During the years immediately following the World War I armistice, U.S. Army Brigadier General William (Billy) Mitchell strongly advocated the establishment of an Air Force, separate from and outside of the Department of the Army. Military aviation was in its infancy, and it was during World War I that General Mitchell had executed the first primitive versions of massed aerial bombardment. A visionary, he accurately predicted the future potential of strategic air warfare.
But the independent air force concept competed directly with the military tradition and for the resources of the Army and Navy, so his views met with strong institutional resistance. He was chastised, and the United States missed an opportunity to comprehend and act on the directions military technology and strategy were moving.
Innovations within naval aviation and an unbridled U.S. aircraft industry allowed us to react to the strategic surprises of the Axis powers that appeared later. But the outcome was never guaranteed, and it is worth asking what might have been gained by the earlier establishment of an empowered Air Force. Perhaps the United States could have fielded a jet-powered air superiority fighter comparable to Messerschmidt 262 or a longer range and more survivable strategic bomber like the B-29 much earlier. Perhaps the war could have been brought to an earlier conclusion.
General Mitchell's vision was vindicated in 1947 with the establishment of the U.S. Air Force. In the years hence, the Air Force has been and remains crucial to our national security, but lost opportunities cannot be recovered.
A more recent example is the Department of Homeland Security, already a conceptual entity prior to the global war on terrorism. If some semblance of its fully synchronized organizational functions had been in place years ago, when the department was first envisioned, perhaps the events preceding 11 September 2001 could have been interpreted and the tragic results prevented.
If history is a guide, then the United States should consider a military department to guard against surprise from any space-related event that places us at a strategic disadvantage.