Will they be called “spacemen”?

December 21, 2019 8:31 AM

Space Force becomes the newest US military service after Trump signs defense bill. Initially, the new Space Force will be composed of 16,000 active duty Air Force and civilian personnel currently serving with the Air Force's Space Command.
posted by blakewest (73 comments total)

I hope they call it the Spacy

Incidentally, what do you think the odds are that the Space Force ends up as a catch basin for elite failsons who don't even want to risk being in the airforce?
posted by Reyturner at 8:47 AM on December 21, 2019 [50 favorites]

hmm, this is actually bigger historically than it appears to us here in the daily news grinding I guess.

not every day that a new branch of service is established, and the ongoing militarization of space is certainly a "growth area" as it were.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:58 AM on December 21, 2019 [12 favorites]

You can't vote or buy tobacco products at 17, but you can sign up to kill and die in the desert space
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:02 AM on December 21, 2019 [10 favorites]

Spuh-see-min.
posted by freecellwizard at 9:09 AM on December 21, 2019 [9 favorites]

Mars Needs Women!
posted by kozad at 9:14 AM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

stupid stupid stupid

But, unfortunately, probably inevitable. I hate the very idea but also know that in all reasonable likelihood we're going to be expanding into the solar system eventually (even if it's just the Klept after the Jackpot), and we're going to do in space the same shit we do here: fuck people over for a buck (or a won, yuan, or ruble) because scarcity is a thing, leave nasty shit wherever we go for future folks to decontaminate because externalities are a thing, and we're going to fight, because we can't seem to not fight for long.
posted by tclark at 9:15 AM on December 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

Our brave spah-che-men and spah-che-women
posted by Reyturner at 9:16 AM on December 21, 2019 [16 favorites]

Finally. Let's make Moonraker magic, folks.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:18 AM on December 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

Official use of the term "Airman" is an embarrassment AND an opportunity. I'm surprised more aviator non-men haven't exercised their gendered exemption from air traffic control.
posted by head full of air at 9:19 AM on December 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

You know what, of all the dumb and horrible shit Trump does, this doesn't even bother me.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:22 AM on December 21, 2019 [13 favorites]

Finally an organization that will put a stop to the constant space attacks this country has had to endure.
posted by dephlogisticated at 9:24 AM on December 21, 2019 [51 favorites]

A family member served in Space and Missile Command in the Air Force for 8 years. That meant a year at Vandenberg, 4 years in Montana in nuclear silos, and 3 years in DC working with NOAA on weather satellites, which were shot from Vandenberg.

Now that Space Force exists, Trump will completely forget about it and it will continue to be mostly about working with NOAA on weather satellites and NASA on the existing space program.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:26 AM on December 21, 2019 [23 favorites]

Will they be called 'space cadets' at the academy. Seriously worse name ever. Did no one read the last 75 years of speculative fiction. The answer is surely: planetary defense force. Or, 'Orbital Junk Removal and Recycling Services'.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:26 AM on December 21, 2019 [13 favorites]

A new branch of service seems like a big deal, but the Space Force (Trump says it without the initial article) will be made up of the 16,000 people that are already serving in the Space Command, and it will remain under the Department of the Air Force, so, from another perspective, it's an administrative reorganization (albeit one that includes creating a new member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).

For comparison, there are 328,000 serving in the Air Force in total, and 1.3 million active duty military people.
posted by box at 9:34 AM on December 21, 2019 [9 favorites]

Every time I hear about Trump's Space Force, I can't help but think he saw some America's Top Secret UFOs show on History channel and thought it was a defense briefing.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:34 AM on December 21, 2019 [10 favorites]

This is pretty much a consolidation of the groups that already exist doing the job that they're already doing. It's more surprising that Congress actually recognizes the importance of maintaining the satellite network and isn't just taking its maintenance for granted.
posted by dances with hamsters at 9:39 AM on December 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

"Incidentally, what do you think the odds are that the Space Force ends up as a catch basin for elite failsons who don't even want to risk being in the airforce?"

That's not why the Ivies have legacy admissions?
posted by Selena777 at 9:40 AM on December 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

I like to imagine them or acting joining together into larger and larger Space Warriors, with new colors and signature weapons at each iterations.

Red Level, with the chainsword and bee cannon, is my favorite.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:49 AM on December 21, 2019 [7 favorites]

Space Force -- because we need to transform outer space into yet another battleground for the psychopaths.

For all those folks who say we need to send people to outer space to preserve the species, I think Space Force demostrates that wherever you go, human social pathologies will go with you.

And not just going with you, the psychopaths will be leading the way.
posted by JackFlash at 9:49 AM on December 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

They are doing their part. Now you do yours. Service guarantees citizenship.

Would you like to know more?
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:58 AM on December 21, 2019 [44 favorites]

I hope they call it the Spacy

[jokey] Not until it's part of the UN armed forces. The very idea of a US Spacy is patently offensive. [/jokey]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:00 AM on December 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

We came in peace, for all mankind.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:01 AM on December 21, 2019 [9 favorites]

AndrewStephens: "Service guarantees citizenship."

Of space!

(came here to make a Starship Troopers / worst timeline comment, found it wasn't needed)
posted by chavenet at 10:01 AM on December 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

On the other hand, this is going to make me much more reluctant to use the phrase "Nuke it from Space!"
posted by chavenet at 10:02 AM on December 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

Just orbit a tank with a wax effigy of Maxwell Taylor on the turret.
posted by clavdivs at 10:07 AM on December 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

We need something catchier than "spacemen" that really speaks to how far the once mighty USA has fallen from the heights of the 60s and 70s to the garbage dumpster fire that is the Trump era. How about "vacuumfodder" or "airsuckers"?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:19 AM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

This is totally a political re-organization to sound cool.

I can imagine it exciting kids as they think they one day can be space soldiers, when in reality it's probably people sitting in cubicles monitoring satellites.
posted by xtine at 10:21 AM on December 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

Star Fleet Command is better for funding, but maybe he just wants a space wall.
posted by Brian B. at 10:24 AM on December 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

This means Netflix's Space Force, featuring the talents of Steve Carell, John Malkovich and others, can't be far behind.
posted by emelenjr at 10:40 AM on December 21, 2019

"Specaman'

'what'

''THE SPACEY MAN'

-from 'The Right Stuff'.

Oh, Marvin the Martian would be cool on the space command insignia patch.
posted by clavdivs at 10:46 AM on December 21, 2019

I don't think that this is going to be a failson sinecure, since the Reserves have already proven adequate for the purpose of giving aspiring politicians military cachet without actually risking their lives. On the other hand, it doesn't really seem necessary, given that it doesn't really change the personnel or missions already in place.

Oh, and by the way, regarding some people's dismay over the militarization of space: sorry, it's already happened. The design of the Space Shuttle was affected by the Air Force's requirements, and the Air Force's X-37B, basically an uncrewed shuttle, recently spent nearly two years in orbit, doing [REDACTED]. For that matter, you could go back to the Redstone ballistic missile being used to put the first American in space, or hell, Wernher von Braun being NASA's chief engineer. It's not a matter of swords being beaten into plowshares or vice versa as much as them both coming from the same forge.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:47 AM on December 21, 2019 [11 favorites]

“It’s going to be really important that we get this right. A uniform. A patch. A song. It gets to the culture of a service,” Raymond said. “So we’re not going to be in a rush to get something, and not do that right. There’s a lot of work going on towards that end. I don’t think it’s going to take a long time to get that done, but that’s not something we’re going to roll out on day one.”
...
Asked whether a red shirt was being considered as part of the Space Force uniform — an allusion to the Star Trek series, where personnel wearing red shirts were seen by the fanbase as being more frequently killed off than other characters — another senior Air Force official jokingly stated that particular color scheme is not currently under consideration.

--DefenseNews

In the spirit of Tom Lehrer, I take this to mean that the US Government is actively searching for an official Space Force song, and our nation's best musical talents should be preparing submissions.

Is there where I add the useless knowledge that the uniformed service of the US Public Health Service has its own march and band, as does the NOAA Corps (in fact, the NOAA Corps seems to have changed to a new song in 2017, for which they promptly awarded the composer a medal, which means there's now a Wikipedia article devoted to the two songs that constitute the Music of the NOAA Corps)?
posted by zachlipton at 10:48 AM on December 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

" I envision a spacecraft, in the next 50 years to exceed .1℅ the speed of light in order for the raw materials of the solar system to be fractionalized into factions and from this day forward, let all nations know that we have laser equipped robotic space planes"
posted by clavdivs at 10:51 AM on December 21, 2019

Space Force -- because we need to transform outer space into yet another battleground for the psychopaths.

This is fun and glib but as a horrible pedant on the internet I feel like I must note that some arm (arms?) of the military was/were going to be responsible for space. Space force might be a combined bureaucratic stupidity and marketing opportunity, but making it seem like this is going to change the broad scope of the nation’s approach to space isn’t really true.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:53 AM on December 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

So the guys who want to spend less further split the military into yet another faction requiring separate uniforms, chains of command, bases, etc? Great.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:56 AM on December 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

Up in the air, Junior Birdmen!
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:58 AM on December 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

Looks like we're still struggling with what the Space Force actually does, but it probably won't include the NRO's eyes in the sky, nor ICBMs.

The Space Force is a misguided idea. Congress should turn it down.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:15 AM on December 21, 2019

but it probably won't include the NRO's eyes in the sky

Per aspera ad astra
posted by clavdivs at 11:21 AM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Looking forward to seeing what SPACE CAMO looks like.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:23 AM on December 21, 2019 [11 favorites]

Well, if they do it right you won't be able to.
posted by axiom at 11:37 AM on December 21, 2019 [28 favorites]

One Way Ticket to Pluto - Dead Kennedys
posted by symbioid at 11:39 AM on December 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

We could just paint an "11" on all the Air Force's knobs, and come up with super-cute uniforms and a super-cute jingle and save billions of dollars
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:43 AM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

The only good bug is a DEAD bug!
posted by alex_skazat at 11:47 AM on December 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

I would love to die in space
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:51 AM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

So this is just a rebranding - not actually anything new.

That won't stop him from claiming it is and taking credit.
posted by Miko at 11:53 AM on December 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

On one hand, it's the Trump administration, so of course it's stupid.

On the other hand, there are some valid reasons why creating a separate service to deal with space, as opposed to atmosphere (the Air Force), is not unreasonable. I'm not sure that creating an actual additional uniformed branch was the way to go, but… maybe the Space Force will end up being one of those smaller, lesser-known uniformed services, like the NOAA Corps. That would be fine, probably. Most of it will probably end up being acquisition stuff (because the work will be done by the same contractors who are doing it right now, but the one thing you can't contract out is procurement).

There are aspects of space and space assets that are relevant to all the services, not just the USAF, and the history of inter-service rivalries is not pleasant. There's a long history of duplicated efforts where each service basically has its own space programs, because the Navy's needs are not the same as the Army's which are not the same as the USAF's, etc. Creating a separate service or at least a separate agency that can sit atop all of them and provide assets and services to all, on a neutral basis, makes some sense. That said, I sorta thought that's what the NRO was supposed to do already, manage the national assets that don't properly belong to a particular service—why not just increase its scope of mission? That's where it starts to look like a weird move. There are already agencies that could have taken on the mission; why create a new service?

The only thing that comes to mind is, maybe you can't do that if you are planning on putting lethal/kinetic payloads into space; the actual trigger-puller presumably needs to be someone in uniform, with Title 10 authority, rather than a DoD civilian? I suppose that's a not-stupid (scary, sure, but not stupid) reason to create a new uniformed service rather than expand the mission of an existing civilian agency. If you wanted to start dropping tungsten rods on people, and you care about doing it legally (well, at least Constitutionally), and you didn't want to just make that a USAF function, I suppose creating a Space Force would be the way to do it.

Hmm.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:57 AM on December 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

So this is just a rebranding - not actually anything new.

I've read a few articles about it, and talked to some friends who are DoD adjacent, and: yep. It takes a pretty important, but boring aspect currently spread over a few branches and consolidates it. It's very arguable whether this is necessary, or whether it will just create more beaurocratic interference when the new branch has to do stuff across departments. One WaPo op-ed I found in support came from a person currently cutting a consultant paycheck from a company that's primed to do data analytics for the Space Force. trump has latched onto it seemingly because it has a futuristic gloss, and CHUDS are imagining space marines when it's really a bunch of engineers behind desks doing calculations.

Realistic estimates are that the transition to do what these existing departments are already doing is around 5 billion dollars (for reference 24% of all research spending conducted by the US Government is financed by a 7.5 billion dollar NSF budget - so for a similar investment you could almost double federal research grants across the board). Those are estimates that are taking this at face value, and not a program to squeeze as much additional money from the military budget as neccessary, or a vanity project for fascists to put their face on a "groundbreaking" national initiative. After all, Ben Carson spent however many million dollars on couches for the HUD office, and trump's rat-infested clubs regularly drain millions of dollars from the national coffers in kick-backs and sweetheart deals. I'm not optimistic in this administration to use this new power or funding wisely or honestly.
posted by codacorolla at 12:00 PM on December 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

If you wanted to start dropping tungsten rods on people

Then you're a silly person who should just take the launcher you'd use to put the tungsten rod into orbit and throw that at the target.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:19 PM on December 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

I take this to mean that the US Government is actively searching for an official Space Force song, and our nation's best musical talents should be preparing submissions.

It's been a long road /
Getting from there to here ....
posted by webmutant at 12:19 PM on December 21, 2019 [15 favorites]

I should have caught this earlier, but this got passed through a deal granting federal workers 12 weeks paid parental leave in exchange. I can live with that.

Parental leave applies to all federal workers, including gay, lesbian and transgender parents, because of federal regulations, though the weeks of paid leave reportedly would not be allowed to be used in addition to existing benefits allowing 12 weeks of unpaid family leave time for federal workers per year.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), a supporter of expanding paid family leave, told the Post that the deal reached by congressional and White House negotiators was an "incomplete solution, but a significant one."

"We are one of the only civilized nations in the world that does not provide its workers with paid leave when they have children or care for sick relatives, and I have been working for decades to remedy that," she added.

posted by blakewest at 12:22 PM on December 21, 2019 [16 favorites]

"Belters" maybe?
posted by ensign_ricky at 12:53 PM on December 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

I would love to die in space

That's the spirit, citizen!
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:04 PM on December 21, 2019 [10 favorites]

As long as they charge a mighty mighty fee to clean up after elon's scattered space garbage and use the dough for homeless shelters, I'll support it.

They're literally not taking on *any* new mission responsibilities. Farcical.
posted by j_curiouser at 1:15 PM on December 21, 2019

"Ground control to Major Thom"
posted by mbo at 1:23 PM on December 21, 2019

I guess it's a sound business decision to expand one of the few growth segments left in 2019 America -- weaponization -- to one of the only markets it hasn't saturated yet -- space.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:28 PM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Space Grift. War is a racket, Space War is just out of this world. Good thing the theme song already exists, and is making revenue for the private sector.
posted by eustatic at 3:03 PM on December 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

• Remarks: Donald Trump Signs the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2020 - December 20, 2019 (YouTube). Text of his remarks here; and text of S.1790 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 here.

• United States Space Force website, FaceBook, Twitter.

• The Space Force is officially the sixth military branch. Here’s what that means., Air Force Times, Meghann Myers, Dec. 19, 2019:

...
President Trump officially signed the Space Force into law Friday, but for now, all that means is everyone at Air Force Space Command will now be assigned to Space Force. Over the next 18 months, officials said, the finer details of manning and training the new branch will be hammered out and set in motion.

“It’s going to be really important that we get this right. A uniform, a patch, a song ― it gets to the culture of a service,” said Air Force Gen. Jay Raymond [WP bio], the head of Air Force Space Command and U.S. Space Command, who will lead Space Force until a chief of space operations is confirmed by the Senate. “There’s a lot of work going on toward that end. It’s going to take a long time to get to that point, but that’s not something we’re going to roll out on day one.”

For now, the 16,000 active-duty airmen and civilians who work at Air Force Space Command will be assigned to the Space Force, but nothing else will change. Uniforms, a rank structure, training and education are all to be determined, and for the foreseeable future, Space Force will continue to be manned by airmen, wearing, Air Force uniforms, subject to that service’s fitness program, personnel system and so on.

Meanwhile, U.S Space Command, which stood up in August, will continue to exist as a combatant command, similar to Cyber Command, Special Operations Command and others.
...

• United States Space Force (WP)

...
Functions –
As described in the United States Space Force Act, the U.S. Space Force will be organized, trained, and equipped to:[4]
"Provide freedom of operation for the United States in, from, and to space"
"Provide prompt and sustained space operations"

Duties –
The duties of the Space Force include to:[4]
"Protect the interests of the United States in space"
"Deter aggression in, from, and to space"
"Conduct space operations"

Role and mission –
The U.S. Space Force's mission is to "organize, train, and equip space forces in order to protect U.S. and allied interests in space and to provide space capabilities to the joint force. The Space Force's responsibilities include developing military space professionals, acquiring military space systems, maturing the military doctrine for space power, and organizing space forces to present to the Combatant Commands."[2]
...

Russia and China may disagree. War is Peace, and yet again it expands to fill the time and space available to us.

At least with military surveillance scanning the Earth below and the sky above, we don’t have to worry about Total Information Awareness (remember The Logo?) any more. Right?
posted by cenoxo at 3:31 PM on December 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Then you're a silly person who should just take the launcher you'd use to put the tungsten rod into orbit and throw that at the target.

That idea comes up periodically as Prompt Global Strike. It's basically a suborbital kinetic bombardment system built out of old ICBM parts.

It still takes an hour from launch to impact though. If you pre-stage your kinetic rods in orbit, there's basically no warning until things start blowing up, and your order-to-impact time is probably down around 20 minutes if the dispenser is lucky enough to be in the right place. (The situations where you'd want to drop a whole bunch of kinetic penetrators on known targets and not want to give them any warning is left as an exercise to the reader.)

But thinking about PGS brings me to a greater question about the Space Force, which is why doesn't it absorb the strategic missile functions of the USAF? (Like the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces / RVSN.) Who gets to own suborbital stuff, and where do you draw the line? Does it become a Space Force function if it exits the atmosphere, or only if it orbits? If all the arms control treaties go away and we end up with a missile portfolio that goes all the way from 500m anti-tank to orbital bombardment without any gaps, at what point do different services get to own the capability? There's going to be some bureaucratic fighting in there, I'd imagine.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:45 PM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

So this is just a rebranding - not actually anything new.

Sounds like Trump's default business model applied to government.
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:23 PM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Gil Scott-Heron comes to mind here
posted by JohnFromGR at 4:51 PM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Trump is ignorant of the cultural fore-runner: the Space Academy, where Tom Corbett was a cadet before joining the Solar Guard. Personally, I think Solar Guard is a much better name than Space Force. (And I think Tom Corbett had a better sense of mission and purpose than Donald Trump.)
posted by CCBC at 4:59 PM on December 21, 2019

Karen Carpenter also comes to mind here
posted by kozad at 5:18 PM on December 21, 2019

They should’ve just told Trump we already had this branch and then shown him old Stargate-SG1 episodes as proof.
posted by Servo5678 at 5:44 PM on December 21, 2019 [11 favorites]

Daniel!
posted by clavdivs at 6:24 PM on December 21, 2019

"I will have a whole army of Zombies! A Zombie marine corps, a Zombie navy corps, a Zombie Space Cadets!"
posted by ovvl at 6:33 PM on December 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

People who think Trump’s impeachment is other than bi-partisan theatrics - meaningless bread for the masses — need to realize that if it were otherwise no House Democrats would be fundamentally restructuring the Pentagon with Trump or doing any of the other major public policy that they are doing with him now.
posted by MattD at 6:37 PM on December 21, 2019

As a rabidly pro-space tech person, the article where the general starts in with the first thing is designing a patch and uniform raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Garhg, well then actually maybe it's a good thing that's what a general is worrying about. As Halloween Jack points out, military use of space is not new, quite the opposite, all the incredible culture changing science has been to some a side project for PR and to keep the serious space scientists happy.

But, and this is serious, so what? If it gets us off the planet it's a huge leap forward. I know it sound wacky SciFi but it's a big universe out there, we need to diversify and grow and evolve. It may not even be homo sapiens that are the space persons but it will be people. We wacky tech-idealists think all the harmful industry should be moved off planet and the world becomes a garden, and it won't be as simple minded as that but it's the way to go. And if a new arm of the military can start fighting for funding, well there are so many worse ways to spend military earmarked funds.

I suspect (hope) the general I laughed at was using the patch as a throwaway comment to distract reporters or in house competition and has serious plans to grow the new branch. If there is a big moon base it'll need support staff, tech and maintenance workers and all the periphery that will grow into a civilization, belters.
posted by sammyo at 6:44 PM on December 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

People who think Trump’s impeachment is other than bi-partisan theatrics - meaningless bread for the masses ...

Only an idiot would think it is bi-partisan and nobody with any sense ever said otherwise. Republicans have made it obscenely partisan, for sure.

Making a principled stance is not theater. It shows that at least one party cares about constitutional government.

Facing the obvious fact that Republicans will never remove Trump is not theater. It's just an ugly reality and means government must go on in spite of Republican obstruction. Budgets must be passed regardless.
posted by JackFlash at 6:51 PM on December 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

Pageantry is a big part of military endeavours. Just like every generation thinks they invented sex, every generation also thinks they invented cosplay. The funny part is that this is the least bad part of the whole thing.
posted by sjswitzer at 6:53 PM on December 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

We're going to look back on this as the one incontrovertibly positive and intelligent part of the Trump presidency, is my prediction.
posted by 256 at 4:57 PM on December 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

incontrovertibly positive and intelligent part of the Trump presidency

I know what those words mean, but they don't make any sense when you use them together like that.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:23 PM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

256: We're going to look back on this as the one incontrovertibly positive and intelligent part of the Trump presidency, is my prediction.

I'd like to draw attention to something I mentioned in a MegaThread from some months ago, the fact that Trump signed the largest wilderness protection bill in a decade (Paul Rogers for Mercury News / Bay Area News Group, March 12, 2019).

Trump's signing of the National Resources Management Act, or S.47, marked a surprisingly overwhelming bipartisan congressional effort and began with the environmental protection bill introduced by Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in January. The bill expands federally protected land, where there can be no logging, drilling, mining or road construction, and establishes 375,000 new acres of wilderness across California, Oregon, New Mexico and Utah. The bill passed the Senate with a vote of 92-8 and the House with a vote of 362-63 ( Benjamin Fearnow* for Newsweek, March 13, 2019).

* That name is amazing, for coverage of political news.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:49 PM on December 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

“It’s going to be really important that we get this right. A uniform. A patch. A song. It gets to the culture of a service,” Raymond said. “So we’re not going to be in a rush to get something, and not do that right. There’s a lot of work going on towards that end. I don’t think it’s going to take a long time to get that done, but that’s not something we’re going to roll out on day one.”

No news on whether the Space Force has made any progress on the important missions of picking out uniforms, patches, and songs, but they apparently have an official bible, because what is even happening anymore?
posted by zachlipton at 6:35 PM on January 12, 2020