United States Air Force

A 21st-century United States military service branch specializing in air and aerospace power. In the processed material the Air Force appears only through its official insignia engraved on a recovered fragment, which reframes the crew's investigation by implying a terrestrial, early-21st-century provenance for the debris. The emblem functions as a provenance marker and narrative catalyst, suggesting hierarchical, state-sanctioned military activity and creating a temporal-origin mystery that contrasts with interstellar authorities depicted elsewhere in the story.