U.S. Space Force chief: Fiscal 2027 budget will reflect ‘aspirations’ for rapidly growing the service
ARLINGTON, Va. — As the White House prepares to release its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the top U.S. Space Force official said he remains confident the service will receive a boost to its current funding.
“The leadership in the Department of War, the leadership in OMB [the Office of Management and Budget], certainly the leadership in 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,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, Space Force’s chief of space operations, said during a keynote at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum.
“I think the budget is going to reflect that agreement,” he told attendees here.
The White House is expected to deliver its fiscal 2027 funding proposal to Congress on Friday.
For the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, Space Force received roughly $40 billion. Of that total, $26 billion was approved via the normal appropriations process, with the rest coming from the sprawling tax and spending package that President Donald Trump signed in July. That legislation also included funding for integrated air and missile defenses as part of the Golden Dome initiative, a multilayered defense shield that Trump has said will be operational before his term ends in early 2029.
The combined funding amounted to a nearly 40% increase from the fiscal 2025 funding. Service officials over the past few months have said they anticipate yet another funding boost in fiscal 2027, comments that Saltzman echoed today.
“Everybody’s recognized that we’ve needed to grow,” he said. “But this is the first time I’ve seen, ‘No, not only do you need to grow; you need to accelerate your growth. You can’t wait five, six, seven years to be what we need to be.’”
“We need to be there in two years [or] three years,” Saltzman said. “And it looks like the resource is going to now match those aspirations.”
