WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Monday that he would direct the Defense Department and the Pentagon to create a new Space Force -- an independent sixth branch of the armed forces.
Trump has floated this idea before -- in March, he said he initially conceived it as a joke -- but has offered few details about how the Space Force would operate.
Trump said Monday that the branch would be "separate but equal" from the Air Force. Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would oversee its creation.
Saying that he does not want "China and other countries leading us," Trump said space was a national security issue.
Turning to seek out Dunford, Trump said, "General Dunford, if you would carry that assignment out, I would be very greatly honored also. ... Where's General Dunford? General? Got it?"
Dunford appeared to acknowledge the order, responding, "we got it." But the directive seemed to take defense officials by surprise. Creating a new joint military command is largely the purview of Congress, which would have to provide the authority and any funding or shifting of money to a new unit.
Pentagon spokesman Dana White said that the department understands the president's guidance, and is working on the matter while taking into consideration the implications for intelligence operations for the other services. "Working with Congress, this will be a deliberate process with a great deal of input from multiple stakeholders," she said.
The Outer Space Treaty, which the United States signed in 1967, bars states from testing weapons and establishing military bases on the moon and other celestial bodies. It also prohibits the placement of weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth. But the treaty has no enforcement mechanism -- indeed, the Air Force's unmanned space plane, the X-37B, has completed several clandestine missions.
Trump has floated creating a Space Force for months, but the idea goes back at least a year to a proposal by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, and Cooper, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, argued that it made sense to have a "Space Corps," a separate branch of service with its own four-star general serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Under their plan, it would have reported to the Department of the Air Force, in similar fashion to how the Marine Corps reports to the Department of the Navy.
Last fall, that proposal was scrapped amid resistance from senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, who said it would create unnecessary costs and bureaucracy.
"I oppose the creation of a new military service and additional organizational layers at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting functions," Mattis said in October in a memo to Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Some are worried that the Space Force would duplicate existing efforts. The Air Force already maintains a Space Command, for example.
The Defense Department is already in the middle of a congressionally mandated review of the space force issue. The study began in March, with an interim review due in August and a final report due Dec. 31. It's not clear if the president's comments Monday were meant to override or influence that study.
The announcement was made at a meeting of the National Space Council, at which Trump signed a new space policy directive aimed at reducing debris in Earth's orbit. The policy sets up new guidelines for satellite design and operation, as well as tracking the growing amount of clutter in space.
But, citing the number of regulations his administration has dismantled since he took office, Trump warned those at the meeting, "Don't get too carried away."
The president also reasserted plans to land astronauts on the moon again and, eventually, Mars. But his administration has provided few specifics about the architecture of its moon program or a timeline for returning to the lunar surface.
Trump also encouraged SpaceX, Blue Origin and other nontraditional aerospace companies led by wealthy U.S. entrepreneurs to beat NASA to Mars.
"Just go ahead, if you beat us to Mars, we'll be very happy, and you'll be even more famous," he said. "As long as it's an American rich person, that's good, OK? They can beat us. We'll save a little money, and they can beat us, and we're taking full credit for it, don't worry about it."
Information for this article was contributed by Sarah Kaplan, Dan Lamothe and Aaron Gregg of The Washington Post; and by Lolita C. Baldor, Ken Thomas and Marcia Dunn of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/19/2018