A Democratic backer of the 2017 attempt to create a Space Corps predicts President Trump’s Space Force proposal will easily clear the House Armed Services Committee and stands a good chance of winning wider congressional approval.

“I think the prospects could hardly be brighter,” Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper said Wednesday at a forum on space sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think we're on a path here to achieve everyone's goals, which is first, you know, greater capability for our country.”

Cooper and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., drew up a bipartisan bill that would have created a separate Space Corps under the Air Force, but the legislation died, in part because the Air Force and then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis opposed what they called an unneeded bureaucracy.

Cooper said that while he thought President Trump’s call for a “separate but equal” Space Force was “over the top,” it did “break some ice” within the Air Force and possibly the Senate, which had been lukewarm to the idea.

And when he saw the legislative proposal crafted by Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Cooper found it looked “way more modest” and closely resembled the 2017 plan that failed to get Senate backing.

“In fact, it's about as close to our original House proposal as you can get. I think it uses some Pentagon terminology they're more comfortable with,” Cooper said. “My guess is from the administration standpoint, they may only care that we call it a Space Force, whatever we're doing. OK, we can do that.”

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“But what really matters,” Cooper continued, “is not the bureaucracy but the substance. We need to be able to acquire state-of-the-art technology and put it on orbit in record time.”

Shanahan also appeared at the forum and said the Space Force is going to be small, with a budget comparable to the U.S. Special Operations Command, roughly $2 billion over the next 5 years. It will be focused initially on protecting the communications and navigation satellites that allow America’s $19 trillion economy to function.

Shanahan quoted Cooper's previous remark that if U.S. satellites were ever attacked, “we would be blind, deaf, and impotent before we even knew what hit us. Everything from ATM machines to Zumwalt destroyers would be paralyzed."

“If you're faced with threats like this, you say yes to change,” Shanahan said.

Shanahan hasn’t had a chance to walk through the plan with House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., but said his experience with Congress is that most members are open-minded when it comes to protecting vital U.S. interests.

“I think the compelling piece here is that $19 trillion economy and the military run on space, and we need to have confidence that we're really protecting that," Shanahan said. “You know, when somebody says, ‘We're going to start a new service,’ you start to think about, well, like the Army, you know, with half a million people. We're talking 15,000 to 20,000 people defending $19 trillion."

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