Air University Review, January-March 1987
I chose the subject of the future of military space forces because I feel obligated to respond to recent suggestions that we will soon need a fourth military department in the Department of Defense--a Department of Space. There are quite a few proponents of this view, and they argue that an Army, a Navy, and an Air Force will soon be insufficient for carrying out those tasks required for national security. These proponents suggest –with a confident sense of inevitability—that on the horizon is a "Space Force" or perhaps a "Space Defense Force." The "theater" or "area of responsibility" of this future Space Force would be, of course, that medium we all commonly call "space."
My view of the future is quite different. I do not see a Space Force on the horizon. Moreover, I think creation of a separate Department of Space would be the wrong thing to do. I arrive at this conclusion on the basis of an examination of the Department of Defense infrastructure and how it has evolved since well before the time there was a Department of the Air Force, along with consideration for the future adequacy of this infrastructure.
From the earliest days of our Republic until 1947, our military forces were organized into two departments: the War Department and the Navy Department. The civilian secretaries who headed these departments were members of the president's cabinet, and powerful members at that. All military capabilities, all roles and missions, had to be somehow incorporated into this structure.
When Gen William "Billy" Mitchell argued for a unique role for air power in 1924, his arguments struck at both the War Department and the Navy Department. Those two powerful departments viewed aviation as an adjunct to either ground operations or fleet operations. Mitchell asserted that a larger and more independent role was necessary, a role that would permit long-range strategic bombardment.
It took the Second World War to prove his point. By the end of the North African campaign, we had learned that air power could not be subordinated to the ground commander, and thus "piecemealed," if there was to be tactical success. Protecting ground forces by close air support was only one of many roles that air forces were capable of performing, and indeed had to perform. Air superiority was a prerequisite for unhampered ground operations. The interdiction of rear echelon supplies and reinforcements provided tremendous assistance to the ground commander in contact with the enemy. And long-range strategic bombardment showed the effectiveness of destroying an enemy's resupply capability by striking at its source—factories, energy supplies, and transportation nodes. The development of the atomic bomb made the argument for a long-range air force even more convincing. In fact, it actually had the effect of closing the door to any further debate. The Second World War proved Mitchell’s point, but it took postwar legislation to create a separate air force.
From 1945 to 1947, we debated just how we would structure the military establishment to incorporate a separate air force. The National Security Act of 1947 created a "National Military Establishment" as the forerunner of what is now the Department of Defense. The establishment included a Department of the Air Force, along with the Departments of the Army and the Navy. The act also created a secretary of defense, who had administrative control over the three departments. Each department had a civilian secretary charged with administering the forces that were under the command of a service chief of staff. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were given legal status and were charged to bring about coordination of plans and functions among the services.
The Reorganization Act of 1958 reorganized the Department of Defense to increase its effectiveness and to centralize its authority. Until the fall of 1986, this was the most significant change made to the 1947 law. The 1958 act removed service secretaries from the operational chain of command. Their planning responsibilities were reassigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and their operational responsibilities were assigned to the commanders in chief of the unified and specified commands. The services became resource managers. As resource managers, they were responsible for organizing, training, and equipping the forces that unified and specified commanders in chief would employ. The services were to build the force structure, and operational commanders were to employ it.
Military space forces were, of course, affected by the changes in the law. When the US Air Force was created, it took most of its force structure from the US Army. The Army retained responsibility for development of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, which was considered analogous to long-range artillery. The Air Force, however, was charged with developing a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)—an analogous extension of its strategic bombardment role. The US Navy missile program grew out of its initial partnership with the Army.
Space operations were seen as a natural outgrowth and extension of air operations. As early as the 1950s, Gen Thomas L. White coined the word aerospace to describe the medium for Air Force operations. Since then we have considered "air" and "space," while two separate entities, as constituting a single realm—an "operationally indivisible medium." Even before the Soviets launched Sputnik, the senior leadership of the Air Force was looking ahead to a role for the Air Force in space. Clearly this is quite different from the view the Army took toward aviation in those earlier years when General Mitchell and others argued for a distinct role for air power. The Army of General Mitchell’s era rejected a large role for aviation; the Air Force of today eagerly awaits the growth of space activities as part and parcel of aerospace.
Of all the aerospace forces, the space -related one with the longest lineage and largest force structure is our ICBM force. Today the Air Force has nearly ten thousand people in the missile operations and missile maintenance career fields, most of them in the Strategic Air Command.
Ballistic missiles are space systems; about 98 percent of the ballistic missile trajectory occurs in space. The business end of that missile—its warheads—are carried by a very specialized spacecraft called a "postboost vehicle." This spacecraft has its own reaction control system, onboard computers, and maneuvering capability. A missile lifts this spacecraft into space, and the spacecraft maneuvers to release its warheads. The Soviet SS-18, for example, travels more than a thousand miles above the surface of the earth—higher than 40 percent of the satellites in low-earth orbit. Its 10-warhead platform transits space across a distance of more than four thousand miles for approximately 20 minutes. By any definition, the postboost vehicles of ICBMs are spacecraft. In fact, the time an intercontinental ballistic missile spends in the atmosphere is almost negligible. I hasten to caution that these points are not made to suggest moving ballistic missiles to Space Command. Space is not a mission. It is a place from and within which military missions are carried out. Ballistic missiles are strategic offensive systems and, as such, belong in the command that bears responsibility for that unique mission, no matter how much time those systems spend in space.
The significance of already having land-and-sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in the force structure should not be lost. It is one of four reasons why I do not see a Space Force on the horizon. Let me enumerate and explain those four reasons.
First, we have intentionally avoided establishing a precise definition of where this medium, or place, called "space" begins. Physiologists have an aeromedical definition, the personnel folks who define astronaut ratings have another definition, aeronautical and aerodynamic engineers have a third definition, and legal experts have their definitions. Some countries have tried to impose a definition on other countries, but our country has not accepted any of these.
Failing a precise distinction between the mediums of air and space, it would be extremely difficult to separate the two operationally. Where would the responsibilities of a Space Department begin, and where would those of the Air Force end? Similarly, to call space a military "theater" or an "area of responsibility" would be to suggest that space was a "mission" and not a "place." That’s a view I also reject. Even if we could make a clear distinction between air and space, the problem of dividing up the force structure we already have would still remain. That leads me to the second reason I do not think we will have a separate Space Force—and do not think we should have one.
The aerospace operations force structure is largely provided by the Air Force. Since the 1950s the Air Force has continued to fund, research, and develop those military systems designed to exploit the full medium encompassing all of aerospace. The Air Force has accumulated a wealth of experience in space operations and accumulated it at a great price. It is incorrect to think those investments have been made and are being made without a full appreciation of the force structure that must be provided for air and space operations. It is also quite unlikely that early aerospace power advocates—Arnold, Spaatz, White, von Karman, Vandenberg, Schriever, and Twining, just to name a few—somehow might have missed the conceptual boat. I believe they had the foresight to understand that aerospace operations would embrace space as well as the sensible atmosphere.
The early efforts by Chuck Yeager, Frank Everest, Milton Apt, and Ivan Kincheloe to fly higher and faster were driven by the requirement to understand and exploit as much of the aerospace medium as technology would allow. Years of lifting-body research, progressing from the delta wing reentry gliders of the ASSET and PRIME programs, evolved into the manned PILOT missions—the launch of X-24As from B-52 "mother ships."* Years of supersonic flight research beginning with the X-1 series culminated in the hypersonic X-15. It was the convergence of these research efforts that made possible the concept validation and design of the space shuttle. It was the Air Force that sponsored and funded a large part of those efforts, of course. More than three decades ago, the Air Force began to pave the way for the day when technology would make aerospace planes possible. On the horizon are aerospace planes, vehicles capable of operating both in the atmosphere and in orbit. Eventually aerospace planes will operate in both mediums on the same mission. I see the day in the not-too-distant future when aerospace vehicles will routinely conduct operations in and between space and the atmosphere on a single mission. It would be most unwise and very likely impossible to try to separate what man and nature have intertwined. And that leads to the third reason why I do not think a Space Force is on the horizon.
*The acronyms refer to the Aerothermodynamic Structural Systems Environmental Test, Precision Recovery Including Maneuvering Entry, and Piloted Low-Speed Test.
The Air Force recognizes that much of its future is in space. Any attempt to separate "space" from "aerospace" would certainly stimulate a debate. Without space, it could be argued that the Air Force’s atmospheric missions might gradually be absorbed as ancillaries of the land and naval missions. I think the Air Force would struggle hard to avoid that. But frankly, if there were a fourth military department for space, or a Space Force, I think this would be the inevitable result in the long term.
The argument that someday officers engaged in atmospheric missions will have no shared identify with officers performing space missions has so far also proved incorrect. Missile operations and space operations people are doing fine and getting along well with aviators. There does not appear to be a "brown-shoe" Air Force growing out of the "black-shoe" one. It is incumbent on Air Force leaders to ensure that steps are taken to continue that sense of corporateness among all its officers.
Finally, and perhaps most important, the suggestion that we will someday have a new and separate Space Force falls to appreciate how the Department of Defense is structured today and why it is so structured.
Implicit in the organization of the Department of Defense are four fundamental principles. The first principle is that the Department of Defense is organized to serve the people of the United States. We in our nation's military establishment are public servants. Our collective role is ultimately to do no more and no less than the people we serve direct us to do. The mandate of the people is expressed by their choice of our commander in chief, our nation's president and chief executive, and by their choice of the legislators that represent them. The will of the people is transmitted by executive orders and by public law. This representational system is obviously only perfect to the degree that all the people involved are perfect. Whatever real or perceived imperfections that may exist are the cost of a system organized by the many to serve the many. On balance, however, there is no better model.
Throughout the history of our Republic, our citizens have, through our laws, thoughtfully and carefully limited the power of the military establishment. They have limited its power not so much to hamper its effectiveness or essential operations, but rather to ensure that adequate and concrete checks and balances keep it dependent on and responsive to the people it is designed to serve.
The second principle ensures that we have a resource management chain of command and a separate operational chain of command to avoid concentration of excessive authority in any senior office below that of the civilian secretary of defense.
Next, our unified and specified commands are created and are structured to accomplish specific military missions and objectives. Unified commands are organized either to accomplish a broad continuing mission requiring execution by significant forces of two or more services and necessitating a single strategic direction, or to achieve a unity of effort when single responsibility is required for effective coordination of the operations in a large geographic area and when common utilization of limited logistic means is a necessity. Specified commands have a broad continuing mission and "are composed of forces from but one service."
A fourth fundamental principle is that the resource management chain of command is not built around specific missions of geographic areas. Rather, it is organized around the homogeneity of its force structure.
The suggestion that we will someday have a new and separate Space Force also fails to acknowledge how dramatically different today's environment and today’s structure are when compared to that era when air forces grew out of the Army. The differences are enormous, and almost no parallel exists between Billy Mitchell’s era and now.
Today we have three military departments charged by law to organize, train, and equip forces. These departments are resource managers. By law, they lack the authority to employ the force structures they create and sustain. The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force do not have operational missions. Their role is to build and structure forces. They provide these forces through the component commands, which are the major or subordinate commands of each of the three departments, to the commanders in chief of unified and specified commands for employment. Under Title 10 of the United States Code, the unified and specified command structure is the only legal structure for the employment of forces. While it appears some are unwilling to accept this, it is in fact the law of the land.
We have operational commands that are capable of, and that are legally charged with the responsibility for, employing forces in every conceivable medium. Nearly all of our unified commands have responsibilities in the areas of land, sea, and aerospace. Among these unified and specified operational commands is the United States Space Command.
The United States Space Command is a joint-service, unified command, that is just over a year old. Its components provide representation and space expertise from all three services. The command has been assigned responsibilities in three broad areas: space operations, surveillance and warning, and ballistic missile defense planning and requirements development. Our mission is not "space." Our mission is to accomplish certain specific tasks in space pursuant to national security objectives. Although the potential for growth in each of these three areas of tasking is dramatic, advocates of a Space Force most often concentrate on the growth that will occur in the space operations area. Let me highlight the space operations missions we are already tasked with.
Our space operations missions include controlling space, directing space support operations for assigned systems, and operating systems that are designated or assigned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in support of the national command authorities, the Joint Chiefs, and other unified and specified commands.
Space control is analogous to sea control. It includes ensuring the right of passage through space, ensuring that operations in space can be conducted without interference, and—when necessary and directed—denying an adversary the use of space-based systems that provide support to hostile military forces.
Space support operations include supporting the launch and on-orbit requirements that are established by operational commanders and providing support to terrestrial-based forces as required and as the capabilities of assigned systems will permit. In addition, the command is responsible for ensuring that the appropriate space system requirements of other operational commands are advocated, integrated, and supported.
That is a full plate. In organizing to accomplish those missions, we are building an infrastructure that will endure. This infrastructure will enable us to conduct unified and integrated military space operations for deterrence far into the future. It will also enable us to integrate technological change and transform it into military space capabilities.
I accept the fact that technological change is inevitable, but I do not accept the idea that we are powerless to influence the ways in which we assimilate technologies into military capabilities and military structures just because we do not have a Department of Space. The proper arena for the Air Force embraces air and space, and I believe the Air Force has accomplished much in both of those areas. The service departments have provided a superior structure for the advocacy and funding of military air and space systems. The unified command-—the United States Space Command—has the infrastructure built to employ them. Our infrastructure is also designed to incorporate and employ the space systems required by other commanders in chief.
The new Goldwater-Nichols DOD Reorganization Act of 1986 will buttress our nation’s unified and specified command structure. It will strike a more effective balance between the Department of Defense’s resource management chain of command and its operational chain of command. Commanders in chief will be given a greater voice in the requirements, acquisition, and resource allocation processes. This greater influence, I believe, will have tangible paybacks in military capability and effectiveness.
There is, however, an instructive element in the suggestion that we create a Space Force. It does argue that we probably need to do a better job of explaining how the Department of Defense is organized and, given its structure, how it should operate. We also need to increase our efforts to normalize the ways in which we approach the "space" portion of aerospace missions. Failing to do this, we run the risk of failing to truly unify our operations, and our ability to deter in the future could be affected.
Our nation’s policy of deterrence—of preventing conflict—hinges on our ability to maintain the credible capabilities to always deny an adversary whatever it is he might seek by aggression. These capabilities include not only military forces but also the entire range of elements contributing to national power. Military forces themselves do not derive their capabilities just from the numbers and the quality of the people and equipment possessed. Capability is also a function of the effectiveness of the structure that would employ them, the quality of the employment plans, and the degree to which land, sea, and aerospace forces are integrated. The 20-year trend toward unification and integration, while still preserving the sanctity of two separate command chains, is one I see as both necessary and desirable.
I do not see a new and separate Space Force on the horizon. The creation of a separate Space Force would provide me, as commander in chief of a unified command, the United States Space Command, with another component—a Space Force component. What capabilities would this space component provide that the three components we already have cannot provide? I think that proponents of a new department are attracted by an illusion that a Department of Space would have "the operational mission of space." I hope my arguments have shown that this is just not possible. USCINCSPACE would still be the force employer—by law—of whatever force structure such a Space Force might include and provide for my use. What useful purpose would be served by establishing another military department in that context? In an era of finite resources and growing interdependence, can we really afford to neglect the hard-learned lessons of the past?
In the early days of the Second World War, we initially labored under the belief that the "medium defined the mission." However, we quickly learned that in order to meet tactical and strategic objectives, all missions in all mediums had to be subordinated to and contributory with respect to the objective. Heads of state specified the objectives and provided strategic direction of a combined chiefs of staff. The chiefs represented Allied military forces and capabilities in all mediums. They translated global strategic objectives into smaller but still massive theater military objectives. Theater commanders translated these into integrated taskings for all the military forces—land, sea, and air—in a theater. Subordinate commands used combined forces to win victories, and these paved the way to strategic success.
This combined forces approach required an intermingling of capabilities. We saw that the medium could no longer be the sole criterion for defining missions. The creation of a separate Department of the Air Force did not take the Army and the Navy out of aviation. The natural forces set in motion by the combined forces approach to meeting the strategic objectives of World War II could not easily have been artificially inhibited. While the Air Force has a dominant role in aviation, it clearly does not, and cannot, have the exclusive role.
The same will continue to be true with space. The Air Force is not the only military department involved in space. To suggest that 50 years from now we will have a Department of Space with exclusive roles in that medium or that the only command with space missions will be the United States Space Command is too shortsighted to merit serious consideration.
Given the choice of taking the path of rational continuity or fantastic discontinuity, the most prudent course is the path of continuity. I sense we are on that path, and I see nothing on the horizon that could or should sway us from that course. In fact, everything I see leads me to conclude that we are already properly postured for the future. The task that lies ahead is to build carefully on the foundation that has been built, one sound layer at a time.
Future military space forces will be the "fleshing-out" of the structure that we have today. Our basic structure has served us well. I see no need to fragment it under the guise of improving it. Rather, I see us taking the skeletal structure we have today and adding muscles here and muscles there. Our country has significant real and potential space capabilities residing in all three military departments. Most by far reside in the Air Force. The ability and the legal responsibility to employ these forces resides in the unified and specified command structure; it would not reside in a new Department of Space, even if one were formed. When I look on the horizon, I see us doing the smart thing by slowly and surely actualizing the potential that already exists. The Department of the Air Force is our space force, and we certainly do not need another.
General Robert T. Herres (USNA; PhD, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) has been nominated by President Reagan to fill the newly created position of vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His previous assignments include commander-in-chief, North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Space Command, Peterson AFB, Colorado; director, Command, Control, and Communications Systems, Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; commander, Eighth Air Force (SAC), Air Force Communications Command, 449th Bomb Wing (SAC), 310th Strategic Wing (SAC); and chief, Flight Crew Division, Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program (AFSC). General Herres has published in numerous industry and professional publications.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.