Space Force tech mission threatened by staff and funding black hole

Budget slashing has 'outsized impact' on us, says commander who fears branch not ready for orbital war

The US Space Force has been struggling to achieve its technological goals, and Chief of Space Operations General B. Chance Saltzman told senators this week that civilian layoffs and budget cuts aren't helping matters at all. 

Established during the first Trump administration in 2019, Space Force is a new branch of the US military meant to secure America's interests "in, from, and to space," as it says on its website. Unlike NASA, which is focused primarily on science and exploration, the Space Force's job has tended toward things like tracking orbital objects, ensuring the security of GPS satellites, and other interests related to national defense beyond the earth's atmosphere.

Now, the branch says its mission is in jeopardy like never before. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday during a budget hearing for 2026, Saltzman said the Trump administration's wholesale slashing of the government's civilian workforce has hit the US Space Force, aka USSF, particularly hard given its small size.

Saltzman cited deferred retirements, incentives, and the Trump administration's "fork in the road" deals as reasons why USSF's civilian workforce has been leaving in droves - almost 14 percent of the branch's non-military personnel have departed, the general said. And it came at an incredibly inopportune time.

"We were in a period of managed growth, and so there was a deficit when we were trying to get to a larger civilian workforce and we were asked to stop, and then asked to offer some to resign early," Saltzman told the committee (at 50 min 20 secs in the hearing video.)

The general added he understood the desire to reduce the federal workforce, but "it's just having a little bit of an outsized impact on the Space Force." 

As of 2024, the USSF had a combined military and civilian headcount of 14,000 "guardians." 

The Department of Defense has been planning to reduce its civilian workforce by as much as eight percent, per a memorandum issued February.  

US S(low)Pace Force

The Space Force has drawn considerable criticism from Congress in its six years of existence, and for good reason: It's expensive, and some of its key technological tasks have ended up way behind schedule. 

The branch asked Congress for $77 million last year to harden America's GPS satellite network against spoofing attacks, by adding a bunch of mini-satellites to the constellation that resist interference, but Congress wasn't impressed. 

"It is not clear how these additional satellites increase the resilience against the primary jamming threat to GPS," the House Appropriations Committee said of the request. 

GPS modernization, another task the Space Force has been assigned, has also been floundering, though that's not entirely on the shoulders of the guardian corps. 

Full implementation of military-code (M-Code) GPS, which can be encrypted, unlike traditional GPS signals, has been a DoD project since 2009. It was handed to the USSF in 2021, but an additional four years of work don't appear to have helped things much.

In a report by the US Government Accountability Office issued last year, auditors said the Space Force's own data suggested the system was unlikely to be ready until the end of the decade due to satellite launch delays and a lack of ground infrastructure that supports M-Code capabilities. 

To make matters even worse, there's the increased threat of threats from space weapons that Russia and China have reportedly been deploying in recent years.

We are not adequately funded for the new missions that I've been given in space superiority

Analysts reported in 2023 Space Force was unprepared to counter orbital threats, and Saltzman himself said last year the United States was in a position to lose space superiority to China and Russia if the status quo was maintained. 

Saltzman confirmed in Tuesday's hearing that America's adversaries did have weapons in space (1:39:35), and when asked if an additional year of preparation had been enough to give the Space Force an edge, he made his position clear.

"We are not adequately funded for the new missions that I've been given in space superiority," Saltzman said. 

Tim Dill, acting deputy Undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, said last week cuts to the civilian workforce weren't being done without careful consideration. 

"Reducing the size of the civilian workforce is not about hitting a threshold — it's about doing what is best for the department, our warfighters and our mission," Dill said.

The second Trump administration is definitely still interested in national defense in space. Earlier this week, the president announced a $175 billion plan to build a network of missiles, space surveillance, and attack satellites that he promised would protect America. The new plan, Golden Dome, is under the auspices of Space Force vice chairman General Michael Guetlein.  ®