The Newest Military Branch
Space Force
Does the American Legion recognize the Space Force?
It took no special action for Space Force members to become eligible to join The American Legion, as the organization's charter only indicates active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces. For the "last paid year of 2024," the Legion's membership rolls include more than 160 declared members of the Space Force. Dec 13, 2023
It took no special action for Space Force members to become eligible to join The American Legion, as the organization's charter only indicates active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces. For the "last paid year of 2024," the Legion's membership rolls include more than 160 declared members of the Space Force. Dec 13, 2023
In January, the newly created U.S. Space Force advertised 35 jobs for its Pentagon offices. It received more than 5,700 applications.
On April 18, 86 graduating cadets from the Air Force Academy won prized commissions directly into the new service, while Space Force recruiters are reportedly finding that they can choose among the best applicants across the Defense Department. And America’s tiny sixth military branch is also attracting deep interest from female service members and civilians, thanks to an effort to make it the most gender-balanced service.
Energized by a new golden age of space, and the emergence of orbit as a warfighting domain, the Space Force has become a major aspirational target for people with space-related resumes.
The sudden excitement is a far cry from the early public mockery of the Space Force name and the widespread confusion about the service’s purpose or how it might fight.
Launched last December, the branch’s stated mission is to provide space capabilities and to protect U.S. and allied security interests in space. It will also provide tactical support to ground combat units with surveillance, communications, and geopositioning data while seeking to deter adversaries from acquiring military advantages from orbit. It is growing out of the Air Force, the same way the Air Force grew out of the Army in 1947.
However, there are some lingering perceptions that it might have simply “relabeled” thousands of airmen who, six months after reassignment to the Space Force, are still sitting in their same offices, from Greenland to the Pacific islands, and largely doing the same work.
86 cadets among the U.S. Air Force Academy graduating class of 2020 were commissioned directly into the Space Force on April 18. Photo by Staff Sgt. Dennis Hoffman, courtesy of U.S. Air Force.
And there are lingering questions about how it might “fight” in a battlefield where a lot of effective fire automatically turns into friendly fire. That’s because anything you blow up in orbit is likely to shed debris that will come around and threaten your own space assets, at 17,500 mph.
In a briefing to the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on April 7, Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, Space Force’s chief of space operations, described the excitement surrounding the program. “The numbers of people knocking on our door; begging to be a part of this. On a weekly, if not daily basis, I have people asking me, ‘How can I be part of this service?’” Raymond added that universities are seeing an increase in astro-engineering applicants and that Space Force can “do direct hire from industry,” something he’s also excited about.
Established by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act last year, the United States Space Force falls under Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett, and is commanded by Raymond, a four-star general who is now a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It has an operational command hub at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado and is supposed to be fully stood up by the summer of 2021. The USSF immediately swallowed up the U.S. Space Command, which was a combatant command within the Air Force with responsibilities for direct military space missions. It will now comb through the other four military branches—and ultimately private industry—for the skills it needs.
Sixteen thousand airmen, largely from U.S. Space Command, were automatically assigned to the Space Force last December. The new service then performed a “scrub” of all Air Force units with space mission functions, and identified 1,840 additional Air Force personnel for transfer from 23 units, ranging from the 18th Intel Squadron at Wright-Patterson AFB Ohio to the AFRL Rocket Propulsion Division at Edwards AFB California.
Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), says the Space Force is still widely perceived “as a joke” in the general public, or fundamentally misunderstood.
Formerly shrouded in secrecy, basic details about the Spaceplane X-37B, which launched from Florida in May, are now being openly shared by the Space Force as part of its deterrence strategy.
On April 18, 86 graduating cadets from the Air Force Academy won prized commissions directly into the new service, while Space Force recruiters are reportedly finding that they can choose among the best applicants across the Defense Department. And America’s tiny sixth military branch is also attracting deep interest from female service members and civilians, thanks to an effort to make it the most gender-balanced service.
Energized by a new golden age of space, and the emergence of orbit as a warfighting domain, the Space Force has become a major aspirational target for people with space-related resumes.
The sudden excitement is a far cry from the early public mockery of the Space Force name and the widespread confusion about the service’s purpose or how it might fight.
Launched last December, the branch’s stated mission is to provide space capabilities and to protect U.S. and allied security interests in space. It will also provide tactical support to ground combat units with surveillance, communications, and geopositioning data while seeking to deter adversaries from acquiring military advantages from orbit. It is growing out of the Air Force, the same way the Air Force grew out of the Army in 1947.
However, there are some lingering perceptions that it might have simply “relabeled” thousands of airmen who, six months after reassignment to the Space Force, are still sitting in their same offices, from Greenland to the Pacific islands, and largely doing the same work.
86 cadets among the U.S. Air Force Academy graduating class of 2020 were commissioned directly into the Space Force on April 18. Photo by Staff Sgt. Dennis Hoffman, courtesy of U.S. Air Force.
And there are lingering questions about how it might “fight” in a battlefield where a lot of effective fire automatically turns into friendly fire. That’s because anything you blow up in orbit is likely to shed debris that will come around and threaten your own space assets, at 17,500 mph.
In a briefing to the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on April 7, Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, Space Force’s chief of space operations, described the excitement surrounding the program. “The numbers of people knocking on our door; begging to be a part of this. On a weekly, if not daily basis, I have people asking me, ‘How can I be part of this service?’” Raymond added that universities are seeing an increase in astro-engineering applicants and that Space Force can “do direct hire from industry,” something he’s also excited about.
Established by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act last year, the United States Space Force falls under Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett, and is commanded by Raymond, a four-star general who is now a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It has an operational command hub at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado and is supposed to be fully stood up by the summer of 2021. The USSF immediately swallowed up the U.S. Space Command, which was a combatant command within the Air Force with responsibilities for direct military space missions. It will now comb through the other four military branches—and ultimately private industry—for the skills it needs.
Sixteen thousand airmen, largely from U.S. Space Command, were automatically assigned to the Space Force last December. The new service then performed a “scrub” of all Air Force units with space mission functions, and identified 1,840 additional Air Force personnel for transfer from 23 units, ranging from the 18th Intel Squadron at Wright-Patterson AFB Ohio to the AFRL Rocket Propulsion Division at Edwards AFB California.
Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), says the Space Force is still widely perceived “as a joke” in the general public, or fundamentally misunderstood.
Formerly shrouded in secrecy, basic details about the Spaceplane X-37B, which launched from Florida in May, are now being openly shared by the Space Force as part of its deterrence strategy.
Photo courtesy of Boeing
“I think a lot of the public perception of the Space Force is embodied in the Netflix series (with Steve Carell), where they think it’s a joke, or they think it was Donald Trump’s idea, or that it has something to do with NASA and space exploration and going to the moon,” he says. “All of that is incorrect.”
But Harrison insists that it is, in fact, a necessary and overdue branch with an increasingly important mission, that it has “real teeth” and that it is likely to see plenty of action, whether we know about it or not.
He says the Space Force is fundamentally about consolidation: “We already had space forces, now we have a unified Space Force under one chain of command, instead of a bunch of fractured offices.”
The contrast between the Space Force and the other five branches is stark: It is likely to be the oldest service by median age, the most civilian-heavy, the most contractor-dependent, the most collaborative, the least gender-unbalanced, the most rank-unbalanced, and the leanest.
Perhaps the most striking contrast is that it doesn’t plan to ask for more money from Congress beyond its initial $15.4 billion budget. Its operational costs could actually reduce, with the cost of satellites and space launches tumbling.
It will feature collapsed command layers, while outsourcing most of its medical, legal, and bureaucratic needs to the Air Force.
Another difference is its stated intention to use a “clean sheet” on hiring and workplace policies to benefit women, including flexible career provisions and an emphasis on lateral entry from private industry. At a meeting of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, Maj. Gen. Clinton Crosier, director of planning for the USSF, said that “there are tremendous opportunities for women in the U.S. Space Force.”
Rebecca Keiser, chair of Women in Aerospace, an association for the aerospace community, says she is “very encouraged” by signs from both Congress and the USSF that the new service will actively seek a healthy gender balance. “It’s a very good signal that its first two civilian hires were female professionals.” One of them being Patricia Mulcahy—a retired Army colonel who was hired as deputy chief of space operations for personnel and logistics services.
The U.S. Space Force is headed by Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett, and commanded by Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, seen here in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in March 2020. Photo by Wayne Clark, courtesy U.S. Air Force
But there’s controversy in other areas. Harrison says early challenges for the Space Force include resentment from other branches and opposition to its stated intention to declassify some of its capabilities.
In the briefing, Raymond admitted that the service’s capabilities were “overly classified” and that it would need to move toward visibility to deter adversaries from threatening U.S. assets in space.
“I think a lot of the public perception of the Space Force is embodied in the Netflix series (with Steve Carell), where they think it’s a joke, or they think it was Donald Trump’s idea, or that it has something to do with NASA and space exploration and going to the moon,” he says. “All of that is incorrect.”
But Harrison insists that it is, in fact, a necessary and overdue branch with an increasingly important mission, that it has “real teeth” and that it is likely to see plenty of action, whether we know about it or not.
He says the Space Force is fundamentally about consolidation: “We already had space forces, now we have a unified Space Force under one chain of command, instead of a bunch of fractured offices.”
The contrast between the Space Force and the other five branches is stark: It is likely to be the oldest service by median age, the most civilian-heavy, the most contractor-dependent, the most collaborative, the least gender-unbalanced, the most rank-unbalanced, and the leanest.
Perhaps the most striking contrast is that it doesn’t plan to ask for more money from Congress beyond its initial $15.4 billion budget. Its operational costs could actually reduce, with the cost of satellites and space launches tumbling.
It will feature collapsed command layers, while outsourcing most of its medical, legal, and bureaucratic needs to the Air Force.
Another difference is its stated intention to use a “clean sheet” on hiring and workplace policies to benefit women, including flexible career provisions and an emphasis on lateral entry from private industry. At a meeting of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, Maj. Gen. Clinton Crosier, director of planning for the USSF, said that “there are tremendous opportunities for women in the U.S. Space Force.”
Rebecca Keiser, chair of Women in Aerospace, an association for the aerospace community, says she is “very encouraged” by signs from both Congress and the USSF that the new service will actively seek a healthy gender balance. “It’s a very good signal that its first two civilian hires were female professionals.” One of them being Patricia Mulcahy—a retired Army colonel who was hired as deputy chief of space operations for personnel and logistics services.
The U.S. Space Force is headed by Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett, and commanded by Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, seen here in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in March 2020. Photo by Wayne Clark, courtesy U.S. Air Force
But there’s controversy in other areas. Harrison says early challenges for the Space Force include resentment from other branches and opposition to its stated intention to declassify some of its capabilities.
In the briefing, Raymond admitted that the service’s capabilities were “overly classified” and that it would need to move toward visibility to deter adversaries from threatening U.S. assets in space.
86 cadets among the U.S. Air Force Academy graduating class of 2020 were commissioned directly into the Space Force on April 18. Photo by Staff Sgt. Dennis Hoffman, courtesy of U.S. Air Force
10 things about the Space Force
The American Legion
DEC 13, 2023
On Dec. 20, 2019, the U.S. Space Force – the newest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces – was officially instituted with the signing of legislation by President Donald Trump. On the occasion of the Space Force’s birthday, here are some facts the intervening years may have obscured.
1. The Space Force previously existed within the Air Force since 1982, as the Air Force Space Command. (mentalfloss.com)
2. The first official member of the Space Force to be sworn in was its most senior officer: Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. Raymond. (mentalfloss.com)
3. The branch’s motto is Semper Supra – “always above.” (mentalfloss.com)
4. The initial uniforms were modeled on “current Army/Air Force uniforms, saving costs of designing/producing a new one," according to a Space Force source. (cnet.com) A service dress uniform is set to be produced and rolled out to Guardians everywhere in 2025. (airandspaceforces.com)
5. The Air Force Academy's class of 2020 included 86 graduates set to become the Space Force’s first company-grade officers. (cnet.com)
6. On Sept. 15, 2020, a virtual mass swearing-in was held for about 2,400 troops transferring into the Space Force from locations around the world. (militarybenefits.info)
7. On Dec. 10, 2020, the first seven people to enlist directly in the Space Force graduated from basic training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas. (af.mil)
8. It took no special action for Space Force members to become eligible to join The American Legion, as the organization’s charter only indicates active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces. For the "last paid year of 2024," the Legion's membership rolls include more than 160 declared members of the Space Force.
9. The Space Force flag was unveiled at the White House in May 2020; by October, Alpharetta American Legion Post 201 in Georgia had obtained one and was flying it above their post home. (legiontown.org)
10. The official song of the Space Force, also called "Semper Supra," was unveiled in September 2022. You can hear it here.
The American Legion
DEC 13, 2023
On Dec. 20, 2019, the U.S. Space Force – the newest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces – was officially instituted with the signing of legislation by President Donald Trump. On the occasion of the Space Force’s birthday, here are some facts the intervening years may have obscured.
1. The Space Force previously existed within the Air Force since 1982, as the Air Force Space Command. (mentalfloss.com)
2. The first official member of the Space Force to be sworn in was its most senior officer: Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. Raymond. (mentalfloss.com)
3. The branch’s motto is Semper Supra – “always above.” (mentalfloss.com)
4. The initial uniforms were modeled on “current Army/Air Force uniforms, saving costs of designing/producing a new one," according to a Space Force source. (cnet.com) A service dress uniform is set to be produced and rolled out to Guardians everywhere in 2025. (airandspaceforces.com)
5. The Air Force Academy's class of 2020 included 86 graduates set to become the Space Force’s first company-grade officers. (cnet.com)
6. On Sept. 15, 2020, a virtual mass swearing-in was held for about 2,400 troops transferring into the Space Force from locations around the world. (militarybenefits.info)
7. On Dec. 10, 2020, the first seven people to enlist directly in the Space Force graduated from basic training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas. (af.mil)
8. It took no special action for Space Force members to become eligible to join The American Legion, as the organization’s charter only indicates active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces. For the "last paid year of 2024," the Legion's membership rolls include more than 160 declared members of the Space Force.
9. The Space Force flag was unveiled at the White House in May 2020; by October, Alpharetta American Legion Post 201 in Georgia had obtained one and was flying it above their post home. (legiontown.org)
10. The official song of the Space Force, also called "Semper Supra," was unveiled in September 2022. You can hear it here.