Responding to the Mitchell Papers' "Organizing Space Power"

The notion of Space Force, simultaneously the subject of humorous memes and passionate debate, is at the forefront of military organizational discussion and future planning in the United States Department of Defense (DoD).  The President’s push for the development of an independent military space service to act as a responsible caretaker of military space responsibilities has been opposed by those determined that creating a new service would disrupt rather than expedite development of military space power. Congress is split with members of both parties aligning for and against the President’s stated position. These circumstances have prompted significant debate on the viability of an independent space service, the cost of its creation and the model by which it could be developed.

In Organizing Space Power: Conditions for Creating a US Space Force, (https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/a2dd91_2ff8dfe95e694f80b4139d05650843ed.pdf) Colonel Martindale and General Deptula (Mitchell Institute Policy Papers, Vol 16, 2018.) examine the creation of a notional US Space Force using a conditions-based approach. They argue that the “creation of a US Space Force is the right decision,” but that it is critical to define the conditions under which it is appropriate to stand-up another military service to avoid an “unwieldly bureaucratic load on the [DoD].” They stipulate the following five conditions derived from the strategic approach of interwar airpower advocates within the United States Army must be met: 1) Societal vision of the United States as a Space Power, 2) the demonstrated ability of space-power 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 Space Power and Space War 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 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. Why should this be the case? Did the Air Force, the Army or the Marine Corps model their justification on the conditions which led to the creation of the Navy? The individual services which exist now, do so because they align to the domains of historic conflict, the Air, the Land, the Littoral and the Sea. In each case, their creation was evolutionary and the organization existed in a defacto sense before their formal creation, but none were modeled on the conditions which had created the other. 

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, gaining new officer commissions in 1920 and being broken into a separate service corps in 1926.  This level of evolutionary development for space organization 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 article stipulates as necessary for a separate space service.

Finally, 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. 

Returning to the authors’ assessment, the argument that there should not yet be a Space Force since no broadly understood and accepted theory of Space Power and Space War theory exists is tenuous. What is the broad understanding of airpower? To define it, the authors site Air Force doctrine. 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. And still airpower theory evolves; in 1948 the Air Force defined airpower principally through the lens of strategic bombardment, today it is defined by the Air Force as quoted in the article: “the ability to project military power or influence through the control and exploitation of air, space and cyberspace to achieve strategic, operational or tactical objectives.” It seems reasonable, then that the definition of space-power must be the ability to project military power or influence through the control and exploitation of space to achieve strategic, operational or tactical objectives. Since the Air Force continues to define and redefine the common understanding and theory of airpower, is it not reasonable to expect that a more common appreciation of space power theory would be advanced by a space service?

Their final condition, the demonstrated ability to produce direct combat effects from space is only unmet because of an unstated choice to define combat effects from a kinetic perspective. According to official unit web pages there are space control forces deployed in support of the current fights in the USCENTCOM area of responsibility. These forces provide non-kinetic 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 weather data and communications results in battlefield effects that impact combat outcomes. All of these capabilities are dependent on “the ability to project military power or influence through the control and exploitation of space.” 

The authors’ stipulated conditions, while thought provoking 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 only possible answer is yes. Therefore the United States needs a force dedicated to developing and protecting that ability. To date, none of the other services can provide any such assurance despite their growing dependence on space based capabilities.

If the United States follows the authors’ model waiting for a set of conditions to occur, which fundamentally requires a space focused organization in order to transpire, then the nation must accept the likely loss of the very space capabilities on which the military, information and economic operations of the nation depend. Space is a domain for conflict. There will be combat in space, both kinetic and non-kinetic. The United States needs a Space Force to prevent wars in space and failing that, to win them.

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