. and the USSR agreed to the UN’s Outer Space Treaty, which banned stationing weapons of mass destruction in outer space and military activities on celestial bodies. In 1975, six years after the moon landing, the two nations conducted a joint space mission: the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), in which they docked their respective spacecraft in orbit and shook hands, marking a new era of space exploration for peaceful purposes. Fears of a weaponized space, and fears of an Earth beholden to the dominant power there, began to feel overblown and hyperbolic.
Space Competition Has Been Renewed
Time passed, and the Cold War ended. Space remained demilitarized, in the sense that it never became a stationing point for nuclear weapons that could be fired down toward Earth—a constant fear of proliferation experts throughout the Cold War.
But as military and commercial satellites proliferated in orbit, space nonetheless became central to the military operations of the most advanced nations, with space-based capabilities undergirding the communications, navigation, intelligence, and other critical functions of nations like the U.S. and China. Similarly, it became integral to the lifestyle and economy of everyday citizens, who relied upon space-based technologies for their own communications, finances, entertainment, livelihoods, and commerce.
Accordingly, the preservation of space-based capabilities became of profound interest to the nations who depended so much on those space-based capabilities. And as space has become increasingly congested and contested, preservation of one’s interests in space has become increasingly difficult.
For the United States, which recognized the growing importance of space in so many aspects of American life—including and perhaps most importantly national security—the answer was to finally create a branch of the military dedicated to guarding U.S. interests in space. Crucially, although the move took place during President Donald Trump’s contentious first term, it received bipartisan support in Congress, and polls have consistently shown widespread approval from the American people.
“The U.S. Space Force was established on Dec. 20, 2019, creating the first new branch of the armed services since 1947,” the U.S. Space Force website reads. “The establishment of the USSF resulted from widespread recognition that space is a national security imperative. When combined with the growing threat posed by strategic competitors in space, it became clear that there was a need for a military service focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain.”
Still, while the Space Force makes sense in strategic and practical terms, the service’s creation marks an ominous signal for those hoping that space would always be a peaceful plane shared amongst all humankind.
About the Author: Harrison Kass
Harrison Kass is a senior defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
Image: Shutterstock / luckyluke007.
