The Space Force, the sixth and newest branch of the U.S. military, was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in December 2019. Its creation was not a partisan endeavor, though Trump has boasted that the idea for the organization was his alone. At its incarnation, the Space Force was an assemblage of programs and teams that already existed, mainly as entities within the Air Force. “It’s one of the common misperceptions that it cost money to create the Space Force — and it really didn’t, because we already had space forces,” Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told me. “One of the things that we were lacking without a Space Force was an organization that would argue for its own destiny,” Douglas Loverro, a former Pentagon official involved in helping start the branch, told me.

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Persons: Donald Trump, Trump, “, ” Todd Harrison, ” Douglas Loverro, Loverro, Wang Hucheng Organizations: Space Force, U.S ., Congress, Air Force, Force, Center for Strategic, International Studies, Pentagon Locations: United States