They can’t hear you scream in space. And we’re not screaming here on Earth, but boy do we have a few things to say on this morning’s Space Force plan.

It is a waste of money.

A completely separate branch of the military won’t necessarily help the U.S. lead in space. It will, however, create a lot of waste and duplication.

Think about it: If we create a whole new branch of the military, the Space Force Secretary would also have all attendant staff and overhead, plus dozens of generals, officers, and staff. Except we already have the Air Force Space Command, while the Navy and the Army also already have their own space-related operations. Even if a space force just gets cobbled together from all those other parts of services, the Pentagon’s bureaucracy would still grow with a new service secretary. To say nothing of recruiters, communications, HR, admin, and on and on.

Don’t believe it? When Army Air Forces was turned into the Air Force in 1947 it’s not like other services quit their aviation components. And how would a Space Force work with NASA?

Here’s a better idea: How about making Air Force Space Command a Combatant Command like SOCOM and stopping there? Because the bottom line is that a space force will create costly bloat and do nothing to increase our dominance.

We’ll be looking more at this issue in the days to come. And try not to scream at what are bound to be some wasteful details.