Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis informed reporters at the Pentagon that work on the creation of the new service “Space Force” has not yet begun.
The Space Force is the potential new military service to the Defense Department that Trump ordered the Pentagon to build two days earlier.
“[The Space Force], as you know, is going to require legislation and a lot of detail planning that we have not yet begun,” said Secretary Mattis.
The creation of a Space Force, which will only begin if Congress can be persuaded to amend Title 10 of the United States Code, will likely take years as details such as the price and timeline of the new service are worked out. Only a very small part of the military budget is related to space.
Mattis is aware of how much discussion needs to take place over this potential new service.
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“We clearly have got to start the process, and that’s one of the issues that we’ll bring up on Friday morning as well with national security adviser [John] Bolton,” Mattis said.
Mattis did not publicly offer his personal opinion on the idea of a potential Space Force.
Noah Nash is a rising senior at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. At school, he is the editor in chief of the Collegian Magazine and the digital director of the Collegian, Kenyon's newspaper.
