The Department of Defense has released its fiscal year 2025 budget request, and some are calling for cuts.
The Pentagon’s $825 billion request is a 1 percent increase over 2024, with budgets for all but one of the military branches increasing. The Air Force budget and intelligence pass-through both increased by 2 percent, while the Navy, Marine Corps and overall DoD budgets increased by 1 percent, while the Army saw a slight increase of 0.2 percent.
However, demand for the Space Force fell by 2 percent.
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall and Space Commander Chance Saltzman took a courageous stand to justify and support the request for a Space Force. There is no question that their comments were accurate and sincere. A lot of progress has been made in past Space Force budgets, and this year’s budget proposal prioritizes the right investments. What they failed to say is that more needs to be done, and there is even more that could be done with additional funding.
Department Integrated Combat Conceptis the result of a five-year effort to define what the U.S. military must do to fight and win in the future, and it relies heavily on space capabilities that don’t exist today. Our military will need to monitor the battlefield, find and target enemy forces, while also defending against attack.
This must be done across tens of thousands of square miles of land, air, and sea, against hundreds of targets simultaneously. This approach fails unless we can observe and understand what is happening across vast areas in real time, ensure that our forces and their commanders are aligned, and prevent our adversaries from doing the same. This cannot be done at the speed, range, and scale required except via space.
Remarkably, the Chinese military is rapidly fielding forces that can fight in a manner similar to this vision of the future. Saltzman recently noted that the PLA currently has 480 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites in orbit, which it uses as the foundation for just such a space-based network to find, track and target U.S. forces. They are also fielding weapons to destroy U.S. satellites in war. China’s goal is to overtake the U.S. in space. Cuts to the Space Force’s budget are helping it achieve that goal.
To be fair, there is an argument to be made that the Space Force budget should remain flat this year. The Space Force has nearly doubled its budget since its creation in 2019, and is the only service to have seen a double-digit budget percentage increase every year since. The service is making good progress — it seems to be managing its growth effectively and doing a good job building necessary new mission systems — but it’s fair to pause for a moment to assess its progress.
Moreover, the resources needed to deal with the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East mean that current munitions stockpiles are woefully inadequate and need to be replenished. A space-based kill web would be of little value without an adequate supply of weapons to use it.
So budget makers in Washington should be given some leeway, but only a little. Congress has actually cut the Space Force’s budget request by $1.2 billion for fiscal year 2024, and fiscal year 2025 is up to Congress to decide. A 1 percent increase for the Space Force would align with the overall defense budget and send the right message. The roughly $900 million difference between the 2 percent cut request and the nominal 1 percent increase could go a long way in a variety of ways.
Both the Space Force and U.S. Space Command have submitted unfunded priority lists totaling more than $1 billion. Many of the items on those lists are classified, but the unclassified lists include requests for funding private space communications and data relay services, improving ground system endurance, and experimentation with new technologies needed for future warfare.
Additionally, the Department of Defense and Space Force recently released a Commercial Space Strategy. Combatant commanders urgently need space-based sensing and communications services for routine operations, exercises, and training. These services, which are readily available in the commercial space sector today, will improve the effectiveness of routine operations and significantly improve their use in future combat operations, especially when used in conjunction with allies and theater security cooperation partners.
As Congress considers what to do with the defense budget for 2025, the Department of Defense has already begun the budgeting process for 2026. To effectively implement the joint warfighting concept, protect U.S. interests and freedom of action in space, and begin to address challenges that arise in lunar space, the Space Force’s budget will likely need to double again over the next five years. The question, of course, is whether the Space Force’s 2026 request will reflect that need.
Is this year’s reduction in the Space Force’s budget a temporary pause before the department embarks on the next phase of space investments needed to fight and win in the future, or is it a sign of our inability to prioritize investments essential to our national defense?
Is this a passing phenomenon or a sign of something better? The answer will have significant implications for the nation and its military.
DT Thompson is a senior advisor at Elara Nova and a former deputy chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force. His views do not necessarily reflect those of any particular organization or government agency.
