President Donald Trump signed a directive Tuesday to create Space Force. The administration’s budget, expected to be delivered to Congress mid-March, will include language setting up Space Force and requesting seed money of less than $100,000, USA Today reported.
Space Force would be housed within the Air Force – similar to how the Marine Corps operates under the Navy – and eventually become the fourth military service, according to the President’s plan. He initially wanted to stand Space Force up as its own service but met resistance.
The scaled-back version is an easier sell in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers will have to sign off on the force and its funding.
There are still critics who say eventually making Space Force its own service will compete with other defense priorities.
“There’s no reason to believe that space-related programs would fare any better than they do today under the U.S. Air Force recognizance,” said former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe, now a professor at Syracuse University, according to the paper.