Since 2017, President Trump has pushed for a ‘Space Force’ to take over the Air Force’s resources in the orbital domain, but some members of Congress instead want a ‘Space Corps.’ Kaitlyn Johnson, associate director of the CSIS Aerospace Security Project, says that there are only a few things that these disparate efforts have in common.
“The one similarity is all three are talking about a separate service for military space. For proponents and supporters of this, this is a great sign. It probably means something will happen in conference that will come out looking like a Space Corps or Space Force which is what the administration and the Senate call it. But at the end of the day it looks like something is going to happen,” Johnson said. “There is a four-star that is going to be in charge of the new service. They’ll probably sit on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is a little contention in how soon and who is in charge first. The Senate has the commander of Space Command in charge of the Space Force for the first year before bringing in a new four-star to lead the new service. But a Venn diagram is quite the way to describe it.”
