Former U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James expressed opposition Sept. 6 to a House-passed proposal to create a space corps within the Air Force Department, saying the new organization would cause upheaval, erect new bureaucratic barriers and fail to fix the problems it is supposed to resolve.
James, whose three-year tenure at the Air Force helm ended in January, said she would prefer more targeted measures for space, such as providing more money to ease funding shortages and streamlining bureaucracy to speed up a slow acquisition process.
“My counsel to everybody would be let’s go back to basics,” James said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “What are the problems or problem that we are trying to fix? And then let’s look for what is likely to be the easiest and best way to actually fix those problems. My thinking is that the proposed reorganization, though it is meant with the best of intentions, will not fix the key problems.”
James’ successor, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, has also urged Congress to nix the space corps idea, as have Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. The proposal is included in the House-passed version of the fiscal year 2018 defense authorization bill.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), one of the main proponents of the space corps, defended the concept at CSIS, saying space management is too fragmented, that getting assets into space takes too long and that space will never receive the attention and funding it needs as long as it is subordinate to the Air Force’s air-dominance mission.
“You can’t have two number-one priorities,” Roger said. “That’s it in a nutshell.”
Rogers asserted that major organizational change is urgently needed now because the United States is rapidly losing its space advantage over China and Russia. If his proposal becomes law, the Department of Defense will have the opportunity to design the space corps and ensure it is agile, he pointed out.
The Senate version of the FY 2018 defense authorization bill, which awaits consideration by the full Senate, does not contain a space corps proposal. Instead, it would create a chief information warfare officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense to oversee cybersecurity, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, the electromagnetic spectrum and space.
“Once we see what the Senate’s version is coming off the Senate floor, then we’ll look at what options are available” for a compromise bill, Rogers told reporters. “We’re ready for dialogue.”