It doesn’t help that things have gotten off to a somewhat comedic start: the popular culture has dubbed the new command “Space Farce,” thanks in part to its biggest advocate, President Donald Trump. And few institutions have the history of waste, fraud and abuse that the Pentagon does: watchdogs note that the Space Force budget for 2021 is $15.4 billion, with a projected increase of $2.6 billion over the next five years, most of it driven by classified programs.Īlthough the cost represents just a fraction of the Pentagon’s $740 billion total budget, convincing Americans that a new service can be trusted to protect our satellites and not just grow a vast new expensive wing on the military–industrial complex will take some doing. Others point out that the Pentagon famously overstated the danger of Russian and Chinese weapons systems in the Cold War. Some critics say diplomacy and a new international treaty, not increased military muscle, is the best way to secure space. Both countries have deployed ground-based laser and communications–jamming equipment that can disable satellites.īut less than eight months after its launch, Space Force is already trying to justify its existence. China has started training specialized units with weapons that can blast apart objects in orbit. Raymond tells TIME that Russia executed a previous, unreported projectile launch in February 2017. And just as lightly defended access to deep-water ports or natural resources was a source of war in the past, leaders and strategists worry that America’s vulnerable satellite network is an invitation to conflict in our times. depend on satellites overhead.īut for all the ways that civilians and the military rely on it, America’s network of roughly 1,000 satellites is virtually unprotected. Many of the around 650,000 calls made to 911 every day in the U.S.
Weather satellites were transmitting information for nightly forecasts.
Streetlamps timed to global positioning system (GPS) spacecraft were turning on across the country, and businesses were relying on GPS to time-stamp credit-card purchases. Even as the Cosmos 2543 was launching its projectile, Air Force satellites were performing a host of civilian tasks back home in the U.S. Whatever the Russian crafts’ mission-and Moscow says it is purely peaceful-Raymond’s not wrong that Americans have come to rely on satellites in ways they hardly begin to appreciate.
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