United States Space Force

The United States Space Force was established on December 20, 2019, as the newest branch of the U.S. armed forces and the first new independent military service created since the Air Force itself in 1947, organized under the Department of the Air Force to consolidate and formalize American military space operations, including satellite communications, missile warning, and positioning and navigation systems such as GPS, that had previously been distributed across the Air Force and other commands. Personnel of the Space Force, called Guardians, are organized around Space Deltas rather than traditional Army-style divisions, reflecting the service's focus on operating and defending space-based systems rather than conducting conventional ground, sea or air combat. The service's creation reflected a growing recognition within American defense policy that space had become a contested operational domain, with adversary nations developing anti-satellite weapons and other counter-space capabilities that threatened the American military's substantial reliance on space-based systems for communication, navigation and surveillance. As the youngest and smallest of the U.S. armed forces by personnel, the Space Force remains in an early institutional development phase, building out its own doctrine, career structure and acquisition programs distinct from its parent Air Force.