Happy Birthday to the U.S. Space Force!

The U.S. Space Force (USSF) turns five years old today. The youngest branch of the U.S. military was established on December 20, 2019, with the passage of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. Here are a few things to know about the newest U.S. military service. 

Space force was created to address the growing importance of space to both national security and everyday life. Just as the U.S. Marine Corps is part of the Department of the Navy, space force is organized under the Department of the Air Force. The new service’s ties to the air force are understandable. It was created by merging twenty-three different air force units, and Air Force General John W. “Jay” Raymond was named its first chief of space operations. In 2022, another air force veteran, General B. Chance Saltzman, succeeded Raymond as chief of space operations. The air force’s influence over the USSF will likely continue for some time—it handles much of the space force’s logistics work.

Space force’s mission is to “secure our nation’s interests in, from, and to space.” Its specific responsibilities include operating missile detection networks and the Geographic Positioning System (GPS) constellation—the set of satellites that your smartphone, among other applications, uses to pinpoint your location. The USSF also monitors both intentional and unintended threats (e.g., “space junk”) to the more than 7,500 satellites active in space—more than two-thirds of which U.S. owners operate. And it works to enhance U.S. space strategy, including for commercial uses of space, and the international rules governing space.  

Members of space force are called “guardians.” Space force’s motto is Semper Supra, or “Always Above.” As space force hits its fifth birthday, it has 9,500 uniformed guardians with plans to reach 9,800 this fiscal year. To put that number in perspective, the next smallest service, the coast guard, has 39,900 active-duty service members. Space force’s relatively small size is intentional; the hope is that staying small will enable it to remain agile. So don’t expect the space force to ever rival the size of the air force (324,000 active-duty personnel), let alone the army (452,000 active-duty personnel). 

Because it is a new service, all mid- and senior level officers in space force began their military careers in another service. Space force does not have a university to call its own as four of the other five military services do. Space force did begin its first consolidated officer training course this fall. Run out of Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, it provides twelve months of skills-training on critical space-related technologies, operations management, satellite deployment, and other topics so that space-force officers have a shared baseline understanding of their operations. In a separate innovation, space force is partnering with Johns Hopkins University to create a postgraduate school for its officers rather than establish its own war college as the army, navy, and air force have.

Although space force is the first independent service of its kind in U.S. history, it isn’t the U.S. military’s first space-centered program. Shortly after World War II ended, the Army Air Forces (the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force) turned its attention and funding to satellite and rocket technology. In 1985, the Defense Department organized U.S. Space Command, which was charged with planning military operations in the domain of space. In 2002, Space Command was absorbed into U.S. Strategic Command. It was reactivated as a distinct combatant command in 2019 and now works closely with space force. Meanwhile, U.S. military leaders and policymakers debated the need for an independent branch for space for years before President Donald Trump pushed for the USSF’s establishment. 

Space force stands separate from NASA, the United States’ civilian space agency. The two, however, are frequent collaborators, and the first guardian went into space this year as part of the NASA SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station. Space force and NASA also share information on near-earth objects to help inform efforts to construct a planetary defense strategy against asteroids. USSF also cooperates with international partners, such as Japan and Norway. 

General Saltzman delivered a keynote address on the state of the space force this past September.

He summarized space force’s mission this way: “When it was once only necessary to access and use the domain for national benefit, now an essential job of the Space Force is, excuse me, to control the domain. And that means achieving space superiority so that we can continue to access and exploit the domain. Also, denying our adversaries the use of space capabilities against us. The Space Force secures our nation’s interests in, from and into space.”

Earlier this year, space force published a white paper titled “Competitive Endurance: A Proposed Theory of Success for the U.S. Space Force.” The document warns:

The increasingly contested operational environment in space threatens the satellites the Joint Force depends on. Equally alarming, our pacing challenge, China, has invested heavily in developing its own military space capabilities. The resulting space-enabled kill web provides them with a long-range precision strike capability that can hold our land, sea, and air forces at risk before we are close enough to project combat power. To protect our joint force the U.S. must be ready to prevent any strategic rival from effectively employing space or counterspace capabilities in a conflict.

To that end, space force argues for a policy of “competitive endurance” in which U.S.  “adversaries must never be desperate enough or emboldened enough to pursue destructive combat operations in space.”

The National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, has a free exhibit on the USSF. The exhibit showcases some of the most important rockets and spacecraft developed over the past decades and the stories of America’s brave astronauts who paved the way for space operations to become such an important part of the U.S. military.

The growing military and commercial role of space means that the importance of space force will only increase in the future. So Happy Birthday to the U.S. military’s youngest branch, and a tip of the cap to all new and incoming guardians of the U.S. Space Force for their service. 

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this post.