The U.S. Space Force is the nation’s newest military branch, signed into being on Dec. 20 with the sharp vertical strokes of Donald Trump’s presidential pen. It was part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Pentagon’s annual defense bill, with some dollars flowing to the Central Coast.
The bill will also direct the Department of the Interior to allot land to the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, a long sought-after goal for the tribe.
Though the branch was just given life on paper, the government has been ramping up its commitment to space for months.
The military recently re-established U.S. Space Command, a division of the Air Force tasked with space missions. It immediately set about modernizing infrastructure, including internet connectivity and space launch infrastructure at Vandenberg Air Force Base. That work is likely to continue with the much anticipated Space Force, which will be a new, separate branch of the military. It will draw resources and personnel from Space Command, which currently has operations at Vandenberg.
The base and space launch facility located west of Lompoc is the only facility in the country to test Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. It was home of the historic SpaceX landing of a rocket booster after launch, and it has been the home of the mysterious X-37B space plane, which launches and lands there, sometimes spending more than a year in space.
This year’s NDAA doubles down on the ambitions of the executive branch to prioritize space as a war front and the country’s capabilities to launch more satellites into space, quicker and more efficiently.
Some observers of U.S. defense say the Trump administration’s decision has been a long time coming.
“I have been a vociferous advocate of a space force as a separate service for decades now. It’s certainly a step in the right direction,” said John Pike, a defense analyst at globalsecurity.org. “The part I’m not happy about is staffing it only with Air Force personnel.”
His concern is that the missions of the Air Force will be superimposed onto space, what he sees as a different battleground requiring different strategies and solutions. The first step toward showing true commitment to the branch, he says, is simple.
“I want to see how long it takes them to get their own uniforms. You can tell if someone is a sailor a marine or a soldier,” he said. “I want it to be visually distinctive to give them a different identity.”
But the bigger problems for the Space Force and its presence at Vandenberg are budgetary and political. The Pentagon is shifting around funding for its naval contracts, Pike said, and for operations in north Africa.
“They’re trying to move around heavy furniture in this upcoming budget,” he said. “And that’s going to have an effect on the Space Force.”
The biggest peril to the branch, Pike said, is political. Pike said grousing among Democrats over the new branch is an indication that the Space Force may not survive past Trump’s administration.
But some Democrats have shown support for a Space Force presence at Vandenberg. U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris and Diane Feinstein along with U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) lobbied for the Space Force headquarters to be at Vandenberg.
“California [also] hosts the nation’s premier workforce for aerospace engineering and innovation, which would offer Space Command an unparalleled talent pool for defending our national interests in space,” they wrote in a May press release.
