Ryan M. Patrick

It’s the first question I get asked on almost every BookTube or interview I do, What is the Space Force? As someone who was around for the U.S. Space Force’s creation, the standup of the Space Force Element (SFELM) at the National Reconnaissance Office, and the expansion of the initial cadre at HQ USSF at the Pentagon before I separated from the military to pursue my career in the private sector, I was uniquely positioned to see the formation of the newest military service – the first in almost a century. In this post, I’ll try and get down how the Space Force came to be and what it is and isn’t. And I’m not going to talk about the horrible Netflix show – it would be better for everyone if that was erased entirely from existence!

Origins of the Space Force

While the Space Force was signed into law in December 2019, and General Raymond (who I’ve personally briefed half-a-dozen times) was sworn in as the first Chief of Space Operations in January 2020, its beginnings go back to the end of World War II and the start of the U.S. space program. The Army, Navy, and Air Force all competed to be the military leader in outer space. But, while the Air Force won that battle, getting roughly 80% of ARPA and later DARPA’s contracts (mostly due to their focus on manned spaceflight), much of the money eventually went to the new NASA organization.

The Air Force became the lead in space launch as the Cold War dragged on, but shared satellite operations responsibilities with both the other services as well as the secretive National Reconnaissance Office. The military lost the manned program to NASA but moved forward in a number of areas, including ISR (the CORONA and HEXAGON programs), military satellite communications (SATCOM), and GPS. However, space was always a low priority. The four branches of the military loved the effects that space provided, as seen in the “Left Hook” maneuver in Operation Desert Storm that would have not been possible without GPS, but failed to provide personnel or funds to the joint space effort on either the DOD or the IC side. The worst was the Air Force, where the majority of “space” money was directed through. The USAF is run by pilots, and they care the most about aircraft that are flown by humans. Satellites and rockets were a low priority and funds were routinely diverted to plug holes on the air-breathing side.

For this reason, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a Space Commission proposed an independent “Space Corps” but plans for that were put on hold after the events of 9/11 and the pivot to the Global War on terror. The Space Force would have to wait.

Establishment of the Space Force

Despite being an astronautical engineering major at the U.S. Air Force Academy and heavily involved in that school’s FalconSAT program, I had never heard of any of this, just that Air Force space was undermanned and underfunded. However, when I was at the Air Force Institute of Technology for my graduate degree in 2015, we did a class trip for a satellite systems engineering class to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, across the state from Wright-Patterson AFB. We stopped at a McDonalds for lunch and I ate with a colonel who would end up being on my thesis committee, who told me and a couple of other LTs that he had just been to the Pentagon and that we would see an independent Space Force underneath the Department of the Air Force during our military careers.

We all laughed at him! No one could believe that space, which all of us were studying, was important enough to be on equal footing with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

But, sure enough, during my next assignment, the provisions for the Space Force were included in the FY20 NDAA, and the aforementioned General Raymond was the first Guardian (that name deserves its own blog post!). However, it took time to spin up the rest of the USSF. In 2020, during the heat of COVID, I had to put together an “interservice transfer package” to transition from the USAF to the USSF, which would incur a 2-year service commitment. In retrospect, this should have been my signal to leave the military, but that, too, is another blog post.

I was selected to join the Space Force at the end of CY2020 and swore in to the USSF in a conference room in Tower 3 at the NRO in May 2021, not long after I learned I would promote to O-4. I stayed there another year before moving to the Pentagon, where I saw how much of a mess it is.

The Space Force was sold to Congress by the DOD as needing minimal additional funding – they wouldn’t require additional bodies or money on top of what was already assigned to space across the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It was established underneath the Department of the Air Force and has very few organic support staff – all personnelists, security forces, finance, medical, and the like assigned to Space Force units are Air Force airmen.

Problem is, even though Space Force funding and personnel are now outside of the USAF, all of those support functions aren’t. And on top of that, a 100-person HQ staff at the Pentagon has ballooned into over a thousand, and it’s growing still. It turns out to fight in a bureaucratic battlefield…you need a lot of bureaucrats. And that is proving to be much more expensive than Congress had been led to believe. I did not have a good time at headquarters and I hear that it’s just as turbulent after I left as it was when I was there.

It’s still early, but I don’t see it as a success. Yet. I’ll post something maybe next year on where I see the Space Force going in the future, but based on how many people have been contacting me about getting out I don’t think it’s working at the moment.

What the Space Force Is and Isn’t

The Space Force, for the most part, acquires, sustains, and operates military satellites. Those can be as large and complex as the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) GEO comm birds that provide national leaders protected command & control of nuclear forces to smaller megaconstellations like the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 0 satellites. There are Space Force astronauts, but the majority of Guardians live on the Earth, working at high-density locations like Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, and the DC area and lower-density ones like Dayton, Ohio, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. For the most part, they’re doing the same work they did in their old military branch, but there are some nuances – like the Space Force’s modern fitness program.

When I talk to kids at my daughters’ school, they always ask me if I’ve been to space. And I haven’t – even though I always wanted to be an astronaut – and no Guardians have been outside of the NASA manned spaceflight program. But that might change, given Jared Isaacman’s selection as NASA administrator and his recent remarks on the Space Force.

That being said, the Space Force *is* responsible for defending America’s space assets and defeating our adversaries outside of the Karman line. Right now, that’s mostly in Earth’s orbital regimes, but as humanity expands beyond our home planet the USSF will be along for the ride. They’re already thinking about the Space Force on the moon, who knows what’ll happen when Guardians encounter Chinese or Russian forces there?