Space Force launches new intelligence unit: Congress voices concerns over growth | Hacker News Reader

Space Force launches new intelligence unit: Congress voices concerns over growth

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94 pointsTrouble_007115 comments

I used to joke that if you don't have air superiority, you just have permission. I'd change that by saying I would extend that to space, and it's not a joke anymore.

If I weren't too old, would move to the US and enlist to join Space Force. It is really the most important place to be in the world right now. I have some familiarity with some of the problems they need to solve, and they are the only place in government seriously engaged in countering our actual existential threats. The only real fully existential physical threats to the US will come not from sea, air, or land, cyber, or biology where it is already well defended, but from space.

The existence of a Space domain dilutes the integrity of a US ability to secure a physical perimeter in which it can exercise its sovereignty and from where it can project its power. Just in the next 50 years, near earth orbits are going to be full of self-defending orbital satellite and space faring vehicles providing economic resources back to nations on earth. Because of the physical distances and latencies in space, the only thing that secures those vehicles from each other (and therefore any commerce and national interest in space) is cybersecurity. Managing orbital and space faring traffic and securing access to key orbits that facilite whatever economics come out of them is essential. If an axis of China, Russia or and any other countries domainate space, you aren't free or sovereign when you need to ask their permission.

This is on top of how our infrastructure needs to be resilliant to to solar events and even metorites. I'm glad this agency is starting. It's smart.

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.

Is there any evidence to support this idea, or are you just spitballing?

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.

Plus they come in lots of different colours now.

I could rock that

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.

[1] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/militaer-ver...

Since there is no air in space, can the Air Force truly run the program?

It's still a service branch of the department of air force.

> self-defending orbital satellite and space faring vehicles providing economic resources back to nations on earth.

Step away from the science fiction for a while, we don’t have forcefields and aren’t getting them anytime soon. Satellites have few realistic ways to protect themselves from Kessler syndrome let alone any serious attacks by nation states.

Best bet is to stay in low enough that the atmosphere provides some protection, but that line gets blurry between satellites and aircraft.

You're missing it. Without a communications link, satellites and space vehicles cease to exist. The only value they provide is via wireless signal links back to us. All space problems are communications security problems of confidentiality, integrity, and most importantly, availability. Denial and disruption of space communications is the threat to all vehicles. Interception reaps any benfit they provide back without the investment in sending them out there. The only sovereignty we have in an age of space economics and risk comes from cryptography.

What, did you think our plan was to spend all this money just to figure out a way to bash them together? Like, rocks?

Nah. It's easy to envision fully autonomous vessels in space which function fine without a communications link. In fact, that's probably the most desirable type of craft, one that isn't hampered by delays in communication and can respond quickly to dynamic situations.

https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...

It really depends what's the purpose of the satellite.

I think the assumption here is that most of the added value of having a satellite in the first place is through the services it delivers through the communication link (imagery, communication relay, ...)

But how can you ensure that it is operating in an autonomous fashion for you as opposed to someone else who has commandeered it whether through physical force cyber means?

So your hypothetical adversary is getting physical access to satellites in orbit to remotely disassemble them and then put them back together after swapping hardware.

How exactly do you think this is remotely cost effective? Really the best defense is to spend less than 1/10th as much and launch a new satellite.

OP was describing a future where resources are being mined in space and returned to earth,. That is a future where people will have the means to build industrial capacity beyond the orbit of earth which means that infrastructure could be contracted out for surreptitious proposes.

All it takes is one rogue self replicating asteroid miner...

Asteroid mining in 50 years is also the least realistic thing he said. 50 years ago we had already been to the moon, and now people are talking about the possibility that we might at some point go back a few years from now.

Now you want to add self replicating robots on that timescale... Why not time travel and FTL while you’re at it.

Have you been paying attention to what SpaceX is doing with Starship?

Things are developing far faster than you think.

https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article/3002762/space-security-...

Which is somehow different than protecting a random website because it’s in space space space.

Or wait no it's not.

I think you're overstating the importance of satellites. GPS is probably the only useful satellite for the majority of the world, and it is an unencrypted, one-way signal.

Let's split this into military, and non military use.

Non military is GPS sure, but also weather, communications and entertainment. As well as a bunch of internet, a segment that is likely to grow a lot in the near future.

So, non-militarily it's likely that average Joe makes direct use of satilite tech multiple times per day for different reasons.

For the military there's also GPS, communications and reconnaissance. All key features of any mission.

So yeah, these things are super important. Now whether this means a "space force" I'd needed or not is debatable. I'd say not, it seems to me this is a computer issue not a location issue. Attacks on these resources are likely to be cyber in nature, not physical. Physically harming satillites pollutes the area for all players. On the other hand taking control of a working satilite delivers huge gains for basically no construction or launch costs.

Again I think you're overstating their importance. Less people are using satellite TV everyday thanks to streaming. Satellite internet is such a miniscule percentage of internet use it might as well be a rounding error. I don't doubt that will change but it will always be a fraction of the market.

As far as military goes, the US armed forces are insanely overpowered. None of that has to do with satellites. There could be a solar flare that knocks out every electronic device and we would still be on top.

It is also highly unlikely the US will ever officially be at war again. Congress would get eaten alive by their constituents. The military exists purely as a show of force, and a means of siphoning away taxpayer money forever.

>>>As far as military goes, the US armed forces are insanely overpowered. None of that has to do with satellites. There could be a solar flare that knocks out every electronic device and we would still be on top.

In order to be "on top" we have to be able to project power outside of our borders....borders which happen to be REALLY far from any credible challengers. Our overmatch comes from a well-drilled combination of prolific intelligence collections, robust communications, and precise and timely targeting (including having sufficient information to NOT target friendly forces by accident). ALL of those abilities are heavily reliant on satellites.

Accurate imagery of adversary forces staging equipment for attacks? Those pictures come from satellites. Near-instant awareness every time a ballistic missile launches? Those are detected by infrared sensors on satellites ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-Based_Infrared_System ). Global awareness of where friendly troops are, down to the meter? They are taking GPS-based location data for their positions and sharing it via satellites ( https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/c3t-jbc-p/ ) ( https://www.iridium.com/products/nal-research-shout-nano-per... ). Need to pass orders and tasking messages to subordinates at geographically-distant, austere locations? Yup....satcom ( https://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/fleet_ops.htm ) Long-range terrestrial radio, for example HF skywave, is less reliable, has a low data rate, and presents a VERY large target for any adversary competent at electronic warfare .....which is both the Russians and the Chinese).

Purely show of force, huh? Must be a fairly recent development.

I thought this "end of history" narrative would be dead by now. It's incredibly naive to think that major wars are a thing of the past. The trade/commerce argument against the political viability of war has been made and debunked in the past. WWI should have been the nail in that coffin but I guess the idea is too appealing to give up.

> In The Great Illusion, Angell's primary thesis was, in the words of historian James Joll, that "the economic cost of war was so great that no one could possibly hope to gain by starting a war the consequences of which would be so disastrous."[4] For that reason, a general European war was very unlikely to start, and if it did, it would not last long.

Published in 1909. Yeah..

Countries have largely stopped declaring war even when they send troops to overthrow a county. It's the kind of distiction the only matters in international politics.

To underscore how silly this is the last time the US “declared” war was 1942. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unit...

Well if that was throwntoday's point, it's a distinction without a difference. The Korean War particularly, despite not being officially declared as a war, came disturbingly close to going nuclear.

China has already threatened to shoot SpaceX's starlink out of the sky because it poses a NatSec risk to them by puncturing their Great Firewall.

While GPS is hugely important - no debate there -, there are quickly growing alternative uses for satellites. Also, satellites are already used a lot more in business than people realize [2]. Walmart, for example, used to own the largest fleet of satellites in order to connect their stores to HQ before communication was ubiquitous. It built it out in the 80s.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/china-military-scientists-anti-star...

[2] (scroll to 1987) https://corporate.walmart.com/about/history

> GPS is probably the only useful satellite for the majority of the world,

Synthetic aperture radar is incredibly useful to the military [and generally.]

A weather satellite provides economically important information. That's a resource. We have those today and meteorology has been critical to naval operations for essentially all of human history.

We don't need science fiction. We already exist in a world where effective anti-satellite weaponry threatens economic and military power.

“self-defending orbital satellite”

That's what I was objecting to.

It’s actually quite easy for a satellite to defend itself. It just needs delta v or a lot of energy for a directed energy weapon.

It takes a big rocket and lots of time to hit something in geosynchronous orbit. If the satellite has been refueled, it’s delta v capability would dwarf any potential impactors. Otherwise it’s going to be 30+ minutes for a potential impactor to reach the satellite, why not shoot a laser at it for that time period?

Because your adversary could send a bunch of tiny objects in the opposite orbit that impact at around Mach 40.

You can for example destroy every single satellite in geostationary orbit by launching 1 payload of junk going the wrong way. Worse this isn't recoverable geostationary orbit is simply useless on the scale of hundreds of years. Dodging with delta V becomes a continuous problem you can at best simulate geostationary orbit with constant acceleration.

Geosyncronus is a slightly wider range of orbits, but not enough to be safe..

Laser weapons in space are again a fun sci-fi idea, but hardly practical.

1) The object you launch going the wrong way will not have substantial delta-v capability. There are many slots across a wide range of orbits. A hypothetical defensive satellite would only need a few dozen meters/second delta-v to avoid the object. With in-orbit refueling, the orbital satellite has the advantage over a promptly launched weapon.

2) Laser weapons are available for shipborne use today. Airborne defensive lazers targeting Air to Air missiles are currently undergoing tests as part of the 6th generation fighter program. The "sci-fi" you are alluding to is now just a question of power output and weight. If the goal is to disable command and control of a potential impactor satelite over the course of ~30 minutes - the power output requirement needn't be more than a few KW. With a few dozen KW ablative heating of the impactor could push it off course.

The key enabling technology is in cheap, re-usable, heavy-lift. Given this, it will always be possible to put a satellite in orbit with more delta-v capability than any mobile and disposable satellite weapon.

1) The point isn't to launch one object the point is to launch a shotgun blast of 10 million objects each of which can destroy your satellite.

You need km/s delta V to deal with this kind of attack.

2) Lasers are much easier in atmosphere for a huge range of reasons. If something is approaching you at mach 4 you get 1/10th the time to deal with the situation as much 40. Further in space fragments are deadly, a 2.5 gram object at mach 40 has the about kenetic energy as 1 kg object at match 2. Blowing up the rocket aimed for your satellite might not actually help.

Anyway there are vastly better orbital weapons than I just described, the point is any nation that can get mass into orbit can absolutely anailate orbital infrastructure.

* make that 10x not 1/10th

Edited without thinking.

Geosynchronous orbits are way out from the planet and costly, in many ways the "space game" of earth communications, earth monitoring, comms for earth wars has changed.

Constellations of thousands of satellites in near earth obits, precessing for coverage, in near ellipitic orbits for relatively low cost repositioning over tagets of interest, and "not real satellites" - HAPS and blimps are changing the dynamics.

Cheaper to launch, greater in number, and more easily moved about and|or replaced.

> Satellites have few realistic ways to protect themselves

I would imagine it's the same with submarines - the trick is to remain undetected. We already have stealth aircraft, why not stealth satellites? Maybe they are already flying, how would we know?

Subs benefit from hidding in water and being able to move around unpredictably.

Space on the other hand is really empty and satellites have stable orbits.

PS: Stealth aircraft have similar vulnerabilities if they constantly fly the same path. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/stealth-down-how-se...

In the context of fighting a war, Kessler Syndrome is a meme. It reduces the expected lifespan of a satellite, but that only becomes strategically relevant if the new lifespan of your satellites is shorter than the war is expected to last and satellites are being destroyed faster than they can be replenished. America is rapidly developing the ability to launch a ton of new satellites very quickly.

Of course the post-war aftermath would be deeply regrettable. But it always is.

Depends on severity. Some orbits could become contamintaed enough to destroy satellites in hours if countrys are tossing around anti satellite weapons.

See not to nit pick, but it’s that realm of thinking that is the reason we don’t have that level of technology.

Don’t get me wrong caring for our planet is Noble, but if the other hacker news article (the one that shows the events of our life) there are like 2b more people on the planet then existed when I was born, I think it’s time to tackle leaving the planet otherwise instead of banning fossil fuels we will be banning children.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

> If an axis of China, Russia or and any other countries domainate space, you aren't free or sovereign when you need to ask their permission.

As a non-american, the US falls under "other countries" in this for me and, as I am much more exposed to US news than russian or chinese news, seems the most driven to use it for power projection and possibly weaponizing it. If possible, I'd like to see a stronger push to organize space faring and orbital access from the grouund up as an international cooperation.

Realistically though, there will be a security-council type of result: A few countries with the ability to revoke permission for anyone they deem unfit, because they have the power to do so in practice. Of course the US will do anything necessary to be one of those or the only one to do so. But I wish a more equal-access result would be possible.

I feel it could be driven by the real balance of force only, and there's not much countries could compare their space developments to Russian, the US and China ones. (The EU could not be considered as single entity.)

Such powers capabilities being in the control of a secretive military organization don't appeal to me. Simply because often they have too much power and too little oversight and transparency.

See the mistaken bombings by US forces in the aftermath of Talibans takeover of Kabul last August. US forces simply declared that though it was in mistake and none involved would have to suffer punitive measures [0]

[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/12/13/1063880137/no-punishment-troo...

Also military culture seems to not value critical thought and democratic processes. It is better for an open society to keep the influence of the military to the barest minimum.

The incident in Kabul is the cost of doing business in war and security operations. The military understands that but politicians and the public do not or at least act as if they don't.

Civilized people have decided that the costs of war are too high (which is why the US was leaving, it turns out); dismissing clear and unforced errors as "the cost of doing business" is a diffusion of responsibility and obscures causal relationships with a handwave.

Individual people made unforced decisions to slaughter children that day, and other individual people made decisions to cover it up and protect those who made the first error. The New York Times then blew the lid off of it and made the efforts of the second group ineffective.

In my own personal opinion, all of the people in this criminal conspiracy should suffer the absolute maximum penalties allowed by law for conspiracy to commit premeditated mass murder. This is not just "the costs of war"; there was no threat whatsoever. The costs of war also do not justify post hoc deceit to cover one's ass.

Apologism does not fix the problem.

It would be one thing if there was a war. The strike happened after US withdrawal. So is the US at war with Afghanistan forever now or what?

> The existence of a Space domain dilutes the integrity of a US ability to secure a physical perimeter in which it can exercise its sovereignty and from where it can project its power.

How's it going currently when the US exercises its sovereignty and projects its power? I'm not sure that this is something you can claim to want promote with a straight face, now that we know about the Salt Pit, Guantanamo, and rest of the global network of torture prisons they ran in violation of both US and foreign law.

If the organizations abided by the rule of law, perhaps. But they don't, as we recently had publicly demonstrated for us by the POTUS, as well as by Assange in the Collateral Murder video (for which he is now imprisoned and tortured indefinitely without trial). These are well-resourced organizations that promote torture and violence, unconstrained by human rights, laws, law enforcement, or even common decency. Anyone who opposes them publicly, even without force (such as Assange), is subject to extrajudicial assassination or torture without benefit of trial.

Anyone enriching these organizations is aligning themselves against humanity and civilization and will not be judged well by history; lawlessness and arbitrary violence is not something to aid and abet.

> The only real fully existential physical threats to the US will come not from sea, air, or land, cyber, or biology where it is already well defended, but from space.

hahaha this is so out of touch. The biggest threat to the US is the US itself. The country is at war against its own population.

There's a lot of enthusiasm in the parent, but not a lot of support for it.

> If an axis of China, Russia or and any other countries domainate space, you aren't free or sovereign when you need to ask their permission.

That doesn't mean the US needs a space force. It's not clear the assumption is accurate, that those countries seek to dominate space, or that such an axis exists. There are many, many outcomes besides national military competition: For example, throughout the Cold War the US and Russia kept space pretty demilitarized and non-competitive, and even used it to promote peace by allowing flyover and intelligence gathering to support treaties and prevent misinterpretation of actions.

> Managing orbital and space faring traffic and securing access to key orbits that facilite whatever economics come out of them is essential.

In what other domain are those functions performed by the military? Usually they are performed by cooperative intergovernmental bodies, such as the International Maritime Organization.

> in the next 50 years, near earth orbits are going to be full of self-defending orbital satellite and space faring vehicles providing economic resources back to nations on earth.

That's a pretty bold prediction with no support. Self-defending satellites?

> In what other domain are those functions performed by the military? Usually they are performed by cooperative intergovernmental bodies, such as the International Maritime Organization.

Traditionally; the existence of a Navy was to project power across a nation's geographically disparate colonies, which isn't in isolation a very valuable thing, so take it a step further: a nation may want colonies in order to bolster mercantile trade, and the existence of a Navy was to assert power over those colonies, and protect the trade ships in-between destinations.

Sea pirates aren't much of a threat anymore; but certainly non-zero. When incidents occur, its not the International Maritime Organization which responds. Its a sovereign Navy. A strong argument exists that the only reason our seas are as safe as they are, today, is thanks to the extreme investment in naval superiority sovereign states have made; its easy to point to organizations of peace as the reason for peace, when they're backed by guns.

Additionally, navies served a critically important purpose in logistics during times of war.

Basically, if your broader point is to assert that Humanity will leave behind its nature of bloody violence & territorial aggression when we develop our solar system, not only is that stance laughably idealistic, its patently false; we're already developing space, it already serves an extremely critical role in national security, and we're still killing each other & fighting over land. Treaties, agreements, and NGOs are fantastic, until a sovereign suddenly realizes "hey, actually, that asteroid is worth a lot of money, we're going to take it".

The only reasonable argument I've heard against the Space Force is, essentially, that it may be that significant The Expanse-style solar colonization isn't in the cards for the future of humanity, for whatever irrelevant reason, and thus if their entire purview is the protection of earth orbital satellites, it may be that responsibility is more efficiently met by other traditional, more terrestrial command structures (Air Force, NORAD, etc). That's a reasonable criticism, but the equally valid counter-point is, if we wait for more certainty, we'll already be behind.

> Traditionally; the existence of a Navy was to project power across a nation's geographically disparate colonies

Colonies were a long time ago. The US Navy doesn't project power over colonies. It's true that the Navy provides some backbone to international law on the seas, but international law is what rules.

> if your broader point is to assert that Humanity will leave behind its nature of bloody violence & territorial aggression when we develop our solar system, not only is that stance laughably idealistic, its patently false; we're already developing space, it already serves an extremely critical role in national security, and we're still killing each other & fighting over land. Treaties, agreements, and NGOs are fantastic, until a sovereign suddenly realizes "hey, actually, that asteroid is worth a lot of money, we're going to take it".

People like to disparage international peace and order - hey, why not? What fun! What do we have to lose? - but the fact is that the post-war, rules-based international order has worked amazingly well. There has never been a more peaceful time in history. Advanced democratic countries don't even think of solving problems - whether asteroids or otherwise - through violence. Much of the world is blanketed with democracies and run this way: Europe outside Russia (Europe is peaceful!), almost the entire Americas, much of East Asia (with the notable exception of Chine - except Taiwan), etc.

> Treaties, agreements, and NGOs are fantastic, until a sovereign suddenly realizes "hey, actually, that asteroid is worth a lot of money, we're going to take it".

As described above, that doesn't happen. When is the last time a democracy did that?

> Traditionally; the existence of a Navy was to project power across a nation's geographically disparate colonies, which isn't in isolation a very valuable thing, so take it a step further: a nation may want colonies in order to bolster mercantile trade, and the existence of a Navy was to assert power over those colonies, and protect the trade ships in-between destinations.

Not really. You might want to read "The Influence of Sea Power upon History", a hugely influential book that was among the factors for the tensions that brought WWI. Historically sea power (navies) were for trade and lines of communication and their security; conquest of enemies/trade outposts; raiding. Framing it all as "colonies" is a very post-Age of Exploration view.

Found the Space Force recruiter /s

> the only place in government seriously engaged in countering our actual existential threats

The existential threats are, in my opinion, either internal (political), or ecological (e.g. climate change). I don't see how the space force is countering them.

> I have some familiarity with some of the problems they need to solve... The only real fully existential physical threats to the US will come not from sea, air, or land, cyber, or biology ... but from space.

I have some familiars with the problems a "cyber force" may need to solve and I believe that neither land, water, air, nor space will be the threats but instead cyber threats.

> Because of the physical distances and latencies in space, the only thing that secures those vehicles from each other (and therefore any commerce and national interest in space) is cybersecurity.

Ah we are in agreement after all.

But actually I think this is a case of familiarity bias. I agree we need the space force, and we need to defend the perimeter, but I think there's some truth that each war is unique, so we won't fight in space the way we had to fight air or sea. We need to defend in space the way we had to defend in air and sea though. No one in war would retry a losing technique, and if it was a winning technique everyone else had a chance to study it before the next battle, so you better find another winning technique. We still have a lot of new things to try in cyber warfare and a lot of history for "IRL" war actions.

This is an excellent perspective. I can imagine everything you wrote as growing pains and putting time in now would really help the agency's mission and challenge yourself to overcome/fix them.

Outside the Netflix series, I really had no idea about Space Force.

Thanks! Check out the threads about post quantum crypto and NIST evaluating candidate standards. We're going to need it, because space is going to be full of largely autonomous/ML quantum and classical computers. The only way we keep peace on earth over space conflicts is by providing space vehicles with enough autonomy to defend themselves, while still being subject to terrestrial policy. At some point we figure out only sending our smartest people out into the void is probably unwise from an evolutionary perspective, and so then the drone swarms we have out there are going to be where machine learning, economics, policy and physics meet. The remote sensing and signals capabilities are going to drive a lot of research funding. On earth, the prevailing nation will necessarily be the one that succeeds at manufacturing at scale, and maths.

May the odds ever be in your favour!

> Outside the Netflix series, I really had no idea about Space Force.

At least the Netflix version had some actual rockets.

The biggest threat to the US is Americans themselves. A nation willfully ruled by war criminals will eventually become their final victim. The fact that Americas do not prosecute their war criminals is a far greater threat to world peace and stability than any debris falling from the sky.

These heinous new 'intelligence' agencies serve only to prevent justice for America's war crimes. Stop the secrecy! The corruption of government begins with its secrets - a truly free people don't keep secrets!

Meanwhile the actual members of the military understand the Space Force to be a joke. And it should be. We spend more on our MIC than any other country in the world. I guarantee that there is already beginning to be massive overlap between the mission of the Space Force and other agencies, as there already was with the FBI and CIA. It’s incredibly likely this will be an expensive and painful mistake.

A big joke indeed. Massive overhead has been created for what is a relatively small job. The Spacemen (because the Air Force has Airmen, right?) seem awfully concerned with all the trappings of being a separate military service than actually doing a job. What the US military needs is more unity, not less.

There is also significant lobbying for a "Space National Guard" too. Give me a fucking break.

Signed, Crusty, grouchy Army (Reserve/National Guard) Officer

> they are the only place in government seriously engaged in countering our actual existential threats.

With what? The threat of burying an enemy in paperwork?

I'm sorry, but the form to attack the US must be filled out in triplicate. You've also used the land invasion form which is pink. To attack via space, you need the space attack approval form which is blue. You'll also need to be sure that the forms have been properly notarized, and you'll need to apply for a notary authorization by filling out the proper form which, in this case, is yellow.

Actually, it's worse than that because it's all gone digital except to get anything done relies upon ten separate, disparate computer systems all designed by different contractors and a third of them are down for maintenance. Oh, and we're filling out PDF forms that represent formerly paper forms and shoving them in a database.

We're sorry, but your browser is not supported. For the most secure experience, we recommend using IE6 on an updated version of Windows95.

But it's 2022! Damn gov't webservers!!!!

Another thing to consider is that fewer than 4% of human beings live in the US or are USians. If the US is to establish military superiority in space, this would be, by definition, a plutocracy established over all of Earth.

I'm not sure the other 96%+ of us humans are really interested in that outcome?

> It is really the most important place to be in the world right now.

Out of this world, surely?

Your writing sounds like some powerpoint bullet points a think thank would present to circlejerk back and forth with military brass.

> ... is cybersecurity. ...

Like, that applies to any information connected system. Do you mean defend space craft from cyber attacks or attack space craft? Either way, not so different from UAV or many other terrestrial targets is it now? Do you mean maybe that a human can't get to it in time to respond to an attack? You can't get to a remote missile silo sometimes for hours as well or other remote outposts (like many in alaska and bering sea). What is very odd about your remark is how you envision a cyberattack is superior to missiles shooting down space craft. Honestly, would love to hear about any high level attack vectors aside from radio jamming.

> The only real fully existential physical threats to the US will come not from sea, air, or land, cyber, or biology where it is already well defended, but from space.

Excuse me but have you read the news in the past few years? The internet is leading america into a civil war many expect to take place in the next decade or so. The internet is not a space domain, US cybercom exists FYI. For kinetic attacks, ICBM are sort of space based attacks since they re-enter from orbit, THAAD as crappy as it is addresses that, it is not a new concern at all. The only deterrence is possibility of a counter attack. So long as nukes from the various delivery strategies are viable it is a non-issue. Basically keep developing better ICBMs and defenses against them.

> The existence of a Space domain dilutes the integrity of a US ability to secure a physical perimeter in which it can exercise its sovereignty and from where it can project its power.

Which isn't new, reagan even tried the whole "star wars" initiative because of the concern. Are we talking about mexico and canada here? Or do you expect China to send space troopers within ICBM like vehicles along with ground invasion vehicles and supply lines? Or are we still talking about ICBMs and anti sattelite weapons? If so, better icmbs and defenses against them? Non-nuclear weapons, say a laser carrier destroyer will be bad, prevents a planned ground invasion of a remote country (which is a good thing if you ask many americans tired of foreign invasions) but will not be effective against retaliation if US soil is attacked.

To translate what you are saying in military speak (correct me if I am wrong):"it will be a lot harder to intervene in foreign nations' affairs and protect american economic interests like oil and shipping lanes if other countries get better at space based weapons" right? The security of the homeland is still a given because of the might of the Navy, and Airforce. But it does mean not being a military superpower, China will mess up most of the world and the west's global influence might dwindle? Well that is a risk but an economic and political one not one of a military invasion of the homeland by foreign powers which is the only purpose the military serves.

As for the geopoliticsl concerns, I am not saying they shouldn't be addressed but short of an actual invasion risk, the country crumbling from the inside out is a much higher concern. Vietnam and Afghanistan were lost because americans couldn't support them, military thinkers are so disconnected from americans they don't even consider this a risk. People not being able to afford a living, shelter and basic dignity is a higher risk than space craft. Politicians controlled by foreign adversaries and corrupt judges and bribery infested government are more likely to support and promote a civil war.

Although I for one vehemntly disagree and think America is still great and great days are ahead, many refused to celeberate July 4th because of the state of the nation. That is a greater concern, the enemies that are domestic not foreign.

I fear McNamara Fallacy is behind your line of thinking and military brass' [1], your metrics are not measuring the right things. Future battles will be lost because of internal strife before a weapon is fired IMO.

[1] http://mcnamarafallacy.com/

> The only real fully existential physical threats to the US will come not from sea, air, or land, cyber, or biology where it is already well defended, but from space.

This is such an absurd statement. US is literally collapsing before your very eyes and going to turn into an extremely dangerous unstable rogue nation with a lot of nuclear weapons.

US has been totally subverted and is now falling behind Russia and China in conventional weaponry, and falling way behind Russia in missile defense and offensive hypersonic missiles.

There is zero chance USA will be the space faring nation of the future. There's some smart people in USA but the cost of societal, financial, and economic collapse will catch up to the legacy that the USA enjoys due to the hard work of the older dying generations.

The real competition for the future of space is between China and Russia. Friends now, but you never know later.

Even without SpaceX you'd be wrong. However, with SpaceX, you're mega wrong. Falcon 9 had already completely changed the cost function to space. Starship, however, is very set to completely turn the industry upside down.

I love Elon and his antics but competing against the space programs of military super powers China and Russia will not work in the end. State power is ultimately orders of magnitude greater than a single corporation's power.

>US has been totally subverted and is now falling behind Russia and China in conventional weaponry, and falling way behind Russia in missile defense and offensive hypersonic missiles.

It's obvious now, In a conventional war, the US would obliterate Russia in weeks. So could western Europe, even if the US didn't lift a finger to help. Russia has been revealed as a paper tiger.

As far as China, they're probably more of an actual competent force than Russia, but what large-scale military actions has China done in the last few decades?

> It's obvious now, In a conventional war, the US would obliterate Russia in weeks.

Napoleon and Germany thought the same as you. Unfortunately it did not go well for them. Historically, countries that underestimated Russia's military have faced serious consequences.

Suspicious juxtaposition of two separate stories (new unit established and concerns about growth), especially when considering that "Space Delta 18 (NSIC) is comprised of two units originally activated 15 April 2008 within the Air Force’s first Space and Missiles Analysis Group." [1]

[1] https://www.spoc.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display...

as a non-American not familiar with how these structures work, is there a particular reason why these institutions are grouped by domain rather than by function, i.e. why so many branches seem to have their own intelligence agencies, rather than say, combine the intelligence agencies themselves? It seems very redundant and complicated to share information.

There a few different ways to slice your question, but one thing to consider is that there are very different "types" of intelligence "agencies/units".

If we use the broad definition of intelligence which might be something like "gathering and analyzing information to provide guidance to decision makers", and then label any group capable of information gathering and/or analysis as an "intelligence agency/unit", then you can see why they'd appear to proliferate everywhere.

Everyone with executive agency wants their own analysis capability. And everyone with executive agency probably wants their own gathering capabilities as well. And all for pretty reasonable seeming reasons. Technical specialization, time/latency/bandwidth considerations, risk tolerance. There are lots of reasonable reasons why specialization and localization makes sense.

Now the challenge obviously is to make sure you balance that against waste in resources, stuff getting lost in the shuffle, and straight up political infighting.

The US department of defense is the largest employer in the world, you have to have redundancies when you have nearly 3 million people working for you.

An independent intelligence service wouldn't have the interests of the other organizations it served. There are several independent intelligence services and military branches have their own. You want your intelligence service on your side and have separate services for separate missions so that priorities don't get mixed up and you don't have to get political to get what you need from some other organization.

It's not a matter of "this is too complex" but picking your poison as to the drawbacks of several different org structures.

Each branch is motivated to gather intelligence relevant to its operational plans. In the past there was a short-lived attempt to centralize US intelligence gathering (CIA), but the intelligence gathered wasn't useful to the actual business of running military operations, so now each branch of the military runs its own intelligence service.

Ultimately, the military is like any organization made up of people with the usual politics, interdepartmental turf battles, fiefdoms, etc. Sharing information means giving up "power" and, unfortunately, government employees are not selfless civil servants looking to make the world a better place (maybe on their best days they are), they are just people like us.

FWIW, it's also why every department has its own police force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the...

I don't think you're getting very good answers here, but the real answer is there is a split between strategic and tactical intelligence (and operational, but that's kind of in the weeds to distinguish from tactical). Military departments don't generally operate their own strategic intelligence assets. They get the information they need from the CIA, NSA, and NGA, the same as the president and anyone else who needs that level of information.

At the tactical level, though, military units need to be able to operate fairly autonomously. This can go pretty deep down. It means a division of the Army may have aerial recon assets, signals interception devices, and such with an operational range of, say, 500km or something, but not things like spy satellites that can cover the entire globe. Down at the company level, they may even have their own assigned scouts with some limited remote recon tech, but then the range will be much more limited. The point is they can use that stuff within their own area of operations without needing to deconflict with other users, having full local authority over tasking. Tasking of national strategic assets like spy satellites, on the other hand, needs to be done at a level of clearance and authority that has visibility into what all of the nation's military units are doing at any given time, as well as some idea of what they're going to be doing in the future.

This is why we have national intelligence agencies, but each branch of service and even individual combined arms units also have their own intelligence sections. It's similar to why local police departments have their own detectives and don't just ask the FBI to perform all investigative duties for them (more to it in law enforcement because there are also different laws at each level of government, but still some similar ideas).

There has been a lot of discussion and politics about this since it was first proposed many decades ago.

Likely domain-specific knowledge for intelligence gathering. But there probably are also embedded human/political counter intelligence members from another intelligence agency to protect the branches.

Bureaucracy has a chain of command, and ultimately the people at the top of the pyramid only have the ability to focus on so much. That focus is partially driven by personal and organizational self interest.

It’s unlikely that the guy who runs the CIA will have the same priorities as the head of the Navy. Likewise, the Navy guy doesn’t care about tanks.

You explained it yourself - "grouped by domain".

Gathering intelligence in the ground human domain is obviously different from gathering intelligence in the space photography domain.

If it were a part of another agency it wouldn’t be able to prioritize issues the space force cares about. Its why the Army operates a sizable number of aircrafts.

The more you can compartmentalize intelligence assets, the easier it is to hide classified programs.

It is already impossible for Congress to have oversight over the existing intelligence apparatuses.

Whistleblowers are often the first indicator that elected politicians have for how bad the programs have become.

Edit: wow karma lost for having the same concerns as Congress has in the article...

> Delta 18 and the brand-new National Space Intelligence Center were officially commissioned late last month at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. It will be staffed by nearly 350 civilian and military personnel.

Meh. This looks more like a government re-org than a substantive change to me [1]. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) has been around for decades at Wright Patterson AFB. The earliest form of it goes back to 1951 [2].

In 1993, the National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) added space to the list of things they cared about, forming NASIC. It looks like now space is being split off into its own group, so there will be NSIC, and presumably NASIC will go back to being NAIC.

[1] I've been through a few DoD re-orgs. This is what they usually look like.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Air_and_Space_Intelli...

As the space force still reports to the Air Force, and the NGA and NRO exist, I don’t see the need for yet another intel unit just to have one

Should the Marines get rid of their intelligence units since the Navy has them already?

P.S. I don't mean this facetiously: what I meant specifically was - what is the bar for maintaining an independent Intelligence apparatus with this opinion? Do we consider a Secretary/Department to be the cutoff? I'm of the opinion that if the two deviate enough, then there is no reason for them to be conjoined.

> then there is no reason for them to be conjoined.

What about, the worst attack on US soil might have been avoided if different agencies had shared data?

>> the worst attack on US soil.

I think it is pretty strong to suggest that 9/11 was the worst attack on US soil ever without further justification. During the Battle of Gettysburg, for example, more than 7,000 soldiers died after Lee's army attacked the US army. The Attack on Pearl Harbor might also be in contention, depending on how severely you rate the crippling of the US Pacific Fleet.

I think you're right, Pearl Harbor was a major attack but it also had aspects of 9/11 in that there were major intelligence failures.

This underscores the need for better more effective military intelligence.

An attack 80+ years ago does not underscore the need for any reform today, nor for that matter does an attack 20+ years ago. Not unless you think nothing has changed between then and now, which would be silly. Introspection and reform after both those attacks happened years ago. It may be the case that we do need additional reform today, but that isn't evidenced by attacks which occurred generation[s] ago.

The counter to that is what if one agency detects an attack that no other noticed because the culture and practices of that agency diverge from the others in a way that turns out to be positive.

There are both benefits and costs to centralization and standardization. We don't want too much taxpayer-funded redundancy, but some redundancy can be a good thing.

This is different from the Intelligence Apparatus that shares inter-service intelligence. The Intelligence Community is already a thing and is organised under the Director of National Intelligence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...). The point of each service's Agency is to be good at collecting pertinent intelligence data, analysing it, then sharing it with each other if relevant. This way you're not duplicating Intelligence efforts and getting your best value. Inter-Agency communication is a completely different ball game and should be handled separately from organisational structure.

Maybe, but it always seems like people doing various bad things are known to the agencies and they don't have anything specific enough to act on. So we give them even more funding and manpower to prevent it next time and the cycle repeats.

> if different agencies had shared data

Do you think they're not sharing data? Why?

Different agencies is about different collection techniques and domains.

Please read the 911 report. It goes into fact that our agencies weren't sharing data properly and what could have been done to prevent the attack with data we already had in our possession. This is well walked ground.

> Please read the 911 report.

From a quarter of a century ago? Before they founded an entire new department? Really not sure it’s relevant for how things are done today.

Does a centralised agency guarantee that this data is shared correctly?

This Space Force unit is being formed by transferring over space-based responsibilities that the Air Force use to own. This is not creating new capabilities or new units per se.

The responsibilities transferred are about gathering and delivering intelligence on enemy space capabilities and enemy counter-space capabilities - which is not the strict purview of NGA/NRO either.

One would assume that this is a step into consolidating some other things. The whole idea for a separate space force must have been that enough things were being done to merit a completely separate structure, doing this properly would entail a transition where new things were created to absorb the missions of existing fragmented space-focused resources.

In other words some of the missions of AF, NGA, NRO, etc. will probably get offloaded to Space Force.

Hopefully it doesn’t turn into Section 31.

I remember Trump being mocked for creating the space force, but it seems useful enough to not have been disbanded

People mocked Trump for everything, regardless of how useful what he did was. Actually, CNN's news cycle still consistently has "Trump" in the title of multiple top-level articles. It's quite funny.

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