Vern Evans
When Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall unveiled his seven no-fail mission priorities two years ago — dubbed operational imperatives — creating a resilient space architecture was at the top of the list.
“Of all the imperatives, this is perhaps the broadest and the one with the most potential impact,” he said in the March 2022 speech. “Our terrestrial forces, joint and combined, cannot survive and perform their missions if our adversary’s space-based operational support systems, especially targeting systems, are allowed to operate with impunity.”
Kendall’s emphasis on resilience in space is underpinned by two ideas that have picked up traction across the Defense Department in recent years. First, capabilities like GPS, satellite communications and space-based intelligence collection play an essential, enabling role in most U.S. military operations. And second, threats from adversaries like China and Russia have put those capabilities at risk.
The creation of the Space Force in 2019 was a step toward strengthening the resourcing and organizational heft of the military space enterprise. In making space resilience central to the secretary’s operational imperatives, the push is expected to get top billing when it comes to divvying up scarce Air Force and Space Force budget dollars.
“We’ve only begun to define, and have not yet fully resourced, the space systems we will need to secure the nation,” he said at the time.
The service has made some progress over the last few years defining a more resilient space architecture, Kendall told Defense News in a recent interview. He said he’s happy with the Space Force’s plan to achieve resiliency through fielding smaller satellites in a more diverse range of orbits.
However, to field those satellites and ground systems, he said, the Space Force’s $30 billion budget needs to grow — whether that’s through internal Defense Department trades or an increase from Congress.
“That budget is going to need to double or triple over time to be able to fund the things we’re actually going to need to have,” he said. “Somebody’s going to have to make some decisions about whether to give us a bigger budget overall for this or do some internal trades.”
A growing budget appetite
Kendall’s call for a larger space budget follows several years of steady funding growth for the Space Force.
The service’s budget has nearly doubled in the five years since it was established, but that increase reflects mission consolidation more than it does new investment, as many space-focused personnel and programs from the Army and Navy as well as the Space Development Agency moved under the purview of the new service.
In fiscal 2025, the Space Force’s requested budget is slated to drop slightly to around $30 billion, due largely to constraints imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which puts a cap on defense spending.
Budget documents show that the service expects its funding to remain relatively flat over the next five years.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, the service’s vice chief of space operations, told Defense News that the Pentagon’s funding outlook doesn’t match the demand the Space Force is seeing from users in the field. Soon, he said, the service’s ability to respond to combatant command requirements in a crisis could be limited.
“We are maxing out our budget today and seeing a flat-line budget in the DOD. It’s got to change,” he said. “We are seeing a threat that is absolutely intent on narrowing the capability gap between us and them. Today, we have margin in that capability gap. . . . If we don’t start increasing our investment in space, we’re going to see that capability gap reverse.”
Defense budget expert Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, echoed Guetlein’s concern that without a boost in funding, the Space Force won’t be able to take on new missions, let alone respond to current demands. That includes the Space Development Agency’s plan to buy hundreds of satellites to track advanced missile threats and form a data transport layer in space.
“The Space Force is trying to get into new mission areas,” he said in a May webinar hosted by the National Security Space Association. “It’s going to cost more.”
In the near-term, more funding for the Space Force could come through a congressional budget increase, though based on the FY25 funding levels proposed by appropriators in both chambers, a move in the opposite direction appears more likely. The House Appropriations Committee’s policy bill would, if passed, cut about $900 million from the Space Force’s request. Meanwhile, Senate funding legislation would slash around $1 billion.
Funding could also come from other parts of the Air Force or DOD budget, requiring the department to make trade-offs in its FY26 request in order to fund key space missions like missile warning, space domain awareness and counterspace capabilities, which include the offensive and defensive space protection measures.
An enduring process
As the Space Force advocates for more funding, leaders have been working in the background to determine the right mix of satellites and other capabilities needed for adapting to new threats in orbit.
That process, which started in 2021, is led largely by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, which has been conducting mission-by-mission studies aimed at crafting the Space Force’s ideal, or objective, force structure for the next 10 to 15 years.
Guetlein said the work being conducted by the SWAC is akin to creating puzzle pieces — and after more than three years, the service has most of those pieces in hand.
That includes a plan for fielding offensive and defensive systems, known as counterspace weapons. Most of these capabilities are classified, but options range from cyber or electronic warfare systems to kinetic weapons.
Both Kendall and Guetlein declined to offer details on the Space Force’s counterspace architecture. Guetlein noted that the service’s plan includes not only systems and technology, but also a strategy for running exercises ensure it’s using these capabilities responsibly.
“We are actually trying to [establish] norms of behavior to ensure that what we’re doing is safe and responsible but at the same time understanding we also have to be effective, which means I need to field credible capabilities to be able to counter the threat,” he said.
The next step is to put the puzzle together. The service announced in March that a new organization, Space Futures Command, would be responsible for that work. Once force design is complete, it will then get passed to the requirements community to identify near and longer term funding needs.
The Space Force plans to submit the first of those objective force designs in the fall of 2025 and will update that work every five years to incorporate any changes to the threat environment or other factors.
Guetlein said the process the Space Force has articulated and the creation of Space Futures Command are a direct response to the operational imperatives Kendall laid out early in his tenure. He expects they’ll continue to drive strategy and decision-making for years go come.
“It’s the foundation of everything that we’re going to do,” he said.
Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.
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