The emails are straightforward and desperate.

Last August, as the Taliban advanced on Kabul and the U.S. military began its hectic withdrawal from Afghanistan, emails trickled in to our inboxes.

In the most generous telling, the notes came because Military Times covered the war in Afghanistan for 20 years, mostly from afar but occasionally by embedding with units. Sometimes the writers picked us because we’re Americans who cross paths with those in power. But mostly, their tone revealed, they emailed because we are as good of a lottery ticket as anyone.

Subject line: “Help for evacuation.”

Nov. 8, 2021 2:29 p.m.

“my family’s lives are in grave danger, we have been receiving death threats via phone calls and text messages, Taliban messages are as follows: ‘we will not rest until you are found Infidel.’ Me and my family have given the United States 100% of loyalty and commitment, regardless of the fact that my father was gunned down and killed by the Taliban for working with the U.S military.”

The notes are not unique to us. Reporters worldwide shared the same observation. Sure, Military Times and Defense News employ freelancers and correspondents working across the globe. But the stories of families devastated by the consequences of war are not the pieces we cover daily, or even weekly. We can offer no comfort or refuge.

Dec. 7, 2021 6:16 a.m.

“I am afraid to go to university to teach. The Taliban have repeatedly threatened to kill anyone who had work experience with the US military now that the American forces are gone. I have nowhere to go. We have no food, I need your help.”

To a skeptic, the emails could be a scam. And the authors know their plight sounds unbelievable, so the notes come with attachments. Photos of passports. Family members’ names. Company names. Copies of clearance forms from the U.S. State Department. PDFs of letters from NATO. Affidavits that this man “provides no threat to the safety or security of the United States.” Any crumb of information the writers imagine could possibly help.

Jan 24, 2022 11:13 a.m.

“some of our acquaintances reported us to the Taliban, that [we] are christian and the Taliban are following us … During this time, we fled several provinces and are currently hiding in Mazar-e-Sharif safe place. Please help us to get out of Afghanistan, otherwise the Taliban will find us and hang us.”

In Washington, a town of policy papers and pre-supposed outcomes, everything can feel theoretical. But the threats in the emails are graphic. They are specific. And because of that, they pierce our conscience.

Jan 29, 2022, 11:38 a.m.

“During last 20 years we have seen a lots of people who work with foreigner specially who worked with U.S Govt. and Foreigners. Has been killed, punished tortured and slaughtered.… we are under terrorist and insurgence threat. I got phone calls from known sources and person who threat me, because I helped and worked with foreigner, special U.S Governments and International Organizations. They kill me or chop my head.”

For many, the war in Afghanistan was always confusing. Why were U.S. forces there? Why did troops remain as long as they did? And now, how do we make sense of the Americans’ departure?

The letters have dribbled in all year. They didn’t stop in September 2021. The latest arrived last week, this time asking for assistance from the United States.

Aug. 23, 2022 2:54 p.m.

“My friends and I have two families we’ve been trying for year to get out of Afghanistan. They are going to die before the SIV process is complete. The women are willing to leave their sons behind, in order to escape with their daughters. The Taliban, as you know, are going to force marriages.”

One credo of journalism is to give a voice to the voiceless. I share these notes today because our country is irreparably divided about who gets help from whom. And because too often we want to believe a story is over, after a day, a week or even a year.

The letters from Afghanistan remind us it is not.

Officials unveiled those details and the Pentagon’s legislative proposal for the new military service March 1. Defense leaders sent the formal proposal to Congress Feb. 27 after President Donald Trump ordered its creation in June.

While many of the details have yet to be determined — will the service have a bootcamp (unclear), its own service academy (no), their own uniforms (possible) or recruitment centers (probably) — a Space Force would share resources such as an acquisition chief, general counsel and chaplains with the broader Department of the Air Force.

“Space is not just a support function. It’s a war-fighting domain. We have to be prepared to fight, deter and win,” a senior defense official said Friday. “With these changes, we need to adapt.”

“This is a good path forward, which allows us to deliver capabilities, faster, better, and stay ahead of the adversaries,” another defense official said.

Details of the legislative proposal were first reported by Defense News in December but questions about personnel size and budget figures have remained open questions.

In September, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson floated a cost of $13 billion for the Space Force, while an independent estimate from the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the additional costs at around $550 million per year.

However, senior department officials said March 1 that the Pentagon plans to spend about $72 million on setting up a headquarters for the service with about 200 staffers in fiscal 2020. As the force ramps up, those costs could rise to about $500 million per year. Those costs are in addition to the roughly $10 billion the Department of Defense already spends on unclassified space programs.

An executive summary of the legislative proposal stresses that the $2 billion represents “less than 0.05 percent” of the Pentagon’s expected budget during that five-year period, and adds that “more than 95 percent of the Space Force annual budget is estimated to consist of resources that will have been transferred from existing DoD budget accounts.”

“Additional resources will be dedicated to building out the Space Force headquarters and establishing and maintaining new support elements such as education, training, doctrine, and personnel management centers,” the summary continues. “Once the Space Force is fully established, these additive costs are estimated to be $500 million annually, which would represent approximately 0.07 percent of the annual DoD budget.”

In a statement released by the Pentagon, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan called the legislative proposal a “historic moment for our nation” and “a strategic step towards securing America’s vital national interests in space.” Wilson added that “We will continue to be the best in the world at space and establishing a dedicated space force strengthens our ability to deter, compete and win in space.”

Five-year timeline

The legislative proposal offers up a rolling plan between FY20 and FY24 for how to phase in the new service.

In FY20, DoD would create the initial Space Force headquarters. An undersecretary of the Air Force for space (who must be nominated and confirmed by the Senate) and the service’s Chief of Staff, a four-star position, would lead the organization. While reporting to the Secretary of the Air Force, the Chief of Staff will also serve on the Joint Chiefs, like how the commandant of the Marine Corps operates.

Such a move would create “institutional advocacy and priority for that domain and it wouldn’t be subject to personalities,” a senior defense official said.

Those initial Space Force personnel will be a “mix of military and civilian personnel with key military leadership positions filled by individuals from each Military Department,” per the summary. “Some personnel will be transferred from the existing Military Services, some new personnel would be hired, and some personnel would be temporarily detailed to the Space Force to provide surge capacity and expertise during stand-up.”

In FY21 and FY22, the plan calls for the majority of missions transferred from existing space-related offices to the new service. “This will include relevant space operational elements, acquisition elements, training and education elements, and other identified space-specific entities,” per the summary.

For example, the Navy’s Mobile User Objective System, a narrowband communications satellite system, or satellites in use by the Missile Defense Agency would likely shift to the Space Force, space officials said. The Secretary of Defense would sign off on those moves.

In the following two years, FY23 and FY24, new units or organizations could be stood up, including potentially “activating additional operational, acquisition, and/or training units, as necessary to meet new mission demands and to establish organic space-specific capacity for doctrine development, intelligence analysis, education, etc.”

All told, roughly 15,000 “highly technical” personnel from existing offices will move under the aegis of the Space Force by the end of FY24. Those individuals may be transferred both voluntarily and involuntarily, and will move with the grade, rank, duty, and pay status they had previously.

While in the past decade Air Force Space Command has been described as including as many as 40,000 employees, not all of those workers were strictly focused on space and may have provided support functions.

Some new general officer roles will be required to fill out the Space Force, which requires Congressional authorization. Just how many is unclear, with the proposal promising a report to Congress on that issue sometime in FY20.

One challenge in setting up the Space Force during this period will be collaboration with the intelligence community, whose National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) will remain independent of the new military branch.

The new service, along with its adjacent U.S. Space Combatant Command, will “place greater demand on the IC to better understand space threats and to provide intelligence support to planning, operations, and acquisition,” per the summary.

“The Space Force, in collaboration with the IC, will identify, prioritize, and advocate for the intelligence capabilities, personnel, training, and organizational constructs necessary to provide intelligence support to DoD and IC space missions. Such intelligence support could include staffing a joint intelligence operations center; improving foundational military intelligence, including scientific and technical intelligence; and developing tasking, collection, processing, exploitation, and dissemination processes and capabilities.”

In addition, the Space Force will assume functions currently executed by Air Force Space Command elements within the NRO.

Another uncertainty for the service is how the guard and reserve components will work. The legislative proposal essentially punts on that question, pledging a more detailed proposal for FY21.

The study by the Secure World Foundation, released Wednesday morning and previewed exclusively with Defense News, is a comprehensive collection of public-source information about the counterspace capabilities of China, Russia, North Korea and other world powers that could threaten American dominance in space.

When most Pentagon leaders discuss anti-satellite or counterspace capabilities, they reference the infamous 2007 Chinese test of an anti-satellite kinetic weapon, which successfully destroyed an old Chinese weather satellite and scattered thousands of pieces of debris in orbit.

But a more likely attack in 2018 would come in the form of electronic warfare jamming that could prevent users from turning on their equipment, directed energy attacks to dazzle sensors, or perhaps most plausibly, hacking a terminal on the ground so troops cannot operate it.

This non-kinetic approach is more about rendering equipment useless than it is destroying it outright ― a strategy that costs less and is harder to attribute, said Brian Weeden, a former U.S. Air Force officer and one of the authors of the new report, titled “Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open Source Assessment.”

In other words, countries are smarter about how they pursue capabilities in space.

“The bad news is I think there is strong evidence we’re seeing more development and testing of counter space technologies than any time since probably the height of the Cold War,” Weeden said. “The somewhat good news is that at least for the time being, operational use of these counter space capabilities is limited to the non-kinetic types.

“We’re seeing development of broad range, everything from kinetic destructive technologies to jamming and hacking but the operational use so far seems to be limited to the jamming and hacking types.”

Per the report, these countries are the biggest players in the counterspace arms race:

• China has not slowed down its capability development since the 2007 anti-satellite test, but has also not repeated its action of destroying a satellite on orbit,  a feat which drew global condemnation. The report concludes that Chinese capabilities against satellites in low-earth orbit (LEO) “is likely mature and may be operationally fielded on mobile launchers within the next few years,” but found that capabilities to target medium-earth orbit or geostationary earth orbit were likely still in the “experimental stage.”
• Russia has likely built up its capabilities on the back of Cold War efforts, but likely does not have anti-satellite capabilities “on a sufficient scale or at sufficient altitude to pose a critical threat to U.S. space assets” at this time. In addition, the capabilities under development don’t appear aimed at targeting assets outside of LEO. However, Russia has invested heavily in electronic warfare capabilities, and “can likely jam communications satellites uplinks over a wide area from fixed ground stations facilities” today if needed.
  
• The United States has highly-capable technologies that would allow them to maneuver near potential enemy systems in both geostationary orbit and low earth orbit, and has a number of technologies that could be adapted to anti-satellite systems with limited work. That includes mid-course missile defense systems, which could be used against satellites in low-earth orbit. Like Russia, the U.S. “likely has the capability to jam global navigation satellite service receivers [like GPS] within a local area of operation to prevent their effective use by adversaries.”
  
• Other nations in the report include Iran (unlikely to develop an anti-satellite weapon system, but has limited commercial GPS jamming capability), North Korea (“does not appear motivated to develop dedicated counterspace assets” but has limited GPS jamming options) and India (unlikely to develop a counter-space capability, but could probably move rapidly in that direction if it chose.)
  

Weeden describes the spread of these technologies, along with the publicly stated rise of great power competition between the U.S., Russia and China, as a “worrisome combination of trends.”

And it’s unclear how the U.S. can change that trend to deter proliferation of these capabilities – or if that is even a realistic goal anymore.

“The focus seems to be, ‘well, everyone else is doing it, we should too,’” Weeden said. “These trends appear to be used as an argument for why the US also needs to restart or develop more of its own offensive counter-space capabilities, rather than how do we tame or stop the proliferation and kind of get control of the technology, or deter use.”

For years, Pentagon officials were cautious of talking about a potential war in space, out of fears such statements could create an arms race in orbit. But in recent years, American officials have become more vocal about the threats, in part due to sequestration-related budget pressures that threatened to squeeze the space funding stream.

However, the report shows that the heavy investment in anti-space capabilities began in the mid-2000s, before that rhetoric from the U.S. shifted.

One area being invested in heavily by China, Russian and the United States are capabilities known as Rendezvous and Proximity Operations, or RPO – the ability to have a system in space maneuver around and interact with another nation’s satellites. Both China and Russia are pushing money into these capabilities and testing them on their own equipment, although the report notes there is “no proof” these are disruptive capabilities as opposed to intelligence gathering investments.