Space US Space Force

[Bombardier]

The United States Space Force (USSF) is a newly proposed military branch that President Donald Trump announced during a meeting of the National Space Council on June 18, 2018. If the proposal is enacted, it will become the sixth armed forces branch, joining the Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.

The branch of the United States Armed Forces, is intended to have control over military operations in outer space.

Trump said

It is not merely enough that we have American presence in space, We must have American dominance in space.

I doubt that we will see space soldiers with laser guns but rather the 'Space Force' will focus on maintaining satellites and vehicles that are to be used for international communications and observation.

A new Wiki page (I guess this will be updated as time goes by
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force

I will keep a keen eye on this and so thought best to create a thread for photos, videos and even any news we all come across

President Trump holds up Space Policy Directive-3 at the White Houseon June 18, 2018

 

[BravoZulu]

The USAF will have it's nose out of joint as space is also it's charter to militarise for offence/defence

 

[Bombardier]

Agreed mate, as we all know there is enough resentment in normal military branches, this is bound to create more especially regarding budgets etc

 

[RobertKLR]

There is already quite a bit of history of a military presence in space. That made me wonder about older plans. Remember the MOL. the manned orbiting lab the Air Force wanted in the 60s? I have to wonder if they went back and dusted off the prints. There was quite a lot of planning and study back then about the military in space. On the NROs YouTube channel I found this video of a mock up of the MOL. It seems to be quite large and somewhat like the Soviet stations. There is no audio.

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Here's a Smithsonian Air & Space article about the secret missions of the Space Shuttle
Secret Space Shuttles
When you’re 200 miles up, it’s easy to hide what you’re up to

Read more at

The Secret Space Shuttles

The Pentagon also used NASA’s space truck, but was a lot less willing to discuss what went on up there.

www.airspacemag.com

Here is a very long list of military spacecraft.

Military

Military

astronautix.com

 

[colin traveller]

There was US Space Command .. imo all he has done is re activate it . US SC was responsible for all of the Spy Sat Launches at Vandenburg , And it's still being used .

 

[RobertKLR]

There was some thinking that the lunar lander upper stage could be used as an anti satellite vehicle. Because it carried a large fuel supply it would have been capable of making big changes in its orbit to chase down satellites. I imagine the crew would be wearing ski masks and armed with baseball bats to knock Soviet satellites silly. If I find the article again I will post it, it is on the Encyclopedia Astronautica site. The site is recommended by NASA, but it is huge and I'm not so good at navigating it.

 

[BCNTM]

Where did the X37 go for a year?

 

[Yevgeny]

So what kind of satellites Americans got in the orbit? GPS, SBIRS? What else? Any passive radio detection or optical surveillance systems?

What about Space surveillance systems? Optical? Radio? What exactly they got?

 

[AAR Galileo]

They got a lot of "debris" or classified as debris that are in fact reconnaissance satellite.
When the french lauched their first spy satellite in the mid 90's the US published the ephemerids of this one. The next day french authority's said: we have a list of strange debris with solar panels we will publish their orbitals data. The day after the data of the french Helios satellite were removed.
So to known exactly what they have up there is hard and only few countries have the capability to make catalog . They need ground radar and fast tracking telescopes to do the job.

 

[Yevgeny]

Unlike space debris working satellites have to transfer data to the ground control center so you can potentially detect radio emission coming from the satellite. The Russians can do that with their Moment passive radar for instance. I'm not sure about the other countries.

 

[AAR Galileo]

Not necessary, they can transmit to geosynchrone communication satellite like the Milstar, WGSatcom, civilian satellite, .... that relay the signal to the earth.
They got a lot of stuff up there, there is the known list, but what the Space shuttle or the OTV - X-37 also bring or retrieve is still unknown:

List of USA Satellites - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[BCNTM]

X-37 also bring or retrieve is still unknown:

Rod from God

 

[Yevgeny]

Not necessary, they can transmit to geosynchrone communication satellite like the Milstar, WGSatcom, civilian satellite, .... that relay the signal to the earth.

The only problem is optical and infrared reconaissanse satellites usually operate at the orbits lower than those of SIGINT satellites. Some 250-500 km for optical surveillance against 750-1000 km for SIGINT satellites. Thus operating at higher altitudes Russian Liana satellites will be able to detect the signal coming from US optical reconaissanse satellites or SBIRS orbiting lower. Detecting satellite signals at the hights above 500 km is somehow irrelevant as modern ASAT capabilities are constrained to these altitudes - 250-300 km for SM-3 and probably some 500-600 km for A-235.

They got a lot of stuff up there, there is the known list, but what the Space shuttle or the OTV - X-37 also bring or retrieve is still unknown:

Modern Space surveillance systems have nothing to do with tracking launch vehicles. Russia for instance use variety of ground based systems to register all objects orbiting the Earth - Krona active radars, Moment passive radars, Okno telescopes and so on.

 

[AAR Galileo]

Liana is not a satellites but a network of satellites Lotos-S and Pion-NKS (this one specialized in Sea asset ELINT)

Russia's military spacecraft

Russia's military assets in space by Anatoly Zak

www.russianspaceweb.com

 

[RobertKLR]

Here's the story of the Apollo LM CSD, American manned combat spacecraft, armed with spray paint and a baseball bat.

 

[Penny]

'Get a haircut,' real Space Force chief tells Netflix 'Space Force' star Steve Carell

https://www.space.com/space-force-c...NcYY6-fEUtvCt7YJesibVaxV8FkrccPzaR_S0YTjFeR0M

 

[Penny]

Watch the Space Force launch a Top Secret Space Plane, the X-37B

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10 second countdown begins on video at, 24:45.

 

[droopy]

Watch

the Space Force launch a Top Secret Space Plane, the X-37B

Now that is a contradiction in terms.

 

[Penny]

Now that is a contradiction in terms.

I imagine, Mission Objectives will not be overly discussed, but Spacecrafts and some technologies/capabilities likely will be transparent, to a degree, due to the nature of visibility and ability to be detected and identified by others, in the area of space these events may occur.

 

[bdpopeye]

SpaceX launches a U.S. Space Force GPS 3 satellite, recovers rocket's first stage

SpaceX launches a U.S. Space Force GPS 3 satellite, recovers rocket's first stage

spacenews.com

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