United States Space Force
space warfare branch of the United States Armed Forces
The United States Space Force (USSF) is the space service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It was established on 20 December 2019 as part of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six armed forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the second independent space force to have been formed, after the Russian Space Forces; together with that of China, it is one of only two still extant.
The United States Space Force traces its origins to the Air Force, Army, and Navy's military space programs created during the beginning of the Cold War. U.S. military space forces first participated in combat operations during the Vietnam War and have participated in every U.S. military operation since, including the Gulf War, which has been referred to as the "first space war". The Strategic Defense Initiative and creation of Air Force Space Command in the 1980s marked a renaissance for military space operations.
Proposals for a U.S. Space Force were seriously considered during the Reagan administration (1981–89) as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The National Space Council, established in 1989, began discussing plans for a Space Corps or Space Force, but these plans were suspended shortly after President Clinton came into office. These discussions were revisited in the late 2010s in response to Russian and Chinese military space developments.
“United States Space Force” enters the record as space warfare branch of the United States Armed Forces. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and Space can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55088961. VIAF identifies the subject as 40155563945613000194. The Library of Congress control number is no2019051349. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1981 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Space Force” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.