President Trump, addressing service members at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California, said he wants to create a branch of the armed serviced that’s specifically designed to operate in space, and wants to call it a “Space Force.”
How did Trump get the idea? Well, it started out as a joke apparently. “I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force,’ and I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘What a great idea,’ maybe we’ll have to do that,” the president said. He continued the discussion about why the Space Force would be a good idea to have in place. At this time, it’s unclear if he was still joking or being serious.
Trump says that space is a "war fighting domain" and proposes a military "space force." pic.twitter.com/759ENLaIYj
— Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) March 13, 2018
While President Trump may have talked about this, he’s certainly not the first to discuss such idea. The Air Force already has a Space Command division that helps oversee the US military operations in space. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coates said in 2017 that “Both [China and Russia] will continue to pursue a full range of antisatellite (ASAT) weapons as a means to reduce US military effectiveness.”
We don’t have any details about what the Space Force would do. He said, “We may even have a Space Force, develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have the Space Force.”
