In contrast, I take a very low opinion of the creation of the space force. Normally the creation of a new division of the military has stemmed from a new domain that is being controlled by the command structure of another domain which is impeding their mission.
The Air Force had complete control over the domain of space, splitting space out didn't answer any real organizational problems.
IMO, the real forward looking decision would be to have created a cyber force. Apparently US Cyber Command is a shit show from having several seperate command hierarchies. And arguably the material conditions of the cyber domain are a greater present threat to the enforceable boundaries of the US.
> Normally the creation of a new division of the military has stemmed from a new domain that is being controlled by the command structure of another domain which is impeding their mission.
The Air Force is ran by pilots. Mostly former fighter pilots and the occasional bomber or transport pilot. This is even true to a lesser extent with the civilian leadership (for example Barbara Barrett was fond of flying F-18s). Not surprisingly, that focus on the air domain was reflected in the AF's budget priorities— countless instances of situations where space funding gets raided so that the Air Force can keep buying A-10s and F-35s.
There's also all kinds of bureaucratic problems that happen when space is a secondary concern for every branch, such coordination issues— GPS is a good example of this, where the Air Force was in charge of some segments while the Army was more or less responsible for building the actual GPS receivers. I would also argue that the sort of acquisitions that the Air Force often does (e.g. spend a bazillion dollars and a decade to develop a new bomber, then fly the same design for 50 years with only minor upgrades) is not going to fly in the longer term if applied to space.
> The Air Force had complete control over the domain of space, splitting space out didn't answer any real organizational problems.
Organizations have costrained focus and priority, like you and I do. I have all sorts of responsibilities, but certain ones are my top priorities and others I get to when I can. Lower priorities also can distract organizations. From what I understand space was not a priority of the US Air Force, which has long had a reputation for prioritizing fighters over everything else. It's perhaps analogous to the priority of Bing at Microsoft compared to search (or ads!) at Google.
I'm not saying the Space Force organizational design is good or bad, but that there are reasons to spin off functions from large organizations.
Knowing what I do about bureaucracies, the organizational problem it solved was more strategic than just that. To be agile enough to respond to space and cyber, the Executive branch needed something (like a startup) growing and changing and above all, adapting fast.
That administration was persuaded that the only way to counter China was to become more adaptable above all other things, and nobody in the military was doing it fast enough to meet this crititcal need - so they did what they knew worked, and he created a new competitor for all their budgets, and also made it the place that had to solve security in the biggest problem on the horizon, space.
I'd say to other orgs (to adapt an adage) that if you think space force was a solution without a problem, the problem may have been you. ;)
As I understand it, the primary organizational problem that the Space Force is solving is that there was no way to become a general if you were interested in space stuff, much in the same way that you're not going to make general if you were, say, a logistics officer.
Or, transplanting it to business terms, this is like creating a department of paper clips so that someone can now become a senior VP in charge of paper clips.
I'll take that job. Those nuggets get everywhere, checking if it looks like people are writing a letter, they probably have an Intelligence function second to none in any major business.
I've been working for the USSF since it split from the USAF. The split was a good thing because it moves the funding decisions for critical systems up a level. People mock the Space Force because it was created under Trump, but air and space really are such different domains that it needed to happen.
Aerospace military industrial stagnation under the airforce seemed pretty bad, from a lay observer, even knowing that NASA's derelict space flight capabilities before SpaceX are ostensibly a civilian domain.
I would trust the airforce and their corporate owners to be able to launch hundreds of ICBMs in a nuclear counter attack, or throw a lot of lead and explosves at goat hearders. But would you trust them to be able to develop novel offensive and defensive capabilities that could counter China and Russia in space?
The stagnation is real bad. They don’t develop stuff anymore. They pay companies absurd amounts to actually do the innovation. The Military Industrial complex has sort of given itself a case of gout or diabetes… the companies grew by delivering what the military wanted, then gradually it became “your so good at giving us what we want, we’ll just let you sort it all out, just make sure it can do XYZ” … and thus the disconnect grows with the users now mostly cut out of the design loop except for limited feedback towards the end of “product development”. Which is how we get things like the F22 and the Bradley… they fulfil a design brief and channeled millions of government dollars around the country making lots of people happy… except the people that had to make use of them for their job of defending the country…
They contract out satellite designs to firms that developed standard busses based of mil spec rating commercial innovations and then spent decades launching them at whatever cost they got charged by a duopoly of commercial vendors so incestuously linked that they were legally required to merge as the simplest outcome of suing each other for stealing secrets from the other one. It really did need this sort of shakeup. And unfortunately the Cyber domain does too, but that’s in even worse shape since it’s spread across everything and has a weird estranged relationship with the “black ops cyber” (both offensive and defensive) world of stuff going on at the NSA that seems to have permanently limited the scope of Cyber into a whole weird thing.
> the companies grew by delivering what the military wanted, then gradually it became “your so good at giving us what we want, we’ll just let you sort it all out, just make sure it can do XYZ” … and thus the disconnect grows with the users now mostly cut out of the design loop except for limited feedback towards the end of “product development”
For what it's worth, the counterpoint: Government-led purchases of military products have led to colossal cluster-fucks like the F-35 where everyone and their dog seems to have been allowed to specify inputs and throw around stuff mid-project, throwing everything off course. Here in Germany, the same issue has been blamed on virtually all of our military purchase scandals and issues.
In contrast, Rheinmetall just presented their new KF51 Panther tank [1] which they developed fully on their own as a response to the Russian T-14 Armata, which means it is expected to be in serial production in 2024-2025 while the "collaboration project" KNDS (between French Nexter, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall) is expected to be in production in 2035. This fits into Chancellor Scholz' recent announcement of a Zeitenwende in military investment, of which a huge part will be to buy what the industry already has ready and tested instead of wasting time and money on bespoke solutions.
The Air Force had complete control over the domain of space, splitting space out didn't answer any real organizational problems.
IMO, the real forward looking decision would be to have created a cyber force. Apparently US Cyber Command is a shit show from having several seperate command hierarchies. And arguably the material conditions of the cyber domain are a greater present threat to the enforceable boundaries of the US.