McMillin: The Space Force isnt the U.S. militarys first space program. Lets hope this one sticks around. – The Denver Post

I chuckled at some excited national news reports in mid-December when it was announced that troops in the one-year-old U.S. Space Force would be called guardians.

Marvel Comics name-stealing jokes aside, guardians have been hanging around Colorado Springs and a handful of other places for 37 years without much ado. See, technically Air Force airmen assigned to the fledgling Air Force Space Command adopted the motto in 1983: Guardians of the High Frontier. (The other guardians were introduced in comics in 1969, and on the big screen in 2014.)

For me, revitalizing the name brought another wave of dj vu in a year that often took me back to the halcyon space days of the early 1980s. And of all the starts and restarts, of all the wasted time and money, of all the abandoned projects and forgotten promises, this repackaged promise of a new branch of the U.S. military with about 14,000 guardians, has me rooting for success, stability and permeance that has eluded U.S. space programs for the last half-century.

In 2020 we redesignated the Air Force Space Command as the U.S. Space Force; we brought back the U.S. Space Command; we launched humans from U.S. soil to the International Space Station; three countries (the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates) sent spacecraft to Mars; China had an unmanned moon landing, and a Japanese craft grabbed soil and rocks from an asteroid.

Theres plenty on the horizon for 2021, too, including a new space telescope to replace Hubble and the likely debut of Boeings Starliner space capsule in a springtime test.

Maybe thats enough momentum to keep space programs on track, but with the economic ruin of the global pandemic, money will be tight. Space programs often are seen as expendable when times are tough or political winds change, despite their nearly total integration into everyday life.

Which brings me back to the early 1980s. Thats when space programs both military and civilian appeared to be blossoming anew, after a decade of budget cuts and stagnation when the Apollo program ended. Space programs had not disappeared entirely there were scientific missions and research and development aimed at finding cheaper and more routine ways to get satellites and people into space.

NASA pinned its hopes on the Space Transportation System, known as the space shuttle. It was neither cheap nor reliable.

From the first launch on April 12, 1981, to the last landing on July 21, 2011, there were 135 missions. Two of them ended in tragedy: the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, killing a seven-member crew; the shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts.

Still, it briefly brought back the promise of space exploration as we watched astronauts deploy satellites, fix solar power antennae and carry out experiments in the shuttle bay. Maybe space travel and work could be routine.

The Air Force jumped on that bandwagon for a few years, converting an unused launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base into a shuttle launch pad and planning a Shuttle Operations and Planning Center (SOPC) at what is now Schriever Air Force Base near Colorado Springs. (Former astronaut Sen. John Glenn had fought to have the SOPC in Ohio.)

The space shuttle Discovery was set to launch into polar orbit better for spying from the West Coast in October 1985 but was delayed into the following year. But with the Challenger explosion in early 1986, everything changed.

That launch pad, dubbed Slick 6 for Space Launch Complex (SLC) 6, is emblematic of so many of the fits and starts of a space program beset by budget cuts, shifting priorities, technological advances that outpaced projects, interservice rivalries and pork-barrel politics.

It was initially built for the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program that was announced in December 1963. Essentially, it was to be a military space station.

Budget cuts because of the costly Vietnam War meant the program plodded along so slowly it was surpassed by technology. Slick 6 was mothballed in 1969.

NASA had selected the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Vandenberg as shuttle launch and landing sites. The Air Force thought it would be cheaper to convert Slick 6 to a shuttle launch pad than to start from scratch, and in 1979 the $3.5 billion conversion project started.

The never-used pad was mothballed again in 1986 because it cost only $6 million to $8 million a year to maintain in caretaker status as opposed to about $400 million a year to keep the pad launch-ready, the Air Force told me in 1990 when I was a military reporter for The Gazette in Colorado Springs.

Thats when the Air Force signed a $300 million contract with Lockheed Space Operations Co. to convert Slick 6 to a rocket launch pad. Several Delta 4 rockets have launched from the pad since 2006.

Meanwhile, in 1987, about $20 million was paid to IBM to buy out a $94 million contract (that had grown to $139 million with new work orders in the first year) for computers for the shuttle center at Schriever.

There was some thought at the time that the shuttle operations center might be revived, but the military space program was headed in new directions and extricating itself from the costly shuttle program was inevitable.

Satellite technology was rapidly evolving, and it wasnt just about spying. Communications and weather satellites became increasingly important to troops on the ground, in the air and at sea. Visions of smaller, less vulnerable and easily replenishable satellites emerged. And the new Global Positioning System was proving so precise for navigation and targeting that the Air Force initially was hesitant to share the technology for civilian use.

The space systems were coming out of research and development, and the Air Force, as the biggest player in the military space program, wanted a way to organize, train and equip troops to use them and protect them.

The Air Force Space Command was established in September 1982 as the focal point for space systems that were passing from the developmental to the operational stage and to deal with the expanding space mission, the Air Force said in a fact sheet. It was followed by the creation of smaller space commands in the Army and Navy.

And on Sept. 23, 1985, the U.S. Space Command was established at Peterson Air Force Base.

It seemed the military space program had indeed launched and that El Paso County would be the hub. The Consolidated Space Operations Center at what was then called Falcon Air Force Station and is now Schriever Air Force Base was under construction 10 miles east of Colorado Springs. It was conceived in the late 1970s, and in 1979 Colorado Springs was selected to house it, although New Mexico Sen. Harrison Jack Schmitt, another former astronaut, fought hard for several more years to have it placed at Kirtland Air Force Base.

The Strategic Defense Initiative Star Wars had been launched by President Ronald Reagan.

That brought new political and social concerns. Instead of simply using data from satellites to support soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, would we have treaty-violating weapons in space?

The initiative evaporated after Reagan left office, with most of the research and development programs absorbed by other military units. Again, it didnt go away it morphed.

The value of space systems for the military was indelibly imprinted by their use in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, dubbed by many as the first space war.

Things seemed to stabilize. The shuttle kept flying and the Challenger orbiter was replaced. Schriever grew and added housing and other amenities, helping stifle its reputation from Falcon Air Force Station days as Falcatraz because of its lonely location on the prairie. (Which the Air Force worked hard to ensure as it bought up land in a huge buffer zone to better protect the highly classified center.)

Then came the 2001 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and everything shifted again.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff routinely review the missions and structures of the unified and specified combatant commands, which are, simply put, the commands that give combat orders. The major commands within each service train and equip troops, the combatant commands tell them when and how to go to war.

The U.S. Space Command was merged or absorbed, depending on your viewpoint, with U.S. Strategic Command as the combatant commands were reorganized to emphasize defense of North America. A new cabinet department, Homeland Security, was created along with the Northern Command and eventually the U.S. Cyber Command first as a subcommand of Strategic Command and then as a full unified command.

Essentially, that pushed military space programs from prominence. Still, no one doubted that space systems are inextricably linked to most military operations, especially to cyber and communications missions.

And 19 years after it went away, the U.S. Space Command was back, temporarily housed at its old home, Peterson Air Force Base. It was reactivated in August 2019, and a year later Army Gen. James Dickinson was named commander. Dickinson is a native of Estes Park and a graduate of Colorado State University.

Five other states are competing against Colorado to land the permanent headquarters. Seems like a no-brainer to me because when Peterson was selected for the headquarters in 1985 it came with $19 million for a headquarters facility. And if the base is to be a Space Force base, it makes sense.

At least two other contenders in the location pageant, though, also are or are expected to be Space Force bases: Kirtland in New Mexico and Patrick in Florida.

The tricky part in intra-service and interservice rivalries and politics is who gets the money for what system, and who gets more troops in this case guardians at their bases.

Which is in part why there was a push for a separate Space Force. That might add to rivalry between services, but some including John Pike of GlobalSercurity.org would argue that it might rescue space systems from a service intent on preserving pilots and vehicles with wings.

But the Space Force was established within the Department of the Air Force and primarily is enveloping Air Force Space Command units and bases. Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Patrick Air Force Base in Florida have been renamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Patrick Space Force Base.

Several Colorado bases - Peterson, Schriever and Buckley - also are expected to be named Space Force bases.

The command is overseen by the Secretary of the Air Force, and the chief of space operations is Air Force Gen. John Raymond.

Sort of makes it Air Force.

In remarks made when the command was established by Congress through the Defense Authorization Act on Dec. 20, 2019, Raymond noted that in its first year they would create a new force, with a new culture.

That included such things as inactivating Petersons 21st Operations Group and activating Space Delta 2 in its stead. Space wings were deactivated and reconstituted as garrisons.

It also included choosing a work-day uniform thats the same camouflage as the Armys and Air Forces, but with the barely noticeable difference of a dark blue name tape instead of black or spice brown.

Not good enough, Pike says. They need something distinctive. Some variant of Star Trek garb, he said. But not jet black. Thats too much like the SS.

He might be right. Symbols are important when youre building a culture, and distinctiveness should not be underestimated if you are expecting something to last.

On the services first birthday, Raymond said the progress made surpassed his expectations, according to an Air Force news release.

While the move to create the Space Force was pushed by President Donald Trump, it grew out of bipartisan efforts in late 2016 in the House Armed Services Committee. Space News reports that industry representatives and analysts believe that President-elect Joe Biden will stay the course with the Space Force and his transition team met with Raymond in December.

Might some politicians try to negate it because its associated with Trump? Perhaps. But they might look back at the history of military space efforts, and the perseverance it took to withstand politics, shifting priorities and budget slashing to continue research and development programs that brought GPS to our cars and weather satellites that show us exactly where those killer hurricanes are headed.

At least four countries the United States, Russia, China and India have proven they are capable of shooting down satellites. Theres also technology out there for jamming. And cyber warfare.

Most of us, I think, would like to ensure that those satellites we rely on every day continue to orbit freely.

Sue McMillin is a long-time Colorado reporter and editor who worked for The Gazette and Durango Herald. Now a regular columnist for The Denver Post and a freelance writer, she lives in Caon City. Email her at suemcmillin20@gmail.com.

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McMillin: The Space Force isnt the U.S. militarys first space program. Lets hope this one sticks around. - The Denver Post