We're living in the Space Age right now and have been since 1957, though I don't think I'm alone
in saying that it really doesn't feel like it. Conspiracy or not, Apollo 11's July 1969
Moon-landing captivated the imagination of every human being on our Pale Blue Dot, and,
yes, there has been some excitement about getting to Mars, though, other than that,
this so-called "Space Age" isn't living up to its name. The concept of humanity spreading from
system to system like a plague — no, literally a plague — is inspiring and terrifying both,
though, in reality, we're far, far away from space fleets and extrasolar colonies. With that said,
military interest in any frontier is followed often by public interest and, if it at least
most of the paperwork gets signed, resources. To maintain military operations in any frontier,
technology must rise to match the demands of the frontier and, more importantly,
make every other interested party's technology look it was dusted off and hauled out of a museum.
This "Space Age" didn't really kick off until space-bound technology was perceived
as a military threat and, consequentially, the US military got involved. It was a competition
in a virgin frontier, and that competition bred all sorts of wonderful technologies.
It's not unreasonable, on first glance at all this "United States Space Force (USSF)" stuff,
to think we're entering a new, military-driven age of expansion into the cold, cold void. Though,
in reality, all of the USSF's operations occur scarcely beyond the gaseous film of
our little world and, importantly to this video, have basically been going on since
the dawn of the Space Age. The USSF isn't really anything new, and it was sculpted
from more than sixty years of military — and, of course, scientific — operation in space.
We mostly cover war history here on The Front, and space forces, given they were actually a
thing before December 2019, certainly fall under that bracket. For the rest of this video,
we're going to discuss the history of space forces and how it sculpted the space forces of today.
The Space Age was born during and as a result of a desire for space supremacy in the Cold War,
and the competition between the US and the USSR to achieve it is known commonly as the "Space Race."
The USSR got a satellite, Sputnik 1, up in orbit first, in 1957, and soon after,
both the US and the USSR were deploying satellites on the reg. These were recon satellites only,
deployed to both take images of rival military installations and ensure others
nations were sticking to their end of the Outer Space Treaty, which we'll get to soon.
What's more exciting is that though both nations were researching all sorts of fun
ways to engage in satellite-to-satellite combat, the most exciting of which being kamikaze-esque
satellites and directed-energy weapons, which — yes, thank the Force, yes — included lasers.
To the surprise of no one — after all, it was the Cold War — both the US and USSR researched
putting nuclear bombs into orbit, and both these powers developed ground-based ballistic missiles
capable of waging intercontinental nuclear holocaust. While said ballistic missiles
travelled ground to ground in an arc, that arc actually crested into space, and both
the US and USSR explored anti-ballistic missile technology delivered by weaponised satellites
in space. The Strategic Defensive Initiative, proposed by president former Ronald Reagan,
was a space-based system founded on such technologies, though, for the laughable
logistics of the thing, it was mocked, compared with Star Wars, and it never left the ground.
On the Soviet side of things, they developed, among other technologies,
the Polyus spacecraft, a prototype orbital weapons platform designed to
take out satellites just like those in Reagan's failed Strategic Defense
Initiative with — wait for it — lasers. The craft never found its way into space.
Luckily, all of these propositions and prototypes never saw action,
though before we move on to the Outer Space Treaty and Post-Cold War space forces,
the US thought about nuking the moon just to show the world who had the biggest "stick"
and — after the US realised that nuking the Moon maybe wasn't the greatest idea and zipped
up their pants — establishing a military base on the Moon. None of it came to pass.
Now, the idea of throwing nuclear bombs from continent to continent was scary enough,
so in 1967, most of the world agreed that launching nukes from orbit was crossing
the line and signed the Outer Space Treaty. The treaty, however, didn't just include the
commandment "thou shalt not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or
on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner" — it covered the use of the
Moon and other celestial bodies, the roles of astronauts as envoys of humankind, contaminating
space and celestial bodies, and other clauses regarding the exploration and habitation of the
universe. The treaty stands to this day, and to say it's "Carl-Sagan cool" is an understatement.
After the Cold War and disintegration of the USSR, space militarization didn't change all that
much. While the names and administration, which we'll get to soon, were shuffled around a bit,
both the US and USSR maintained space forces whose space-bound materiel — if we can call it
"materiel" — remained limited to satellites. Three common military uses for orbital satellites were,
and still are, for recon, global positioning systems, and communication. Space-bound weapon
systems are still limited by international treaties like the Out Space Treaty,
an Earth-bound target has never been successfully neutralised from orbit,
and satellites have only ever been attacked in training or "deactivation" missions. No
one has ever been wounded or killed in a military conflict in space.
Before we touch on the newly anointed "USSF," it's important we cover how the
names and administration of Soviet and US space forces changed over the years.
From 1982 to 1991, the Soviet Space Force was the Ministry of Space Units, and after the Soviet
Union disintegrated, the Russian Space Forces sprung out of the Russian Armed Forces. In 1997,
the Russian Space Forces also dissolved, becoming a part of the Strategic Rocket Forces until 2001,
when it was remade as an independent section of the military. Then, in 2011,
the Russian Space Forces became the core of the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces,
and in 2015, this organisation was merged with the Russian Air Force
to become the Russian Aerospace Forces, of which the Russian Space Forces was a branch.
Still following?
As for US Space Forces, military space development started in 1945 under the Army Air Forces and was
then organised under the US Air Force — after it gained independence from the Army — until 1982,
when Air Force Space Command was created; while the Air Force now commanded the majority of
US space forces assets, the Army and the Navy possessed some too. This brings us to the USSF,
which was established on the 20th of December 2019 — you know, the military organisation that
copped all the heat for stealing the Star Trek insignia. The soldiers and sailors from the
US Army and Navy space forces will have joined their air force counterparts in the USSF by 2022.
So what will the USSF actually do? If you were looking for the answer
"construct a Death Star and destroy Alderaan," you're going to be slightly disappointed.
The answers are a little vaguer than that, including such mission sets such as
achieving space superiority; supporting other operations, such as the operation of recon,
GPS, and communication satellites; supporting other services, such as
civil and commercial services and spacelifts; and supporting nuclear command, control,
communications, and detonation detection and missile warning and defence operations.
The first of their two "functions," as detailed in the USSF Act of February 2020,
is, quite simply to "provide freedom of operation for the United States in, from, and to space."
So the most important thing to understand from all of this is that space forces have been a
thing for over sixty years, and the USSF is simply the amalgamation of all spaces
forces in the US military into one distinct and individual force, equal in title to the army,
navy, and air force. Functionally, it's not really anything new. A stereotypical space force, as in
a fleet of spaceships packed to the blast-doors with armour-clad military personnel or droids,
does not yet exist, and satellites remain the primary in-orbit assets of any space force,
of which there are more than those maintained by the US and Russia. Their space forces are
simply the only independent space forces in the world at present — China, Japan, India,
and the European Union aren't so far behind. Also, space forces are largely
concerned with what's going on down below, on Earth — they're looking in, not out.
But you mustn't forget — this is simply what we know. There's
very likely a lot we don't know. It's space, after all, the final frontier;
just don't expect the formation of the USSF to make good on this whole "Space Age" thing
and catapult the plague that is humanity into the stars. If that happens, the best all the
aliens could do is pray their star burns out and they all die before we Terrans get there.