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Senate must back creation of ‘Space National Guard’ to end a needless division.
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
July 14, 2022
Defense News
At a time when China and Russia are seeking to overtake the United States in space…, we cannot afford any setbacks in our own space program. That’s why we created the Space Force in 2019….
Air Force units with space missions were transferred to the new service…. But there was a key exception: Space units in the National Guard were left under the Air Force because a corresponding “Space National Guard” was never formed. We have proposed establishing a National Guard component for the Space Force to eliminate that needless division….
Our space units should operate as a seamless team, but they can’t do that while divided between two services…. The division also makes it impossible to build a strong organizational culture.
Moreover, unless the Air National Guard’s space units are transformed into a Space National Guard, those units may lose their space mission. That would come at great cost. We would likely lose the wealth of expertise that exists in 14 Air National Guard space units in seven states…as well as Guam. There would also be a financial cost….
[T]he Office of Management and Budget cited an annual price tag of “up to $500 million annually” as its reason for opposing a Space National Guard in last year’s defense bill. But that was a Congressional Budget Office estimate to create a Space Guard vastly larger than anyone is proposing…. [W]e can’t let distorted budget estimates distract us from the urgent task at hand….
It comes down to this: A brain drain in the space arena will have detrimental effects on our national security and our states’ readiness, and creating a Space National Guard is the best, most cost-efficient way to prevent that from happening….
Read the rest here.