In the four years since Congress established the U.S. Space Force, its budget has doubled. That growth needs to continue in order to meet the increasing demand for space capabilities, according to Gen. David Thompson, the vice chief of space operations. The Space Force’s fiscal 2024 request called for $30 billion to match the new responsibilities and missions.
The budget needs to grow because there are still more missions that are migrating to space. In the coming years, the Space Force is poised to play a greater role in some missions traditionally conducted by other services. These missions include, for example, the ground moving target indicator mission and the satellite communication mission.
As the Space Force takes on new missions, it is also working to make its existing systems more resilient against threats from adversaries like China. Leaders have set 2027 as a target timeline for fielding key upgrades to the service’s missile tracking satellite constellation. Thompson stressed that how much progress the Space Force makes toward modernizing its architecture in the next few years will be a test of whether the processes and structures it has put into place since 2019 are working as planned.
