Donald Trump announces Space Command to control ‘the ultimate high ground’
The leader of Russia's space agency said 'We are heading towards this...Everyone is working on it.'
Donald Trump announced the establishment of the US Space Command, calling the cosmos ‘the ultimate high ground.’
President Trump unveiled his first steps to create a sixth branch of the military, the Space Force, on Thursday at a press conference outside the White House.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said: ‘It’s a big deal…And I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody. It’s all about space.’
‘Those who wish to harm the United States, to seek to challenge us on the ultimate high ground of space, it’s going to be a whole different ballgame,’ he continued.
The Space Command will initially consist of 287 personnel members, although a location for its headquarters has not yet been determined.
Air Force General John Raymond, the current US Space Force Command commander, said: ‘We no longer have the luxury of treating space as a given.’
He continued: ‘There is a growing threat. The scope, scale, and complexity is concerning…there’s reversible jamming of GPS communication satellites. There’s directed energy threats.
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‘There’s missiles that can be shot from the ground and blow up a satellite, like was demonstrated by China in 2007. So there’s a full spectrum. We’re concerned about all of those threats.’
The US Defense Intelligence Agency released a report in February that warned about how US adversaries, Russia and China, were developing jamming and cyberspace capabilities, according to Al Jazeera.
This not the first time the US has had a Space Command. In the 1980s, the Space Command was created during the Cold War to coordinate misile defense systems, but it was later combined with the US Strategic command, which focuses on war and terror.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, reacted to Trump’s announcement, tweeting: ‘Slowly but surely, we are heading towards this. (Roscosmos) has no illusions about this. Everyone is working on it.’