Space Force

The United States Space Force (USSF) is the space service branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, established December 20, 2019 under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) FY2020 — the first new U.S. military service branch since the U.S. Air Force was separated from the Army in 1947. Headquartered at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., with operational installations at Peterson Space Force Base (Colorado), Vandenberg Space Force Base (California), Schriever Space Force Base (Colorado), and Buckley Space Force Base (Colorado), USSF organizes, trains, and equips space forces to protect U.S. and allied interests in space and provide space capabilities to the joint military force.

USSSF's primary mission areas include Space Domain Awareness (SDA) — tracking all resident space objects to detect maneuvers, anomalies, and potential threats — satellite communications (SATCOM) via the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) and Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) constellations, missile warning via the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) and its successor Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) satellites, GPS constellation management and modernization (GPS Block III satellites), and protection of U.S. space assets from adversarial interference. USSF's Space Systems Command (SSC) manages procurement of space systems; Space Operations Command (SpOC) operates fielded systems; Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) develops doctrine and training.

The establishment of USSF reflected U.S. government assessment that space had become a warfighting domain — with China's 2007 ASAT test and Russia's development of co-orbital anti-satellite systems demonstrating the vulnerability of U.S. space assets that underpin GPS, military communications, and intelligence collection. USSF currently has approximately 8,000 active duty Guardians and 5,000 civilians. Its FY2024 budget is approximately $30 billion — smaller than individual Air Force or Army programs but growing rapidly as the U.S. invests in space resilience, disaggregation of vulnerable large satellites into distributed architectures, and offensive and defensive space capabilities.