• President Trump is directing the Pentagon to create a "space force" as the sixth military branch.
• The president first floated the idea in March as a part of his national security strategy.
• The White House, the Air Force and Secretary of Defense James Mattis disapproved of creating a sixth branch of the military last year

President Donald Trump declared Monday he will move to make a new branch of the military focused solely on space.

"I am 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," Trump said during a meeting of the National Space Council.

"Our destiny beyond the Earth is not only a matter of national identity but a matter of national security," Trump said.

He floated the idea for the force as a part of his national security strategy on March 13, saying "space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea." The president described then how he had originally coined the term as a joke, while discussing U.S. government spending and private investment in space.

"We have the Air Force, we'll have the space force," Trump said in March.

As it turns out, the space force sounds a lot like the space corps legislation the Trump administration opposed last year.

In the National Defense Authorization Act, the House Armed Services Committee proposed last June the establishment of a space corps, a new branch of the military that would fall under the command of the Air Force. This branch's relationship to the Air Force would be similar to the Marine Corps' ties to the Navy. The space corps would have an area of responsibility that encompasses the vast expanse outside of the Earth's atmosphere.
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At the time, the White House, the Air Force as well as Secretary of Defense James Mattis disapproved of creating a sixth branch of the military.

"I oppose the creation of a new military service and additional organizational layers at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting efforts," Mattis wrote in a letter to the House and Senate armed services committees.

While the legislation passed the House, the space corps bid did not make it into the final defense authorization bill in November.
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The addition of a service branch would be the first in 71 years. The Air Force is the nation's youngest branch and was added shortly after World War II.

Hearing of this recent announcement, former Supreme Commander of the Galactic Empire, Darth Vader, immediately volunteered for the position.

Syria: Russian developed air defenses shot down many missiles

The Russian news agency RIA added "over 100 cruise missiles and air to ground missiles were launched by the air and sea missile carriers of USA, France and the UK, aimed at military and civilian objects of the Syrian Arab Republic.”

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported government forces "confronted on Saturday a tripartite aggression launched by the US, France and Britain on a number of sites in the surroundings of Damascus and Homs."

Targets included a research center in Barzeh and warehouses for the Syrian army in Homs, SANA said.
Air defenses over Homs "intercepted several missiles and downed them," it added.

"The missiles that targeted a military site in Homs have been intercepted to change their track and cause the injury of three civilians."

A building containing scientific labs and centers in Barzeh was destroyed, the report added.

Separately, Russian state-run outlet Sputnik said the majority of missiles launched against Syria were intercepted by air defenses.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Sputnik said, Syria repelled the Western attack using air defense systems made in the Soviet Union, including the S-125, BUK, and S-200.