X-wings, TIE fighters, battle cruisers — don’t pretend these images didn’t come to mind when then President Trump announced the idea of a United States Space Force back in 2018.
If there’s ever a century for extraterrestrial dogfights between spacecraft to become reality, it’s this one.
We’re only thirty years out from the Cold War and military competition in space is heating back up.
The addition of a sixth branch to the U.S. military isn’t the only example; look at Russia’s anti-satellite test last November or China’s hypersonic glide vehicle test the summer before that.
In VP Mike Pence’s words, space is “a war-fighting domain just like land and air and sea.”