I'm going to step a bit out of my usual wheelhouse and talk about the proposals for a Space Force coming out of DC recently, and why I don't think they're a good idea. Don't worry, this will end up back at ships.
Naval capabilities like this Tomahawk strike are dependent on space-based support
First, let's get one thing clear. Space capabilities are tremendously important to the US military. The ability of satellites to gather intelligence and provide reliable communications and navigation anywhere in the world is absolutely critical to making them what they are. These capabilities are increasingly threatened by Chinese and Russian anti-satellite weapons of various kinds, and making space forces more visible and independent is probably not a bad idea.
But the proposals to set them up as a completely separate service go too far. First, there's the bureaucratic overhead. Currently, most of the space mission is handled by the USAF, and can essentially piggyback on the infrastructure of that storied service. Separating it out is going to mean more accountants, more administrators, and a new uniform selection board that decides to follow the fashion trends of between 5 and 25 years ago about every five years.
Second, this sets up exactly the wrong organizational incentives for the space forces. Space is vital to our capabilities precisely because it provides critical support for those at the sharp end on land, air, and sea. But military forces do not like being in support. They want to be at the sharp end themselves, and will adopt all sorts of weird policies to make sure that they, and not other services, stay there. If we set up a space force, within a decade we'll be hearing about why reconnaissance satellites and comms are all useless, or should be handled by commercial providers, so that the Space Force can spend more money on a new Orbital Laser Battle Station. Even if Orbital Battle Lasers, cool though they are, are still really a couple decades away from maturity.
The author of Ecclesiastes said "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun", and so it is in the defense world. In 1918, the British decided to concentrate all of their aviation assets under the newly-created Royal Air Force, including those of the Royal Naval Air Service. Even the aircraft which flew from ships would be bought and manned by the RAF. Initially, this wasn't a big deal, as the RNAS had made up a significant fraction of British air strength, and the war kept everyone focused on the important things, like killing the Germans. During the interwar years, however, a major funding crunch led the RAF to aggressively promote the idea that strategic bombing could and would win wars, unaided by ground or naval forces.1 This meant that forces not dedicated to bombing or resisting bombing got cut. Naval aviation, in the form of the Fleet Air Arm (which flew off of ships) and Coastal Command (which flew land-based maritime aircraft) suffered particularly badly. Initially, Coastal Command's main mission was support of the bombing offensive, while the FAA was saddled with obsolescent airplanes and a doctrine which did not prioritize fighters or the large air wings found to be necessary when war broke out.2
Problems continued during the war. The FAA's primary fighter early in the war, the Fairey Fulmar, was an adaptation of a light bomber best known for getting shot down in massive numbers over France. Design resources were concentrated on land-based fighters, and the most effective fighters of the FAA were either adaptations of land-based designs or USN designs provided under Lend-Lease. Coastal Command also struggled, as the same types of aircraft were necessary for hunting submarines in the mid-Atlantic and bombing Berlin. Even at the height of the U-boat offensive, Bomber Command refused to transfer aircraft. It was pointed out that the Germans probably wouldn't notice if the British sent 900 planes over Berlin instead of 1000, but this argument was not enough to dissuade Bomber Harris from his ineffective, wasteful and morally dubious attempts to destroy the morale of Germany's workforce.3
In the US, which had not moved naval aviation under the all-powerful control of the Air Force, things were rather different. The USN and USAAF were often at loggerheads over the distribution of aircraft, most notably over who would control the land-based anti-submarine squadrons, but a compromise was reached in that case and US Naval Aviation never faced the same kind of political threat that Coastal Command or the FAA did, at least not until after the war.
A satellite groundtrack map
None of this is to say that the current situation is perfect. Space is increasing in importance, and the fighter jock mafia has been in total control of the USAF since the end of the Cold War.4 A friend who was involved in the USAF space community told me of being in a meeting where the highest-ranking officer, a former fighter jock, asked how many Gs the satellite was pulling in the turns on a groundtrack chart.5 This sort of thing could be solved by making it easier for the Space Operations community to rise and share their expertise with the rest of the Air Force. But it doesn't take a separate service to do that.
2024 Postscript: The predictions I made here have held up quite well in the years since Space Force was founded. Most notable is recent talk of a Space Guard to provide space communications in the event of a disaster, drawing on experience in the cleanup from Hurricane Helene. From a practical perspective, it's unclear why this would need to be a separate organization, and not just Army National Guardsman trained to run satellite comms, but it makes perfect sense if Space Force is trying to build an empire. I'm half-convinced that they're going to be arguing that only they should be allowed to run satellite comms at all within a decade.
1 This wasn't entirely unique to them. Lots of people worldwide believed that strategic bombing could destroy enemy industry with precision or that civilian morale would collapse immediately under bombing. Neither proved to be true, and historians still argue over the effectiveness of the bombing campaigns, although general consensus is that the British bomber offensive in Europe was not very good. ⇑
2 I'll discuss the details of this at some point. It's a fascinating story, but one not really in scope here. ⇑
3 This campaign, which was basically useless, should be distinguished from those of the US forces, who generally were aiming at military effects, and achieved them to a degree since minimized by opponents of strategic bombing. ⇑
4 Before that, the center of the USAF was SAC, the famous Strategic Air Command. The destruction of that organization has done damage to our nuclear forces that is still not repaired. ⇑
5 For those who don't immediately get why this is such a bizarre question, the satellite is pulling 1 G (yes, it is, but it doesn't feel it), and those turns are the result of the satellite's orbit being inclined to the equator. ⇑
Comments
DHS and some of the alphabet soup intelligence agencies seem like other interesting cases in how organizational structure impacts mission, particularly for places like USCG.
Well said Bean. Certainly we need to "grow" space--no question of that. We all now realize that space is mission critical not only for the DoD, but ever increasing swaths of civilian life and commerce. Soon, if not already, it is indispensable.
But to cleave off another service when the AF has had this in their lane and then have to deal with the problems you describe? Nah...
Let us be smart about capabilities, threats, vulnerabilities, etc. before we start the money suck that this would entail.
Can I at least assume the G-force question was a bit of ill-informed idle curiosity and not an attempt to gauge the overall worth of the satellite in question?
@ADA
Probably. I had never even thought of the idea that he was trying to gauge its worth by how many Gs it could pull.
Is there no good way to enforce a support role on a service?
Like suppose that all of Space Force's activities, from R&D through craft construction to operations, were funded and conducted on a contract model with one or more of the other branches (or maybe an intelligence agency) as client. Space superiority and strategic orbital bombardment would be part of the Air Force's mission, which they'd place Space Force contracts to achieve.
The result is that the Space Force might argue that OLBSes are more important than comms and recon, but they'll have to convince one of the other branches in order to actually move resources that way. The USAF would probably undervalue space superiority and orbital bombardment relative to stuff they command directly, but that's no great loss for the foreseeable future. If these things do become essential, transitioning Space Force into an independently-funded branch would be a lot easier than creating it from scratch--though you'd have to contend with the risk of this happening prematurely.
(if the British had done this to their Air Force, I'd expect naval affairs to have gone much better and the strategic bombing campaign to have been minimal to nonexistent, and also probably better close air support for the Army, at a grievous cost to their strategic air defense which neither Navy nor Army would prioritize until the Blitz was upon them)
(admittedly this doesn't address the bureaucratic overhead issue at all)
I don't think that would work. The problem is that it's not really any different from funding the Space Force directly under the budgetary model we use. Congress doesn't just give the services a big pot of money and tell them not to spend it all in one place. I don't read defense appropriation bills myself (although it might be a good idea the next time I have insomnia) but particularly big-ticket things like this will definitely be decided in Congress and not by the services. So instead of the Air Force asking for the Space Force to get more commsats while the Space Force asks for an orbital bombardment constellation, you'll have the Air Force asking for a contract for commsats, while Space Force says the USAF should contract for the bombardment constellation.
I'm not sure about the British, either. The RNAS was in charge of air defense against Zeppelin raids, and presumably the RN would have kept the role, or funding authority for the role, and done a decent job of it. And you'd have the RAF arguing to make the RN and Army pay for strategic bombers, instead of just arguing for them directly.
There's also the accounting issues of overhead payments, but that's not something I'm really qualified to speak on.
So what prevents the space department of the USAF from telling Congress we need OLBSes? An intra-service prohibition on going over superiors' heads, enforced by the fact that your stories are the ones who decide when you get promoted? I guess I could see how that would work.
That's most of it. Telling Congress something greatly at odds with the service's official line is going to be career-limiting in the extreme. I suspect there's some fighting around the edges in front of the various Armed Services committees, but the General/Sky Marshall that Space Force sends is going to have a lot more freedom than the representative of Air Force Space Command, even if it's the same person who was representing AFSC last year.
Also, here is a link to the FY19 National Defense Authorization Act, in case anyone wants to take a look at how the DoD actually gets its money, and with what strings attached. Or wants a good treatment for insomnia. (It worked pretty well for me last night.)
Thanks for that link, actually! I wouldn't attempt to read it straight through, but reading the table of contents and sampling random items is pretty illuminating as to the granularity of Congressional authorization.
Thinking this through some more, I reinvented the concept of a Unified Command, discovered that they already exist, and that moreover that a Unified Command for space is actually established in that same Defense Authorization Act, which I didn't know was a thing at all.
What's your thought on that (assuming it doesn't actually lead to a Space Force)? It sounds like a pretty reasonable way to unify space efforts while still leaving everyone involved answerable to one of the existing branches and also avoiding most of the overhead of a new branch. Plus it's a reestablishment of a command that existed before, which suggests it's at least not totally crazy.
Oh, it’s absolutely not something to read as if it was a book. But I’ve never looked at one before, and I learned a thing or two, not least about how many reports and certifications they demand in these things.
Reestablishing Spacecom is definitely the way to go here, and you did sort of reinvent the UCC (which I didn’t recognize because I’m allergic to that kind of thing). There used to be one, but it got rolled into Stratcom in 2002 because they didn’t want to go over 10 UCCs and were standing up Northcom. Not sure what the thought there was.
The big difference between a UCC and a contracted service is loyalty. The head of Spacecom wants Spacecom to gain power, but he's Air Force (probably) at heart. He's not going to cause a huge flap by trying to buy bombardment constellations because he's essentially running a support command, in the same way that TRANSCOM hasn't tried to take over.
I have a friend who’s thinking about explaining the whole UCC thing in more detail here.
Right, I didn't mean that contracted service == UCC; I meant to say that I reinvented the UCC while formulating a revised proposal.
I'd definitely be interested if your friend makes that post!
Inertial trajectories are 0g; number of Gs pulled is a measure of how much you're deviating from inertial. Straight and level flight is 1g because you're typically nowhere near orbital velocity and therefore there's a short and rather hard limit on how long you can follow the 0g inertial trajectory.
Alternatively: seatback trays being a useful thing in aircraft, but not so much on the ISS.
Unless of course I'm completely mistaken, but I'd give ten to one odds on ten dollars that I'm right on this one :p
You'd lose the bet, although I'm being unusually idiosyncratic in that comment. I'm well aware of how microgravity/free fall works (my degree is in aerospace engineering). If the spacecraft was truly experiencing no forces and 0 G of acceleration, then it would travel in a straight line, not orbit. A circular orbit is mechanically the same as tying a rope to the satellite and swinging it around at the speed at which the resulting acceleration is equal to the gravitational acceleration at that altitude. It's just that gravity pulls on everything together at the same weight, so you feel weightless.
By that definition, an object falling from a tower is also experiencing 1g. I'm not arguing that gravity isn't experienced in orbit, but rather that pulling on everything the same feeling is exactly the topic of interest.
A person in orbit around a denser planet such that they underwent nine times the gravitational acceleration is not going to black out from the 9g's they're undergoing, agree? To the extent that that is the technical definition, I'd argue that the technical definition is, maybe not faulty, but divorced from the understanding of enough people to matter.
But at the same time, I'd argue that such a definition is in fact faulty. Standing on the top of a building, I'm undergoing 1g, agreed? When I step off the roof (in a vacuum, for the sake of pedantry), you would say I'm wrong to claim that I'm now experiencing 0g, but rather that I'm still experiencing 1g, correct?
It depends on your frame of reference, which in turn depends on what you're doing. Most people other than the astrodynamicist would agree that it is in zero G. But in this case, we are looking from the astrodynamics side, and gravity is the only thing that matters.
In this context, an ex-fighter pilot was asking how many gees were being pulled :p
Granted, and in that context there isn't a good answer. From the perspective of someone looking at the spacecraft from the outside in a stationary reference frame, it's accelerating at basically 1 G. In terms of someone on the satellite, it's 0 G. It depends on what you're doing, and I'll cheerfully admit to choosing the former to be weird. In no case is the satellite deliberate accelerating.
As a heads-up, I am getting hundreds of lines of error codes when loading this page (and only this one). mostly 'Warning: pregmatch(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /home/public/wiki.obormot.net/cookbook/simplehtml_dom.php on line 1364 '
"History would record Space Force's first offensive action as a hack against a small naval history blog."
I suspect that the problem is the plugin for getting comments from SSC, and I've pinged Said Achmiz about it. But blaming Space Force is more fun, so we'll make that the official line.