*** US to launch space force military branch in 2020 | THE DAILY TRIBUNE | KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

US to launch space force military branch in 2020

Washington : Vice President Mike Pence has unveiled a detailed plan for the military Space Force proposed by President Donald Trump in a speech at the Pentagon. If Congress agrees to establish it, the Space Force will be the sixth branch of the US military. The Department of Defence is expected to release a report later “outlining the first stages of our administration’s plan to implement the president’s guidance and turn his vision into a reality,” Pence said. “This report reviews the national security space activities within the Department of Defence, and it identifies concrete steps that our administration will take to lay the foundation for a new department of the Space Force.”

The Trump administration aims to have the Space Force up and running by 2020, Pence said. “Next February in the president’s budget, we will call on the Congress to marshal the resources we need to stand up.”Trump’s Space Force has stirred plenty of controversy and debate since the President first publicly entertained the idea during a speech in March 2018, when he told US service members that his “new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea.” On June 18, Trump showed that he was serious about the Space Force by formally directing the Pentagon to create the new military branch. “We are going to have the Space Force,” he said during a meeting of the National Space Council.