After a season without much news about the president of the United States, a new proposal of his has returned to the front pages of the international press. This time, Trump has had the idea of creating a military branch different from all previously known, the so-called ‘Space Force’ .
According to the politician’s statements, “space is a domain of war like land, air and sea .” This approach arose a few days ago when, in a meeting on projects in space, Trump suggested, as a joke, to create a body that would defend all these projects. What began as a simple comment, soon became consolidated as a matter of special attention to the president.
The idea of a space corps made headlines last year , when the House of Representatives passed legislation mandating the creation of a space army. However, the headquarters of the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, refused to obey this law.
The leader was in an audience of Marines, in the Air Station of the Marine Corps of Miramar in San Diego (California), when during his speech he spoke of this idea. In the end, he again caused, as on previous occasions, the overflow of the bases on which his own administration is based.
Trump’s appearance in California marks the second time in less than a week that the president’s statements about the nation’s space ambitions contradict real policies.
Pretensions of a spatial conflict
The concept of a space force is not very new. In 2000 , the former US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld , already proposed the creation of this body. However, the issue was left aside due to the attacks of 9/11 in 2001, as well as the armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
When it surfaced again in 2017 , the House Armed Services Committee approved a measure to create a space corps proposed by Mike Rogers (Republican) and Jim Cooper (Democrat). The model they suggested would absorb the duties of the US Air Force Space Command , a unit that supports most of the country’s military operations in space. The Senate finally banned this project and the Pentagon stood firm in its decision. A year later, it was Trump who brought up this issue again.
“I am very proud of President Trump’s support for this important and historic initiative to create an independent space force. I look forward to working with the Trump administration to make this a reality in the near future,” Rogers said in a statement.
There is a treaty, specifically the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 , that prohibits the placement of weapons of mass destruction in the orbit of the Earth . The problem is that there are loopholes in the use of space weapons . In fact, there is not even a regulation that defines exactly what can be considered a space weapon.
In the hypothetical event that a space fight breaks out, the most immediate consequences would undoubtedly be the disorder of hundreds of communications, navigation, meteorology and reconnaissance satellites on which society depends . Some scholars suggest that this infrastructure could collapse without firing a single shot.
