quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
Every time I read about Space Force I hear "Spaaaaace Ghost." Lol

The Schwartz will be with you, always.

If you're into the Space Force, here's a good article with nice behind the curtain shots from Buckley AFB:

America Really Does Have a Space Force. We Went Inside to See What It Does

BY W.J. HENNIGAN | PHOTOGRAPHS BY SPENCER LOWELL FOR TIME
JULY 23, 2020 5:54 AM EDT

American intelligence analysts have been watching a pair of Russian satellites, identified as Cosmos 2542 and 2543, for months. Or rather, they have been watching them since they were one satellite, deployed by a Soyuz rocket that took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Nov. 26, 2019. It was 11 days after that launch that the first satellite split in two, the second somehow “birthed” from the other, and no one in the U.S. military was happy about the new arrival. By mid-January, both Russian satellites had floated near a multibillion–dollar spacecraft known as KH-11, one of the U.S. military’s most powerful spy tools, part of a reconnaissance constellation code-named Keyhole/-CRYSTAL. It wasn’t clear whether the Cosmos satellites were threatening or surveilling the KH-11, which is said to have the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope, but it turned out that was only the start of the twins’ surprises....

Complete article with photos:

https://time.com/5869987/spaceforce/

I used to see those radomes (from outside the fence) when I was in 140TFW, CO ANG, 1987-89.

Space Force is really nothing new; it's just a new organization for dozens of missions that have been going on for decades. I spent 23 years in 'space operations,' and if I were still in today, I would be in Space Force. They do a lot of stuff behind the scenes that most people have never even heard of. They have 24/7 duty stations all over the world, monitoring and working, keeping everything from missile warning satellites to GPS satellites functional.

And, yes, they are weird. Space ops has always had a cultural identity all its own - we were called dot watchers, space cadets, etc, LONG before Space Force came into being.

Yes, the symbol (in use since 1981 or so) looks like Star Trek. Yes, the occupational badge (the space wings, or "Spings" (I personally hate the Spings and wish we had the old space occupational badge) ) resembles the Buzz Lightyear Star Command logo. Yes, they wear camo uniforms. Somebody pointed out to me yesterday, and I agree, that a LOT of the criticism over Space Force has more to do with President Trump than anything else.

No matter what they do, people will nit-pick and criticize Space Force. Uniforms, for example. For the sake of simplicity, they chose the Air Force standard OCP uniform (brown cammies), and there was criticism. Had they picked ANYTHING else, you can bet there would have been criticism. For a new and unique uniform (there's an oxymoron for you), they would have criticized the 'waste of money' when there are plenty of current uniforms to choose from. Had they been blue, purple, black, whatever, I know people would complain. The big complaint against camo is "if they operate in space why a brown uniform?" This is just ignorance, IMO. I spent a cumulative 16 months in the desert performing space operations duties, and I wore whatever desert camo we had at the time. Look at the pictures of Navy people wearing their dark blue/black camo in the desert - it looks really dumb.

So, they came out with the official logo and slogan, and surprise, surprise, people complained. They will eventually announce the Space Force song and/or Space Force Creed, and guess what? People will complain.

Space Force is doing some cool stuff. Take the X-37B space plane for example. It's a 1/4 scale unmanned space shuttle. All Space Command publicly stated about their missions was "Today we launched the X-37B." 6-18 months later, they would announce "Today, we landed the X-37B." I don't even know what that thing does up there, but I would bet it's not studying global warming or ozone levels over the poles. . .