America launches process of setting up Space Force

“Just as in the past, when we created the Air Force, establishing the Space Force is an idea whose time has come, said Pence. “The space environment has fundamentally changed in the last generation.  What was once peaceful and uncontested is now crowded and adversarial.  Today, other nations are seeking to disrupt our space-based systems and challenge American supremacy in space as never before.”

President Donald Trump had a few weeks ago directed the Department of Defence “to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces.”

The defence department has now released a report outlining the first stages of the administration’s plan to implement the President’s directive. It reviews the national security space activities within the department and identifies concrete steps that the administration will take to lay the foundation for a new Space Force.

“For many years, nations from Russia and China to North Korea and Iran have pursued weapons to jam, blind, and disable our navigation and communications satellites via electronic attacks from the ground,” said Pence. “But recently, our adversaries have been working to bring new weapons of war into space itself.”

According to him, in 2007, China launched a missile that tracked and destroyed one of its own satellites, which was “a highly provocative demonstration of China’s growing capability to militarise space.”

Russia has been designing an airborne laser to disrupt America’s space-based system, he pointed.  And it claims to be developing missiles that can be launched from an aircraft mid-flight to destroy American satellites, said Pence.

“Both China and Russia have been conducting highly sophisticated on-orbit activities that could enable them to maneuver their satellites into close proximity of ours, posing unprecedented new dangers to our space systems,” the American vice-president warned.