On the same day he touted the "Space Force" to veterans, President Donald Trump's plan to create a sixth military branch hit a roadblock in Congress.
A House-Senate conference committee working on the $716 billion defense budget for fiscal 2019, which begins Oct. 1, left out money to start building the Space Force.
Earlier Tuesday, in address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Kansas City, Trump cited the Space Force as part of an unrivaled military buildup under his administration.
"My thinking is always on military and military strength. That is why I'm proud to report that we are now undertaking the greatest rebuilding of our United States military in its history. We have secured $700 billion for defense this year, and $716 billion next year -- approved," he said to applause.
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"And I've directed the Pentagon to begin the process of creating the sixth branch of our military. It's called the Space Force," Trump said to more applause. "We are living in a different world, and we have to be able to adapt, and that's what it is. A lot of very important things are going to be taking place in space.
"And I just don't mean going up to the moon and going up to Mars, where we'll be going very soon," he added. "We'll be going to Mars very soon. But from a military standpoint, space is becoming every day more and more important."
However, the conference report of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees left out funding for the Space Force in the National Defense Authorization Act. The conference report must still be approved by the full House and Senate.
Instead, the report directs Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to come up with a plan for how the Defense Department would organize for warfighting in space.
The House version of the conference report was also leery of Trump's vision for the creation of a new military branch for space, instead calling for the establishment of "a subunified command for Space under United States Strategic Command for carrying out joint Space warfighting."
Last month, Trump appeared to give the job of creating a Space Force as a separate military branch to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford.
At a White House meeting of the National Space Council, the president said, "I'm hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces."
"We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force -- separate but equal. It's going to be something," he said.
Trump then looked around the room to find Dunford and said, "General Dunford, if you would carry that assignment out, I would be very greatly honored."
-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
