Let us recall those halcyon days when liberals, full of vim, vigor, and anti-Trump vitriol, mocked the U.S. Space Force.
That happened after former President Donald Trump introduced the department as the sixth branch of the U.S. military in 2019 and continued until Joe Biden took office.
In February 2021, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki ridiculed a reporter’s question about Space Force, calling it “the plane of today,” a reference to asinine questions she had been asked about whether Biden would repaint Air Force One.
But in January 2021, two days after Biden took office, The Free Press noted that the mood had shifted, especially among liberals.
Space Force, The Free Press reported at the time, “may grow under the new administration, as Biden’s Democrats, who thought Trump could do nothing right, are embracing the service and even promoting it as their idea.”
Biden sealed that deal this week when he proposed his budget for the fiscal year 2023.
On Monday, the website DefenseOne.com reported, “The Space Force is requesting $24.5 billion in the 2023 budget, roughly 40 percent more than in last year’s request.”
“Officials said the jump reflects the urgency to launch and defend satellites that can spot a hypersonic missile, track a moving truck, assure U.S. nuclear command and control, and more,” the website continued.
It then quoted Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who said, “There’s no more important services than missile warning and the nuclear command-and-control capability we get from space.”
Three events likely promoted the Biden administration to validate Trump’s vision for the Space Force: Russia’s recent use of a new hypersonic missile in Ukraine, China testing a similar weapon not long ago, and North Korea test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile that exceeded the capabilities of its previous ICBMs.
The agency’s proposed budget included $2 billion for new satellites to track such weapons.
DefenseOne.com quoted a senior Defense Department official, who noted, “Right now, the department has satellites that provide global missile warning capability to essentially detect launches of missiles, but nothing that can actually detect the new advanced missiles with hypersonic glide vehicles and such. And so this would be the first to be able to provide that over the globe.”
The website SpaceNews.com noted Kendall’s comments at a press briefing about the Space Force budget.
“This budget is driven by the threat,” he said, noting CHina’s menacing pursuit of new weaponry. Once, the United States could “put up expensive systems in space and not worry about them,” Kendall added. “That era is over; it’s been over for a while.”
And, meanwhile, the military service Trump was once so roundly mocked for launching is here to stay — and then some.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.
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