The Space Force is the first new military service in 70 years, an historic milestone for the Department of Defense and space. But what a military service is has changed over those decades and the Space Force is being founded at a time when some worry the military services have seen their authority and control fragmented. Space Force leaders have to create the identity, organization, and culture of a new military service; establish its unique role; and build the relationships to sustain it. Yet the Space Force is itself drawing its people and funding from the older military services, exacerbating concerns the traditional services are losing authority. Only by understanding that trend can Space Force leaders best launch the Space Force. There is no single meaning for what a military service is and, therefore, no uniform path for Space Force to follow. The Space Force can look for examples at either side of what constitutes a military service: on one side, the smallest military service that shares a military department, the Marine Corps, and on the other side, the largest non-service organization charged with organizing for operations, the Special Operations Command. The Space Force has similarities and differences with both and those distinctions can point the way to how the Space Force can become an independent military service within a fragmented DOD.

"The Department of Defense has not institutionalized public diplomacy-like activities throughout its components, belying both hopes that it would internalize these broader concerns into its everyday activities, and fears that the Department's great scale would overwhelm all other US public diplomacy. But the evolving, post Goldwater-Nichols role of the combatant commands and SOCOM did encourage those particular organizations to develop and consolidate a program that looks very much like public diplomacy. These conclusions have been obscured until now because of the difficulty in cataloging and costing activities within the Department of Defense that are like public diplomacy. This report is the result of a concerted effort to do so. We conclude that: Most of the defense activities often implicated in public diplomacy should not be. These include most of the activities the Defense Department defines as information operations, public affairs, building partnership capacity, and even most tactical military information support operations. Additionally, the Department of Defense has not broadly institutionalized public diplomacy-like activities despite a push to do so in the early 2000s. Institutionalization is the moving of people or resources, which has not happened. However, Special Operations Command and the geographic combatant commands maintain one enduring and fairly defined program that is very similar to public diplomacy activities. It includes the "Trans Regional Web and Magazine Initiatives" (TRWI and TRMI) and named "VOICE" operations. The contrast between one robust program and the lack of broader institutionalization is best explained by the varying identities, incentives, and missions of different military organizations. The military services have resisted institutionalizing public diplomacy-like activities to avoid diluting their long-standing missions, but the combatant commands, and especially SOCOM, have embraced such missions in response to their changing role in executing US foreign policy. Public diplomacy offers a valuable example for how different organizations respond to different incentives and ultimately affect how US foreign policy is executed. Only by understanding these organizations and their incentives can we anticipate the military's future role in executing US foreign policy."--Executive summary.

This report is a compilation of recommendations made in recent years by many boards, commissions and study groups that have proposed efficiencies in how the U.S. Department of Defense spends money. If implemented fully, the recommendations would save nearly $1 trillion over a decade, though it is virtually impossible they will all be adopted. The proposals face varying degrees of political opposition -- some intense -- and some recommendations are contradictory. The authors are not endorsing any of the specific options but, by compiling the proposals, have created a resource that frames the many calls for efficiencies, providing context that the broader debate on defense spending is currently missing.

Prevailing wisdom on defense spending in the past decade asserts that despite the large amount spent, we did not modernize our weapons systems. In reality, the military services did take advantage of increased procurement funding to modernize their forces, although not always as expected. This paper analyzes procurement funding of the last decade and demonstrates that though each of the services has followed a different approach in allocating these funds, they share a similar result: the services capitalized on funding to modernize their forces, especially the major weapons programs that constitute the heart of the services' capabilities.

By R. Russell Rumbaugh.