The "soul" of the Space Force?

"Finally, the debate that should have begun over a year ago has now arrived in earnest. Two different visions for the future of the Space Force have recently been presented to the public.

One is from the president of the Air Force Association, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright. The other by the currently serving Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast.

These two men encapsulate the two major factions that exist in the Space Force debate. Wright expresses the Air Force’s preferred “warfighting domain” school. Kwast is the most senior and vocal proponent of the maritime-inspired faction that has begun to call itself the “blue water” space school. Which school America chooses to first lead the Space Force will have serious repercussions to the United States for decades to come."  The Hill

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I realize that such a post will be of little interest to the people who think a dollar spent on space is a dollar wasted as well as the foreign and domestic Marxists who want all US attention focused on what they  hope will soon be a revolution that makes what is now the US the power house that achieves the world wide communist state that is the object of their desire.

For the rest of us pilgrims it is probably clear that the US will continue to exist for a while and will continue to have armed forces.  Among these will be the US Space Force, a separate service within the Department of the Air Force much as the USMC is a separate service within the Department of the Navy.

The author of the linked article posits a division of thought as to what the base mission of the Space Force should be.

On the one hand a retired Lt Gen named Wright wants a Space Force analogous to a "brown water" (inshore) navy that would be closely focused on support of warfighters on earth locked in combat against a putative enemy which he does not hesitate to name as China.

On the other hand we have an argument made by a second USAF LT Gen named Kwast who wants there to be a Space Force inspired by the "blue water" maritime concepts of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the author of "The Influence of Sea Power on History."  Kwast sees a need for a Space Force operating way out beyond the orbit of the ISS to influence the economy of the world through the domination of international exploitation of space resources.  In other words the beginning of a true space navy.  Kwast is still on active duty so I suppose he sees himself as a candidate to head the Space Force.

Uniforms?  I suggest black on black.  pl

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/458509-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-space-force

Comments

[Barbara Ann]

Agreed. Priority has to be ensuring the US wins the race to make extraterrestrial resource exploitation profitable. Tax dollars may be needed on incentives to achieve this goal and military strategy should follow from this imperative. As TTG says, so long as 'brown water' superiority is retained it will be possible to blockade any competitor's off-world colonial expansion long into the future.

[CK]

So, China or India or FRS launch an exploratory to Mars, strictly scientists and other civilians. Will the USSF brown water version destroy them on their launch pad, or as they exit low earth orbit. It is so easy to imagine blockades and sanctions when the size disparity is large between the sanctioned and the sanctioner. The problem is that both are acts of war; the aggressor has to win every action.
But on the positive side, their are no known aboriginals on any of the asteroids or nearby planets (Marvin the Martian does not count) so no problem with exploiting the natives.

[CK]

It is 01:30, almost, on a beautiful late summer afternoon. As I sit here reading the deep thoughts of the committee of correspondence regarding the USSF, I have questions.
If the brown water model is the appropriate one, then why should it be part of the AIR Force? Would not the USCG be a better and more appropriate model. If instead the blue water force projection model is the appropriate one, would not the USN be more appropriate. And if the appropriate model is both the brown water for close in and the blue water for force projection in an entirely different pair of environments would it not make more sense to have an independent Interplanetary force. Consider the way the USAF has tried to handle the A-10 and succeeded in handling the SR-71, would you really trust them to treat the USSF any better? Space is not the atmosphere without air, one cannot parachute from deep space to the ground, changing directions in orbit is nasty on the body and brain. Consider how difficult it is to pull 9 gravities within the atmosphere now consider how many g's you would need to withstand in a LEO to do a 45 degree turn.
In an earlier post on solar sails the Col. pointed out how easy it is to gain speed in space if one is merely patient. Inertia is nowhere near so accommodating.

[Philippe Truze]

Near Space : a today necessity.
Far Space : a tomorrow necessity.
Besides, the first helps the implementation of the second.

[The Twisted Genius]

No, my grandparents came here before the war. My father learned English from some Lithuanian nuns when he started Catholic grammar school in Connecticut.

[turcopolier]

TTG
so they left Lithuania because it had been annexed by the USSR?

[The Twisted Genius]

My grandfather got out during the interwar period. The interwar peiod was marked by three wars of independence against the Bolsheviks, the White Russians and the Poles followed shortly afterward by a minitary coup d'état. Four of his brothers that stayed never returned from the gulags. A few others got out after the war.

[Barbara Ann]

I don't think we are quite at the stage of destroying one another's scientific missions yet. I was thinking more of China trying to turn the Moon into Mischief Reef.

[English Outsider]

The language that's closest to Indo-Germanic, they say. Also the last European country to be converted. Those huge forests ...

And lost 20% of its population in the twelve years to 2016. What happened?

Off topic, but I'm reading some bad stuff about what's happening in the Donbas region. Also still shelling and some small scale fighting.

I don't know if you're still keeping an eye on that, but if so do you know what's really happening there?

[John Minehan]

Consider the Outer space Treaty (https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm) as it stands, it seems to create a "tragedy of the commons" scenario: where no one owns anything, no one bothers to maintain anything.

Yes, it is what is done in Antarctica, but to this point our interactions with it have been limited and we anticipate our interactions with space to be much broader, especially with Low Earth Orbit (at this point).

[John Minehan]

Nothing better to avoid "shiny, expensive, dysfunctional, unfocused, overreaching nonsense" than having to make money. Nothing clears your head more than having to face a board when your "great idea" loses money for a quarter

[John Minehan]

Your thought about the civilian contractors made me think about the Field Artillery, which started out (say, around the fall of Constantinople in 1453) as forces of civilian contractors (mercenaries, but very technical ones).

At least in the British Army, the last civilian parts of the Royal Regiment of Artillery (drivers and teamsters) were not incorporated formally into the Army until of Napoleonic Wars.

This might be how it goes with space.

[John Minehan]

The technology does not exist yet, but everyone is trying to develop it.

The historic analogy is less St. Brendan and more just before Henry the Navigator.

[CK]

As opposed to the USA turning the moon into Diego Garcia or Gitmo, or India turning the moon in Jammu and Kashmir, or Russia turning the moon into Kaliningrad oblast? Whichever nation gets there first will attempt to impose the power of the high ground. Climbing the gravity well is hard, throwing rocks back down it is easy and the math isn't even rocket science.
How do you and TTG suggest using the brown water space force to prevent other nations' colonial expansions into space? First strike? Contrived "orbital accident".

[turcopolier]

pB
What is the meaning of your mention of our relative ages? You think me senile? I remember sitting on the front porch with my father around 1950. the moon shone high. I said I though men would walk on the moon soon. He laughed and said that would not happen in my lifetime. You sound like him.

[turcopolier]

All

I think neither concept should dominate, but there is money to be made out there on the moon and in the asteroids and that will speed the "blue water" concept up in achieving dominance.

[Barbara Ann]

OK, so a better analogy is ships carrying ballistic missiles en route to Cuba. And yes, if persuasion & threats doesn't work, blow them out of the sky. An act of war? Certainly.

[CK]

One wonders how the Jupiter MRBMs were positioned at Turkey's Russian border months before the Cuban missile crisis.
It reads as though you are suggesting that the only armed vehicles to be allowed into space would be the US Brown or Blue variety. I suppose that might work if all the other nations were just bunches of worthy oriental gentlemen; they aren't. Five other nations have space vehicle capability right now. That is five other blue or brown space forces to deal with.

[CK]

Of course, when the USAF does realize that neither variety of space force will require butts in the ejection seats nor ejection seats the whole intellectual exercise will become moot. The TOP GUN model is morté https://www.rt.com/news/466637-okhotnik-drone-fresh-video/