The Air Force Association may not be the best source for Military Space Policy

The Air Force Association (AFA) is dedicated to being the “premier professional military and aerospace education association in the nation” with a mission to “promote a dominant United States Air Force and a strong national defense, and to honor Airmen and our Air Force Heritage.” Arguably, the AFA, and its predecessor organizations dating back to the Army’s Aviation News Letter at the dawn of aviation, have been hugely successful in their advocacy, guiding the nation in the development of the most powerful and effective air arm in history. Many an airman and aspiring airmen has spent countless hours poring over every issue of the AFA’s magnificently written and illustrated Air Force Magazine, inspired by the history, news, aircraft diagrams and advocacy contained within the pages. (This author among them, still.) 

In light of such a rich and inspiring history, it is extremely disappointing to see the AFA take an advocacy position as divergent from their foundational ethos as their published statement against Space Force released on 17 September 2018. In the release, timed to nearly correspond with the anniversary of the United States Air Force, the AFA articulates the following rationale against the creation of an independent space service:

1. The question of standing up a new armed service for space is not “if,” but “when,” and the “when” is the time all the conditions for creating a separate armed force for space are met.[1]
2. The standup of a combatant command (US Space Command) to focus on warfare in space is appropriate. Rapidly reducing US space capability gaps, while re-establishing US Space Command, is the best way to address advancing threats to space.
3. From an employment perspective effects from air and space have been integrated and are indivisible. The US Air Force may want to reflect this reality so it is better understood by Americans by considering renaming the US Air Force to the US Aerospace Force.
4. The Space Force proposal is a resource question writ large: Too much mission, too few dollars. Standing up a separate space bureaucracy amplifies the problem by driving more money to a headquarters function, not space operations. Congress has constrained space capabilities, not the Air Force, by underfunding the service.
5. Currently there are no space arms which are fundamental to setting up an armed service. Constraints to fully-weaponized space capability must be debated and changed by Congress to allow the Air Force to mature space warfare theory and concepts of operation for war in, from, and through space—these are prerequisites for establishing a new Armed Service. Realistic concepts of operation to hold an enemy at risk from space must be considered and debated before establishing a separate space armed force.

These positions and the underlying rationale do not create a compelling argument against Space Force, rather they vary from being internally contradictory to irrelevant, unsupported or factually incorrect. The initial premise of conditions based timing is presented without any specification as to what those conditions might be. The “[1]” after the first point is a reference the AFA’s Mitchell Institute paper: Organizing Space Power: Conditions for Creating a US Space Force. The authors of Organizing Space Power provides a conditions based approach to determining when a Space Force is needed in which they stipulate the following five conditions must be met: 1) Societal vision of the United States as a Space Power; 2) the demonstrated ability of spacepower to fulfill peacetime and commercial roles; 3) Political will for the requisite legislation to create a new service; 4) a broadly understood and accepted theory of spacepower and space warfare theory; and 5) the demonstrated ability to produce direct combat effects in and from space using theory-based space-power strategies “that were a co-equal contributor to joint multi-domain operations.” The authors derived this methodology from the strategic approach of interwar airpower advocates within the United States Army promoting an independent Air Force.

In the Mitchell Institute paper, the authors assess that the first two conditions are met, the third condition is at least partially extant, but that the fourth and fifth conditions are not. Before addressing the validity of this assessment, it is first necessary to recognize the inherent shortcomings of the model. This model, assumes that conditions for an independent space service must mirror historic conditions which led to the development of a separate Air Force. This was not a method or requirement for determining the relevance or timing any of the previous services (Army, Navy or Marines) and it is not a definitive model for determining future services. Even in the case of the Air Force, the model is largely an after the fact construction, rather than being the road map executed by the founding airmen.

Further, the model’s assumptions of how circumstances developed during the interwar years fails to recognize that beginning in 1918, with the creation of the U.S. Army Air Service, airmen operated with a great deal of independence from the traditional army allowing a level of evolutionary development which for space organizations has been stifled in the Air Force and DoD. Arguably, the elimination of US Space Command in 2002 demonstrates a deliberate choice within DoD to prevent the kind of evolutionary development necessary for creating the theory and strategies the authors stipulate as necessary for a separate space service. This can be clearly seen in the case of the technical development of space operators and support personnel. In the Air Force flying community, there are completely different and separately managed career fields for pilots, navigators, weapons controllers and other aircrew. Within the pilot career, there is separate training, development and management for fighter, airlift, helicopter, bomber and unmanned aerial system pilots. Within each of these communities there is further separation by mission and platform.  While not universal, for the most part, a pilot will spend most of a career with a single platform and when changing aircraft will stay within the larger mission area. In the Air Force space community, on the other hand, there is but a single career field in which all space operators are treated as essentially interchangeable. Space lift, offensive counter space, defensive counter space, space situational awareness, missile warning, satellite command and control and space communications are distinctly different mission sets, requiring different knowledge, understanding and training. Within those mission spaces there are numerous unique weapon systems, which require further delineated training and understanding. A pilot might spend more than two-thirds of a twenty year career in the cockpit learning every nuance of their weapon system. A space operator will not be in the same weapon system for more than three years at a time and will likely spend a number of years doing jobs that are in no way related to space operations. This loss of expertise reduces the innovation of tactics, techniques and procedures to fully exploit the maximum capabilities of systems. It also, incidentally, insures that there are few space professionals with enough depth and experience in a given system to be as credible in force employment, presentation and capability requirements as their pilot counterparts are with respect to their aircraft. 

Additionally, the current force presentation model of services as entities tasked to organize, train and equip forces which are then presented to geographic combatants or joint task forces for employment makes modelling the creation of a contemporary organization on an historic counterpart untenable. Airpower was developed within services which employed that power. Today, the Air Force does not employ combat power. Joint Commanders execute combat operations. Thus the relationship between those who would organize forces and those whom employ them makes post-war conditions with respect to the development of air or space power unrepeatable. 

With respect to the authors’ assessment of their stated determinative conditions, their argument that there should be no Space Force since no broadly understood and accepted theory of space power and Space War theory exists is tenuous. The authors site Air Force doctrine to provide a broadly understood theory of airpower. Thus, the accepted and current definition of airpower is provided by an extant Air Force. Certainly in 1948, at the time of the Air Force’s creation, there was still ongoing debate about what airpower was and how best it could be employed, particularly between the Army and the Navy. But if the Air Force, as the nation’s steward of space power, isn’t creating doctrine and developing broadly understood and accepted theories of space power and space war, can it really be argued that the Air Force is the right organization to manage military space?

The final condition stipulated by the authors, the demonstrated ability to produce direct combat effects from space, is only unmet because of the authors’ unstated choices to ignore competitor’s war fighting space capabilities (Chinese and Russian anti-satellite weapons), overlook the fact that every maneuverable space object is a potential co-orbital weapon, disassociate Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (the ultimate example of force application through space) from the debate, discount proven, but un-deployed, warfighting capabilities (such as the U.S. air-launched direct ascent anti-satellite missile) and define combat effects from a purely kinetic perspective. This discussion will be further developed below in response to the last of AFA’s rationales.

These specified conditions are ill conceived as the principle measure of justification because they distract from the most pressing condition-based assessment which must be: Is the United States existentially dependent on an assured national ability to decisively project military power or influence through the control and exploitation of space and to prevent adversaries from doing the same? The answer to that question is yes, and not in the future, but in the here and now.

The AFA’s second stated position, that the standup of a new US Space Command (USSPACECOM) will reduce capability gaps and is the best way to address space threats, is not a cohesive argument. First, it is unclear if USSPACECOM is going to be a functional command for integrating space forces in support of war-fighters similar to how US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) is with strategic mobility assets or a warfighting command for orbit like US Indo-Pacific Command (USPACOM) is for that region of the world, or some counter-doctrinal hybrid. As stated above, the US military’s doctrinal approach to force presentation is that individual uniformed services develop domain specific capabilities and personnel which are then presented to joint warfighters for employment. The stand-out exception to this practice is US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is not repeatable in space. SOCOM requires service derived and provided domain specific systems, capabilities and experience which the command then modifies and specializes for their unique mission sets. In the case of the orbital domain, there is not much possibility of other domain specific, service derived capability (tanks, planes, ships, guns) being modified for operations on orbit. Additionally, functional commands operate in domains (air, land and sea) which have dedicated forces organized, trained and equipped, by a uniformed service, to secure the domain and protect their operations. Utilizing USSPACECOM as a USTRANSCOM like force integrator, which is a predictable outcome of creating the unified command without an independent Space Force, will have marginal value for organizing, training, equipping and developing space warfighting capabilities, because that is a role for services, not Joint Commands. 

The AFA’s third supposition, that “from an employment perspective effects from air and space have been integrated and are indivisible” and thus the US Air Force might be renamed the US Aerospace Force is, in the first case, contradictory to the AFA’s first assertion that “The question of standing up a new armed service for space is not ‘if,’ but ‘when...’” Either space and air are a continuous and integrated domain and the requisite organization is “indivisible,” or they are not and the only issue regarding the creation of a Space Force is, ‘when is the right time to do it?’ Both arguments cannot be valid. In the second case, the linkage between air and space as warfighting domains is slight. The domains are so dissimilar that differing physical laws are used to define them: Newtonian in the atmosphere, Keplerian on orbit.  Command and control of Air Forces are managed through region Air Operations Centers (which were formerly called Air and Space Operations Centers) while space forces are directed from a single Combined Space Operations Center. Aircraft do not fly in and out of orbital space. Air and space are no more integrated than are air and land or land and sea. Excepting launch and reentry, space craft do not operate in the atmosphere, on land, air or sea, unlike aircraft which must take off and return to the ground (or a ship) with every sortie; arguably a much stronger linkage. Moreover, a potential name change does little to effect the status quo, except for perhaps diluting the national understanding of airpower.

The AFA’s fourth statement arguing that budget must be the principle consideration in the Space Force debate as well as attributing “constrained space capabilities” solely to congressional funding decisions, requires elucidation. While certainly the US congress has constitutionally directed budgetary authority over the military, the services provide the legislature with priorities and exercise some discretion with the execution of funds and greater discretion with internal organizational constructs. The Secretary of the Air Force’s top acquisition priorities are: F-35 (fighter), B-21 (bomber) and KC-46 (tanker.) None of these are space systems. That is an Air Force choice, and probably the right choice for a military air arm to make, but these would not be the top priorities of a space arm, and the absence of a space system from the list is telling. Neither the Army nor the Navy list space systems as top priorities either.

The Air Force also organizes space units differently than their flying counterparts. For example, the 21st Space Wing operates at least eight distinctly different weapon systems, being employed by nine different operations squadrons, plus an Operations Support Squadron (OSS) with 23 operating locations (six of which are sites or bases owned by the wing) around the planet in support of five distinctly different mission sets (Offensive Counterspace, Defensive Counterspace, Space Situational Awareness, Missile Warning and Missile Defense.) By contrast a Bomber Wing might have as many as three operations squadrons and an OSS operating a single weapon system, from one or two operating locations in support of the long range strike or close air support missions. An Air Refueling Wing might have four squadrons operating a single weapon system and responsibility for a single operating location. Fighter Wings may have as few as two operational squadrons. As stated above in the discussion on personnel development, the crushing together of space mission sets restricts the amount of expertise developed by operators, support personnel or leaders, provides unruly spans of control and incidentally limits the number of leadership positions available. These organizational factors are as significant as any budgetary consideration in the constraining of innovation and capability development in military space.

The AFA’s final rationale argues that there are no space arms, no mature space warfare theory and no concepts of operations for war in, from, and through space. As indicated above, if the U.S. military is not planning for war in, on and through orbital space, then that is the single most compelling argument for the creation of Space Force and a change to the status quo. For assuredly adversaries of the US are planning to fight in space to exploit the nearly undefended center of gravity which American space dependence reveals. The requirement for a mature warfighting theory, on the other hand, is a contrived concept. While there are some theories from the likes of Clausewitz, Gray and Sun Tzu that are applicable across time and domain most of what passes for mature theory is little more than the current version of ever evolving doctrine designed to deal with charging technology and situational realities. Simply based on extant military practice, doctrine and assumptions, one can quickly derive a valid theory of space power. For instance: Spacepower is the ability to project military power or influence through the control and exploitation of space to achieve strategic, operational or tactical objectives. The following assumptions underlie spacepower theory: 1) Rapid launch cycles, debris mitigation and orbital strike and defense capabilities are manageable problems; 2) Space superiority is a prerequisite for all other military operations; 3) The advent of military space exploitation was a revolution in military, civil and commercial affairs; 4) Military Space Professionals are a uniquely skilled and qualified group of people and they alone can understand the proper employment of spacepower. As with all theory, this would likely evolve over time predicated on experience and changing conditions, but to argue that what is presented here is any less valid than the theories in place at the birth of the Air Force is, at best, disingenuous.

The argument that there are no space arms or concept of operations is also highly misrepresentative. First there is Joint Publication 3-14, Chapter II-2, which provides for space control doctrine (the AFA mistakenly associates Space Control as its own nebulously presented function rather than as a method of force application, providing yet another indication that those making the statement do not recognize orbit as potential battle space.) The Joint Publication is augmented by Air Force Annex document 3-14. All of which support Department of Defense Space Policy Directive 3100.01 which states in section 4c:

In order to improve space mission assurance and deter attacks against U.S. or allied interests, DoD will:

(1)   Shape the operational space environment through the normalization of DoD space activities and the integration of space-based capabilities into operational plans in a way that promotes the safety, stability, and security of the space domain.

(2)   Contribute to stability by building coalitions that enhance collective security capabilities, preserving decision space, and supporting appropriate de-escalation options during crisis.

(3)   Mitigate the benefits to an adversary of attacking U.S. or allied space systems by enhancing the resilience of DoD’s space enterprise and by ensuring space capabilities are available to support and enable operations.

(4)   Possess and integrate capabilities, not limited to space, to respond to an attack on U.S., allied, and partner space using all appropriate elements of national power.

Even if deeper operational concepts were non-existent, which seems unlikely, that would represent a shortfall in meeting the requirements of current policy and would be yet another argument for why a service dedicated to the military space mission is needed now.

Finally, there is no doctrinal or historic precedent that demands all warfighting capability must be kinetic. From a more operational perspective, official Air Force unit web pages demonstrate that there are space control forces deployed in support of the current fights in the USCENTCOM area of responsibility. These forces provide non-kinetic battlefield effects vital to the warfighter. Further, the employment of global positioning system guided weapons, precise timing, space-based theater missile warning and the dependence on space based environmental monitoring and communications results in battlefield effects that impact combat outcomes. All of these capabilities are dependent on the ability to project military power and influence through access to and the control and exploitation of space.  Add to this Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles which launch from the ground and travel through space before re-entering the atmosphere to strike terrestrial targets (a clear example of force application through space) and extant warfighting capabilities, like the afore mentioned ASM-135 air-launched anti-satellite missile (which did not receive strong advocacy from the Air Force) along with known adversary counterspace systems and it becomes obvious that there is great potential for orbital war fighting. Further, in low earth orbit objects are moving in excess of 14,000 miles per hour. At that speed, any object which can be maneuvered, can be used as a destructive weapon against another space object. This means that there are currently over 2,000 potential co-orbital weapons already in space. The fact that no one wants orbital conflict it to occur, as one assumes is the case with all warfighting, does not negate the risks of ignoring its potential, since doing so will increase its likelihood.

                The decision to create a Space Force will be made by national leaders concerned with funding, commerce, infrastructure and domestic security as well as myriad political considerations. The national security debate to inform that decision should center not on parochial service considerations, but on the best possible defense organization for ensuring national security. This debate is relevant and there are diverse, yet valid positions which could be defended on all sides, but the AFA’s statement does not advance the dialog in a meaningful way or assure that national decision makers are fully witting of the risks of choosing to act on space force or of choosing not to. As with all such choices, there is a balance which must be struck between ends, ways and means in order to mitigate risk. Over emphasis on budgetary concerns (the means) detracts from the innovation to find better ways of operating while simultaneously diverting planners from the vital ends the nation seeks to achieve. All the while risk continues to grow. This in no way impugns the motives of the AFA, the Mitchell Institute or the framers of their arguments. These people are thoughtful, dedicated and absolutely necessary advocates for airpower; but airpower’s greatest acolytes may not, after all, be the best source to inform the national understanding of spacepower.

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I considered using the pseudonym, Robert Baratheon for this article since I could stand to lose some weight and my career is destined to end even before Ned Stark’s, but decided there was little point in doing so.

The expressed opinions are the author's own and do not reflect the official policy of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the Joint Forces Staff College or the United States Air Force.