Old School Air Force Can't Handle 'Space Corps' Challenge?

Interesting read. Glad that someone in DC has their eye on the ball and is leaning forward.

We joke about the notion of space as a battlefield being in the future, and too far afield to worry about. We scoff at the ‘science fiction' scenarios played out in B-Grade Hollywood movies being applied to DoD. And that is easy to do when we have been engaged in a 16-year asymmetric war fighting guerillas and terrorists. Our vision has become myopic and we are focused on the here and now, not on the next war. So, we laugh at the ludicrous notion of warfare in space as we slog through poppy fields and dodge IEDs. Let's stop laughing long enough to look at the facts.

It took us 75 years to advance five generations in technology (i.e., from vacuum tube, to transistor, to integrated circuit, to microprocessor, to artificial intelligence). In the next five years, technology will advance 32 generations. Each successive generation in technology is estimated to increase the capability of the technology by a factor of 10. It also escalates the difficulty in understanding, classifying, responding to, and fielding that technology by a factor of 100. If we were to graph the rate of technological advancement, we would see that it is literally “straight up” right now. The rate of acceleration for technology advancement is increasing exponentially.

To put this into perspective for you:

• The amount of new technical information is doubling every two years. This means that by the third year of a four-year college technical degree, half of what you have learned will already be obsolete and no longer applicable to your field of study.

• The top ten in demand jobs in 2012, did not exist in 2004.

• 4 exabytes (4.0x1019) of unique information will be generated this year. That’s more than the preceding 5,000 years of human history

• Predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will have more computing power than the entire human race.

• The Navy is ready to field electromagnetic Rail Guns on the USS Zumwalt that will launch projectiles at Mach 11 from 180 miles out. The rail guns will hit their target with more kinetic energy than a point-blank salvo from a WWII era 16” cannon. They are pushing to achieve Mach 15 and 250 miles range.

• The Navy and the Army are ready to field laser weapons (LAWS) that will fry aircraft and missiles on contact. The current crop of laser weapons operates in the 50 MW range. They are pushing now for 100 MW and plan on moving to 500 MW.

• NASA is working on the preliminary designs for primitive Warp engines.

So, while we scoff at the notion of space as a battle spectrum, the reality is that it already exists as one. Both the Chinese and Russians already possess space based weaponry designed to engage and destroy satellites. That means that space as a battlefield is in play right now.

In short, the days of Science Fiction are rapidly becoming Science Fact. DoD has a horrendous habit of constantly wanting to fight the last war. We have seen it displayed through our entire history as a nation. In the Civil War, they used Napoleonic tactics of massed troops that were based off smooth bore weapons. The results were devastating casualties. In WWI, they refused to accept that technology had overcome tactics again and were performing mass frontal assaults (even Calvary charges) into entrenched machine gun positions. Again, the results were catastrophic casualties. In WWII, the French attempted to refight the Trench War of WWI with the Maginot Line, but tactics and technology changed and the Germans rolled across Europe using Blitzkrieg and maneuver warfare to render the technology of emplaced fighting positions obsolete. I wonder if we will be any different when directed energy weapons target U.S. facilities and cities from space…… and we have no mechanism, weaponry or organization in place to counter the threat or engage the hostile actors?

Today, we have a few brave souls speaking out and telling us that we need to be looking to space as new battlefield. They are laughed at and quickly dismissed for being so too far afield, and fanciful in their thinking. But not too long ago, officers like Glenn Curtis and William Moffet were also being scoffed at for believing that aviation had a role in naval operations. The Battleship ‘Mafia’ laughed at them and ridiculed them for believing that the fledgling bi-wing aviation assets could ever challenge the unbridled firepower and armor of the battleship. History has proven Curtis and Moffet right, and the battleships have been relegated to being museums.

Space is a battlefield. It is in play. We can choose to ignore that fact at our own peril, or we can recognize the unique challenges of war in space and start organizing and equipping so that we can compete should the need arise. Yes, it is new concept for us. At this point in time, it is easy to laugh at the notion of space being a battlefield. We have been two dimensional thinkers for far too long, and have ignored the third-dimension high above us. But reread the second paragraph. Technology is evolving so quickly and so dramatically that in less than five years we will be doing things that were previously believed to be impossible. Space as a battlefield is not coming. It is already here.

Rather that form a separate service for Space how about rolling the AF back into the Army? The justification for a separate USAF died with the Cold War.

No other service has "Improvise, Adapt, Overcome" like the Marine Corps. Nor the making do with a small force mentality. Unless we have a space fleet somewhere no one is talking about. How many people can we put into space at once right now? Seven?