COMMENTARY: Is it a good idea to have the military protect satellites?

One day in the near future, communication systems will go quiet. Everyone’s GPS will stop working. The White House will discover that multiple lasers are heading toward the United States’ satellites.

For members of the House of Representatives, this thought is their ultimate nightmare. However, for people who are active moviegoers, the “near future” description may sound like the plot of a sci-fi or action movie.

It seems as if no one has any original thoughts these days. Hollywood loves making movies about space, the galaxy, and the different ways to protect it. The sci-fi movies are a hit because they tackle everyone’s fear of the unknown.

While the Space Corps may seem a bit extreme and silly, it is understandable why the House of Representatives is being proactive about protecting the U.S. secrets and everyone’s personal information.

Now, House lawmakers have passed the National Defense Authorization Act with the hopes of creating a sixth branch of the military called the Space Corps to protect U.S. satellites and U.S. in – you guessed it – space.

The urge to protect U.S. satellites is creating a fear big enough for lawmakers to want to put them under military protection. Satellites play a huge part of almost everyone’s lives in the U.S.; some may not even be aware of how important satellites are for daily activities.

Satellites provide communication, imaging and navigation. A lot of information is stored in those floating things in space and one would hope that all that information would be kept secure with multiple passcodes and locks.

At first glance, the idea of Space Corps appears to be a paranoid reaction; much like the kid who wears a tin foil hat in “Signs.” But, lawmakers are making it seem as if everyone’s information is not secure, and hackers from other countries can easily look at whatever U.S. information they please.

The plan is to have the Space Corps timeline approved by Aug. 1, 2018 and a
Chief of Staff for the Space Corps by Jan. 1, 2019. The military branch will “oversee the acquisition, development and deployment of military satellites and the ground stations that control them,” said USA Today. This response comes two years after China took a similar step toward space protection.

Also, the idea of a separate Space Corps did not come from a Marvel movie. Former President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld proposed the Rumsfeld Commission Report which evaluated ballistic missile threat to the U.S. in 1998. The report came out just before 9/11 and the idea was put on hold.

Today, NSA Director Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Alabama) has his own proposal; the Space Corps. Rogers’ proposal comes from his concern about Russia and China’s quick ability to deploy hardware that could potentially interfere with U.S. satellites.

Those who want to see the creation of a Space Corps remind people of the fact that Russia and China have conducted anti-satellite missile tests, hackers have taken control of NASA’s Earth Observing System’s flagship satellite called “Terra,” and U.S. satellites have been jammed by insurgents in the Middle East.

Now imagine a world where people are joining the Space Corps. How is the Space Corps going to protect the satellites?

At the moment, there has been talk about the importance of protecting space, but without the bill in place, no one knows what the Space Corps will do in a time of crisis.

The need for another military branch seems unnecessary because the U.S. is trying to protect information, which seems like a hard thing to do. Has the U.S. run out of smart people or are people in other countries just way smarter?

How will the Space Corps protect satellites from hackers who are sitting in an office? It would seem that in order to fight off hackers, the Space Corps will need more brain power, not muscles or weapons.

If the lawmakers want to use muscles, then it is hard to picture what the Space Corps’ future will look like.

How will soldiers stop hackers? Is it safe to assume that soldiers will be floating near our satellites in spaceships and be armed with lasers if another spaceship tries to invade?

On one hand, it seems like a cool idea to take a war to space. That would mean less destruction of Earth. However, the fighting could lead to debris flying toward Earth and blowing it up.

Again, these are all assumptions as to how the Space Corps will protect the U.S. Maybe the Space Corps will protect satellites by taping lasers to sharks like in “Austin Powers.”