Page 39 - War Fighting News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Itself. barbara starr picks up the story. >> reporter: president trump calling for a radical change in u.s. war fighting. >> we have the army, navy, air force, the marines, the coast guard. we have the air force. now we are going to have the space force. we need it. >> reporter: today at the pentagon vice president mike pence unveiling details of the white house plan. >> the time has come to establish the united states space force. >> reporter: pence making the case the u.s. is under threat. >> russia and china, north korea and iran have pursued weapons to jam, blind and disable our communicat...

Anywhere from 10 to 40,000 people, depending on how you count. so i fear it would get lost in the shuffle of the big bureaucracy of the pentagon. and third, the thrashing about that would come with such a huge reorganization, i believe and fear would actually set back the momentum that we've seen in the last few years toward improving the space enterprise. >> it does make me wonder, secretary -- a branch of the military hasn't been created in 70 years. what would it mean to go about right now creating a sixth branch of the military? because mike pence said today, they want it established by co...

Of the military force? >> that's right. it's a joint approach and it is all about how do we do a strategy for actually conducting the military operation. i would note that the president's report today did call for the stand-up of a new space command, which would focus on war fighting. i happen to agree with that, an that would be a relatively easy situation because space is currently controlled by stratcom. so stratcom would do nuclear, space command would do space. >> and that would be like centcom people might have heard a lot about. deborah lee james, thank you for your insights today, real...

Cracking many jokes in my inbox about it more than anything else. but is there any chance congress would support something like this? it's a huge, new expensive branch of the military. in theory, there's the national security arguments you lay out, but it seems to me like it will have a tough road. >> i think it will have a tough road. i think it does have some support in the house of representatives. you may recall that they proposed a space corps which had similar properties. not the same, but similar. i think the senate will question it very strongly. i always come back to the very simple q...

Thanks. >> so is this a good thing? that trump has announced? >> i've thought a lot about it. but i don't have a strong opinion. the idea of a space force is not a fundamentally odd, when you consider that the army, 70 years ago, birthed the air force. there was the army air force. and once we realized that technology and war fighting capabilities evolve -- >> and was going to take place up -- >> in the air space rather than the ground space, then it was sensible to suggest that perhaps this should be an entire branch of the military unto itself. so today all space capabilities of the military...