Is Space Force the Next Homeland Security?

 As Celeste Ward Gventer notes, the prospect of a United Spaces Space Force was met with, among other reactions, befuddlement and even derision in some quarters. Part of this is due to the fact that it seems to invoke the concept of a war fought in space, for which there is not only zero precedent but of which there is likely minimal threat. To this end, Gventer makes the point that the operations Space Force is likely to be tasked with are fundamentally efforts to support American strategic goals, most of which would fall under the purview of other branches of the military; to create a new and equal branch of the military, then, which is the Trump administration’s stated ambition, would seem superfluous. 

With the 2003 founding of the Department of Homeland Security came a reconceptualization of what policies and tasks fell under the “homeland security” umbrella. Notably, three immigration-related agencies (Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Citizenship and Immigration Services) were founded under the DHS umbrella; the Federal Emergency Management Agency, founded during the Carter administration, was also moved into DHS. This represents not only an architectural shift, but a conceptual one, as it implicitly designated immigration and disaster preparedness as homeland security issues. Far fewer issues have been moved out of the realm of national security. This has led to significant criticisms of DHS, with the Cato Institute calling it a "bureaucratic superstructure."

The creation of an independent Space Force presents the risk of the same phenomenon occurring in relation to the domain of space–especially if the tasks assigned to the Space Force encompass everything having to do with satellites, as Gventer notes. Furthermore, there is a risk of the relationship between Space Force and Air Force (i.e. the semi-independence of Space Force) paralleling the relationship between the Marines and the Navy. Altering the architecture of the national security state requires careful planning, not simply a rushed implication of the desire to conquer new frontiers. Hopefully, the Space Force won’t provide too dire of a lesson in this domain.