What Exactly Does The U.S. Space Force Do?

America Space Force was established on Dec. 20, 2019, the primary recent branch of the American military since its parent service, the U.S. Air Force, was created in 1947. In truth, the Space Force is a component of the Department of the Air Force, meaning it shares resources and identity with the Air Force while still being an independent force unto itself. It is a logical pairing, for the reason that modern Space Force was the Air Force’s Space Command until it became necessary enough to separate into its own entity.

Great! But you may be wondering: What does it actually do? Surely it doesn’t have space marines boarding enemy spaceships, right? (Well, at the very least not yet, though future wars will probably be fought in space.) So … what’s it?

For the moment, it may be easiest to think about it as Satellite Force. In other words, the Space Force is in control of military satellites, including managing the launches, deciding acquisitions of tech and recent orbital devices, and receiving and analyzing the information those satellites provide. Moreover, its job is to defend assets in orbit, whether military, civilian, or allied, from enemy interference or attack.

Because the Space Force likes to say: “Never a day without space.” In other words, you — yes, you — have touched a satellite nearly day-after-day of your adult life. Ever use GPS to get, well, anywhere? It relies on satellites; in actual fact, GPS is a service run and managed by the Space Force (and the Air Force before it). Communications are bounced off of satellites. You would possibly use satellite imagery for any variety of reasons. And, after all, satellites provide the information that your service of alternative uses to let you know the weather.

The military uses satellites for all the identical reasons, plus surveillance, early warning and threat detection (e.g. of enemy missile launches), and domain awareness (identifying threasts to space systems). Really, modern militaries rely upon space to operate at a complicated level; without space, they might be reduced to local communications and intelligence gathering, crippling their effectiveness.

In other words, it’s absolutely critical to the functioning of society to have the appropriate orbital capabilities at your disposal and in addition protect them from an enemy who might wish to shoot them down. These days, one non-U.S. country specifically is getting quite a bit higher at doing that.

The People’s Republic of China has been investing heavily in anti-satellite technology, clearly viewing it as a vulnerability in America’s military dominance. It developed a surface-to-orbit missile nearly 20 years ago and, more recently, has developed lasers powerful enough to “dazzle” a satellite, disrupting its sensors and potentially blinding it. 

If “space lasers” aren’t sci-fi enough for you, then perhaps “space robots” are: China also has a satellite equipped with a mechanical arm, which has successfully grabbed and moved (read: kidnapped) test satellites. As if all that wasn’t enough, China can also be now testing out satellite dogfighting, which is to say, precision maneuverability, which might make their satellites in a position to dock with, seize, or ram into others.

All together, that represents a significant potential threat to critical American and allied assets in orbit. So the query became: Whose job is that this? The Navy deals with the ocean, not space; the Army deals with the land; and so forth. Someone needed to begin fascinated with, and coping with, these threats full-time. Enter the Space Force. In truth, it’s totally likely that the Space Force will probably be developing similar capabilities of its own soon, though it has never confirmed that.

That is all immensely necessary, however the Space Force’s mission is not limited to Earth’s orbit. Formally, its domain extends to 272,000 miles from the surface of our planet – and that extends beyond the orbit of the moon. NASA has been planning to return to our closest neighbor for years through its Artemis program, which, if successful (and never jeopardized by President Trump’s $6 billion funding cut), would mean the start of a everlasting human presence there. Should the necessity ever arise to defend that presence, that will be Space Force’s job.

Even before that future arrives, China is, immediately, beginning to position for operating in cislunar space, far enough from this planet that each the Earth’s and moon’s gravities are an element. A satellite in cislunar orbit could survey the lunar surface, helping its host country find suitable sites for future activities — and, potentially, spy on rival countries and their satellites.

Space Force desires to get into the cislunar environment as well, in order that China doesn’t pull ahead in a second space race. While every branch of the military is all the time fascinated with the long run of warfare, the Space Force also must be fascinated with the long run, period. Where will we, as a species, be in the following decade or two? What’s going to we would like to do? What’s going to the threats be, and the way will we counter them? Perhaps space marines aren’t so far-fetched, in spite of everything.