Retired astronaut Scott Kelly on Thursday ripped President Donald Trump's plan for a space force, saying the administration should be fighting Russian cyberattacks on elections systems rather than "science-fiction warfare of the future."
"There doesn't seem to be a lot of support out there," Kelly, the gun-control advocate who also is a retired Navy captain, told Brooke Baldwin on CNN.
"Being someone who has 20 years in the military, and NASA, I don't think there's a need for a sixth branch of the military."
Following through one of Trump's election promises, Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday announced the new, separate U.S. Space Force as sixth military service by 2020.
Pence said at the Pentagon the force was needed to ensure America's dominance in space amid heightened tensions with China and Russia.
The force would require congressional approval.
Kelly, who has a twin brother Mark, told Baldwin "this idea seems to have come from one person who is not a space or military expert" — President Trump — and "a longer discussion" was needed on the issue.
"Maybe we decide whether this is something we need in the past," he said. "It didn't seem like it made sense. It doesn't seem to me to make sense now.
"I kind of wish we were fighting the wars we currently have, maybe the cyber warfare we're currently in.
"Focus on that," Kelly emphasized, "because that is much more a threat to our democracy and our way of life right now . . . than science-fiction warfare of the future."