So Im curious what other Star Trek fans think about this, it looks like the whole "US Space Force" thing is real, and being actively planned.
https://www.space.com/41427-trump-space-force-military-plan-revealed.html
It sounds kinda like a MACO'ized Starfleet, but maybe they'll realize, it'll save more money in the long run to roll NASA up into this, so it is more Starfleet and less Space Marines.
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-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
If it were instituted, it would have more in common with the Space Marines of Aliens or the forces in that horrendous movie Starship Troopers than with any version of Starfleet, or even the UESPA Star Fleet. Perhaps something like the Terran Empire fleet...
Your right, they have no mission, I mean, i doubt there are aliens up there for "Military Astronauts" to fight, and unless NASA becomes a part of this, it seems very unlikely they would have Scientific Missions.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
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'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Anyway. On topic. While the POTUS and VPOTUS and the USM are kinda jumping the gun here... It does make sense for a military to have a separate branch specifically created for the purpose of operating in space, especially once we get starships good enough for operating in space with a full dedicated crew, but this is kinda decades away. Hence they're kinda jumping the gun here.
The point isn't to put US forces in space, but to project US military power into space. The thing is that most of these roles are already covered by the USAF Space Command, and it's debatable as to whether anything would be gained by splitting it off into it's own branch: yes, a seperate force means Congress could focus funds towards the US's space-based capabilities, but it also means they can redirect funds away from it more readily than they can while it's under the USAF's umbrella.
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Yeah, this would be my take as well. Nothing Trump does is meant to have any long-term effects. This is just another PR stunt which seems to backfire. I mean his base elected him to GTFO of other countries, now he tells them to go into SPACE?
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We already have the beginning of the real life Starfleet with organizations like the ESA or NASA.
Point is, we've already got a unified command responsible for nuclear defense. And we had one for space, but the US Space Command was reduced to USAF Space Command because it's traditional to only have seven major commands and US Cyber Command was coming online. So this "Space Force" not only lacks hardware, it lacks a mission, as everything it would do is already being done, and better, by existing forces.
I might concede the necessity for such a force if we were being threatened by extraterrestrials, but thus far we have yet to confirm the existence of bacterial life on any other planets, much less hostile, technologically-advanced macrofauna.
The MDA is what used to be called the Strategic Defence Initiative (or 'Star Wars'), then the Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation under Clinton, being renamed the MDA under Bush in 2002. They're responsible for the development of interceptor missile systems, among other things relating to defence against missile attack.
It turns out what I was actually thinking off was the Ground-Based Midcourse Defence (GMD) system, based in Alaska, which is under the US Army's jurisdiction from what I can tell (which in itself seems odd, given such a system in the UK would be handed to the RAF given it is air defence).
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Technically it's still not a military. It's just a bunch of people working for the Federation who happen to be very heavily armed as a natural part of their job. As The Federation was shortsighted enough to scrap it's military its defence is left to the largest organisation with guns.
Nonsense. There's going to be a 'yuge wall space force and the Martians are going to pay for it.
Who exactly does Trump think his Space Force will be fighting. I was under the impression all high up fighty stuff was done by the US Air Force and he does have a lot of little tubes filled with bits of hydrogen with various numbers of neutrons as well as plenty of aeroplanes, both of which have stopped an invasion of the US by any serious military assault since the English burnt the White House down in 1814 and blamed the Canadians.
Who does he think is attacking from space? China would do it conventionally, Russia would do it through cyberspace, NK would drop a bomb on their own heads, Iran is tied up fighting KSA (America's meat puppet in the ME), and Canada would just sneek in the back way and burn the White House down again on land.
And the Mothership doesn't want him back.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Bloody local group galaxies. Sneaking through tunnels of different density taking hydrogen from our own galaxy.
Well guess what? The wall just got colder and denser!
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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TAKE HIM! PLEASE!
Anyhow, what happened to the "forums is not a place for politics"?
Oh, and Starfleet was very much the military organization of the Federation. You can call it any names you want, and make a claim that it had other functions besides what we know today as "military functions", but one of it's main tasks nevertheless was guaranteeing the safety of it's citizens and integrity of it's territory, using deadly force if necessary. Can't really get any more "military" than that.
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You sir, are on point. All of the missions of a 'Department of the Space Force' are currently covered by the Air Force. I suspect that some of the big-whigs in the AF space community were tired of having to fight budget battles for systems acquistion, development and fielding with the rest of the AF and got tagged by the 'Good Idea Fairy', and whispered said idea into a few receptive ears. Even if we were to field some kind of starships, I suspect near term they'd be staffed similar to how the did it in Stargate - with USAF personnel. My two ec.
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Ok I'm done.
Brain slugs? Though he seems not the most competent being to protect us from those.
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Spot-on. 'nuff said.
No it isn't. The Federation explicitly disbanded their military (the MACO) at formation.
Starfleet is an exploration and research organisation that has to plug the gap by virtue of being very heavily armed and the Federation having no other option.
The brain slugs have already won Targ.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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A rose by any other name...
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Is poetry not legality.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Oh, so you want to bring legality into it?
Starfleet Technical Manual describes it to be "armed peacekeeping force". Since there has never been any definite statement on screen that would state otherwise (your pretty quote list in signature doesn't count, none of them were shown to be any sort of legal experts), this is the closest thing we have to canon. What we see on screen, however, is constantly people not belonging into Starfleet referred to as "civilians".
To give you a real life example, Japanese post-WW2 constitution forbids them to have any sort of military. However, what do you think JSDF is? A leisure camp that just casually arms it's members? Just because they don't legally call it "military" doesn't change it's core function.
Same thing with Starfleet. You need to have some serious mental gymnastics going on if you're going to say that "military" and "armed peacekeeping force" are technically not the same thing.
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If a war broke out between the USA and any modernized nation the first thing to go would be the spy satellites, GPS satellites, and communication satellites. Worst case is that once a few have been destroyed it would domino into a chain reaction of debris taking out all the other satellites and eventually turning low earth orbit into a no mans land where no craft could safely travel.
There have also been several experimental craft tested in space in recent years, so the hardware to operate up there might not be as far off as you might think.
These types of things are currently under the purview of the US Air Force, but once upon a time the Air Force was part of the Army. Priorities change and organizations must eventually change with the world around them. That said, in this political climate it will never get off the ground.
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Plot of Beyond is totally irrelevant in this context. Edison felt Starfleet weren't ruthless enough, fair enough. At best, this is comparable to a former Wehrmacht soldier who was instated into Bundeswehr. Bundeswehr is certainly "softer", still doesn't change the fact that it's military.
And no matter how you bend your brain to explain why Starfleet isn't a military, the fact remains that no matter what you want call it, during most part of Star Trek universe history, Starfleet has been a "professional organization formally authorized by a sovereign state to use lethal or deadly force and weapons to support the interests of the state", with one of it's main tasks being "defence of the state, and its citizens, and the prosecution of war against another state." (quotes gotten from Wikipedia)
Yes, they had other tasks, obviously, and they are the research and exploration organization of UFP, but for all intents and purposes, they will also remain the military organization of post-ENT UFP.
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De facto they have combat trained armed soldiers and warships. Just because some characters in said source material doesn't like to be called military, and some rabid fans like you are in agreement and don't understand how words and meanings work, doesn't matter at all.
And the distinction you're trying so hard to push really isn't stressed that much on-screen at all, all we see are occasionally some ppl saying "we are peaceful explorers, not a military" (which tends to be followed by an... armed conflict). US military went to Vietnam and said they were "advisors", while having napalm with them. Soviet troops came to Baltics as "liberators", apparently trying to liberate us from sovereignty. You can call something whatever the hell you want, it doesn't change the reality behind the word.
Also, following your own logic, shouldn't we be all absolutely rooting for that Space Force? Doesn't matter what it *actually* is, Trump called it Space Force, therefore it will absolutely be one! (Notice how silly that is?)
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Well, Star Trek is entirely fiction, so anything it can be whatever the writers say. For now, the space force is also fiction, of course, but the US defense forces and defense interests are real things.