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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
May I ask what the Space Force would DO then?
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Basically separate these guys
and others from other branches, into their own branch. It's why the Air Force is a bit antsy.
It's not the worst idea in the world, but considering who is doing it, it's basically a vanity project.
Edited by TerminusEst on Aug 10th 2018 at 5:30:02 AM
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
x5 The US military is believed to have around 200-300 satellites in orbit, as well as all sorts of other stuff, and that number is expanding dramatically. Those satellites do everything from communication to surveillance to nuclear early warning and are all but critical to our military supremacy. With other countries beginning to expand into space and develop things like anti-satellite weapons there’s some need to look after our interests up there.
Most everyone agrees that we need a concerted military effort in space, it’s just that the space force is the wrong way to do it.
x4 Basically. It’s going to end up costing a bunch, but because it doesn’t actually add any new items it’s considered “neutral”.
Someone mentioned “vanity project” and that pretty much hits the nail on the head.
Coordinating satellites isn’t really something ground troops would ever be doing. Though, once we get our warsats online...
Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 10th 2018 at 5:38:41 AM
They should have sent a poet.![]()
Exactly, sattelites are a very valuable target for other nations if they want to launch a new kind of digital offensive. Better to have a Space Force now and secure american space assets than needing it the future and there not being one.
Well, ideally a unified approach. The situation with space right now is pretty chaotic, every branch pretty much has at it. That’s why a proper unified combatant command is a good first step.
The real reason Trump is doing it is so he can call it “Trump’s Space Force” from now until the end of time. You’ll note that he’s already selling merch.
Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 10th 2018 at 6:05:21 AM
They should have sent a poet.Actually, establishing any kind of active military presence in space is a really, really bad idea.
Even if you ignore the inevitable consequences, like Kessler Syndrome, of active military engagements in low earth orbit, the fact of the matter is that earth orbit is, by necessity, neutral territory on the same order as international waters or the deep polar regions. There's a reason why international treaties require nations to divulge when and where they'll be moving their fleets or doing naval exercises through international waters.
If the US tries to lay claim to parts of earth orbit for military purposes, they not only give their enemies an excuse to do the same, but also to argue that whatever part of orbit that is 'above' their country in any given moment is in the equivalent of their airspace...
And then they can shoot down any satellite that's in their 'space' without their permission for 'security' purposes and have a neat, diplomatically acceptable excuse for why they did it ("It was in our space without permission, it might have been military, so we were just defending ourselves from a potential threat.")
Angry gets shit done.![]()
International waters are neutral but that doesn’t mean we can’t sail ships through them or fight wars in them. The situation you describe where military satellites fly over countries that have the means to shoot them down has already come to pass, and countries haven’t started randomly shooting things down.
Also, I’ll add that technically we do have territory in orbit. A country’s airspace extends upwards to the limits of Earth’s orbits, so a satellite in stationary orbit over a country could be said to be inside that country’s orbital territory. Obviously for practical reasons this airspace is not as strictly enforced as atmospheric airspace.
One way or another space is turning into a new battlefield, and I’d rather we be ready for it.
Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 10th 2018 at 7:10:58 AM
They should have sent a poet.The only powers that have a means to fight a shooting war in space are nuclear-armed powers that can't have shooting wars between one another because MAD.
Space is not the new battlefield. Cyber-warfare is the new battlefield, and we are actively getting smashed by Russia on that front. That is where our focus needs to be. I'd rather have a sovereign nation without a Death Star orbital doom-laser than a Russian puppet state with one.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 10th 2018 at 8:15:46 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Space is a new battlefield, not the new battlefield.
Considering, though, how utterly critical orbital control is to our military it’s worth the attention it’s warranted. It’s just too bad it has to come from a vapid publicity stunt.
Also, what Russia’s been doing isn’t really cyberwarfare. Their hacking has pretty much been a sideshow to the propaganda campaign they’ve been waging, one which has sadly been brutally effective.
They should have sent a poet.The propaganda campaign is being done on Facebook, Twitter, etc. It's part of their cyberwarfare suite.
This is the threat. Trump wants everyone talking about Space Force so that we forget that our sovereignty as a nation is actively under assault through digital lanes.
Barbarians are invading through the East and our President is going, "What about those guys to the West? Don't you think we need to send all of our forces over there to mess with them right now? I think that would be a lovely idea." Because he's in league with the barbarians.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 10th 2018 at 8:42:36 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I think that’s minimizing what they've managed to do. Messing with a couple thousand voter registrations is enough to swing an election, and our voter rolls are obscenely vulnerable.
![]()
That’s propaganda and information warfare, not cyberwarfare.
I’ll also point out that cyberwarfare already has its own unified combatant command, USCYBERCOM. Space warfare doesn’t even have that, and is arguably much more important.
It seems unlikely that Russia actually literally manipulated voting data. What they did was maniupulate the opinions of voters, which as it turns out is a whole hell of a lot easier.
Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 10th 2018 at 7:46:59 AM
They should have sent a poet.They can walk and chew gum at the same time.
If you’ve got the ability to delete/invalidate voter registrations, why wouldn’t you? It’s like breaking into a house and not stealing anything. And our electoral system is so crappy, it’s unlikely that voters would know their registration was up to date and something fishy must have happened when they couldn’t vote. They would probably assume they messed something up, or forget to register, etc.
And maybe they can do that, but there is a major difference between "possibly capable of altering voter registration" and "doing it enough to alter elections". The former is not necessarily unbelievable but the latter is a extraordinary claim that requires similarly extraordinary evidence.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 10th 2018 at 11:00:21 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang

"As President of the United States, I do declare ownership of Uranus."