The sixth and newest branch of the United States military, the United States Space Force, could receive $71 billion as part of the $1.5 trillion that the White House has requested for the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2027 (FY27) budget. That would be a significant increase from the $40 billion in FY26, which ends on September 30.
Officials at the U.S. Space Force had called for additional funding to support the service’s growth and to effectively address emerging national security threats in cyberspace and outer space.
The White House heard the calls and listened.
“We were able to make that case and the leadership in the Department of War, the leadership in [the Office of Management and Budget,] certainly the leadership of the White House and the president agree with us, agree with our advocacy, that space capabilities need to grow, that the Space Force’s capacity needs to grow,” Chief of Space Operations Gen Chance Saltzman said of the budget growth at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Forum last week.
The increased budget will support Space Force’s key priorities and programs, specifically improving missile tracking and defense, space-based moving-target indication, satellite communications, and data transport and command and control, according to a report from Air & Space Forces magazine.
Base Budget And Beyond
The U.S. Space Force could expect $59 billion to be funded through the base/discretionary request for FY27, with an additional $12 billion from a separate reconciliation package.
A significant portion of the money is likely to be allocated to the Golden Dome for America missile defense system that President Donald Trump first proposed last year after returning to the White House. The massive program, which could take years to fully implement, would integrate space-based sensors with terrestrial interceptors to protect against a range of aerial threats, including hypersonic weapons.
Critics of the Golden Dome have warned that the total program could cost hundreds of billions, or even trillions of dollars, and still couldn’t stop all the emerging threats.
As SatNews.com also reported, “The scale of this investment is expected to reshape the entire aerospace supply chain, as the government moves toward the mass-production of satellites.”
That has resulted in “massive tailwind” for companies in the space, notably SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and L3Harris.
Along with the proposed Golden Fleet for the U.S. Navy, which could include a new class of battleships, the Golden Dome is among the largest of the Pentagon’s programs.
How It Breaks Down
According to a breakdown of the budget request, around $1.9 billion, a $300 million increase from the FY26 budget, would be directed to military personnel, with operations and maintenance (O&M) seeing a $3.8 billion increase from $5.8 billion to $9.7 billion. Likewise, the Space Force would receive an $11.6 billion increase in funding for Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) from $29 billion to $40.6 billion. Procurement within the U.S. Space Force would also increase from just $3.6 billion to $19 billion, up $15.4 billion.
In specific programs, approximately $31 billion will be directed to the Golden Dome, with $4.3 billion flowing via regular appropriations.
An additional $3.3 billion has been allocated for low Earth orbit missile-tracking satellite research and development, along with $1.8 billion for similar medium Earth orbit systems.
Changing Dynamic for Space Force
The increased budget for the Space Force will not only expand the service’s size but also its role in the aerospace sector as a whole.
As SatNews.com further suggested, by nearly doubling Space Force’s budget, the newest branch of the United States Armed Forces will mark the “end of the era of experimental prototypes,” and instead usher in a greater level of industrial-scale military space production. “The Space Force is signaling that it no longer wants to be just a customer of the space industry, but its primary architect.”
