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Space Force leadership says the service must treat space as a warfighting domain.
The U.S. Space Force is ready to invest in the offensive capabilities needed to maintain its edge in a vast and contested environment—if Congress loosens its purse strings.
The service was established in 2019 in recognition that the domain beyond Earth’s atmosphere requires a singular focus and budget on par with that given to air, land and sea. But even before its launch, military officials had long hesitated to make any reference to a potential war in space—or the offensive capabilities required to wage one.
That is changing. The Space Force must think of space “as a warfighting domain rather than just a collection of support activities,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said on March 3 at the Air and Space Forces Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. Although the service is still responsible for designing satellites that can conduct lengthy on-orbit operations in harsh environments, “it’s not enough,” he said.
- Space Force leader sees domain control as No. 1 priority
- Ongoing budget delays hinder new capability investment
Space control is now Saltzman’s No. 1 priority, encapsulating all mission areas that allow the military to counter adversary capabilities “by disruption and degradation—even destruction, if necessary,” he said.
Orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare and counterspace operations must be harnessed for both offensive and defensive purposes, Saltzman said in a keynote speech, adding that the service plans to share new doctrine and guidance on space control soon.
The Space Force is watching its adversaries develop a broad mix of space- and ground-based weapons to hold U.S. forces at risk, Saltzman told reporters at the conference. That includes directed-energy platforms, radio-frequency-jamming capabilities and kinetic weaponry. “They’re pursuing all of those,” he said, singling out China as the pacing challenge.
Beijing has built a space-enabled targeting architecture that includes hundreds of satellites spanning orbital regimes. To counter it and other threats, the U.S. military is building more resilient space-based architectures to make enemy targeting as difficult as possible. That includes developing proliferated satellite constellations, dispersing those capabilities across multiple orbits and studying on-orbit maneuverable spacecraft.
The Space Force will also be heavily involved in the Golden Dome, the Trump administration’s vision for a wide-scale missile defense architecture, establishing a cross-functional team of experts dedicated to the executive order. That team will examine how the service might contribute available platforms and technologies to the architecture, which relevant systems are in development and where gaps remain, Saltzman said.
A disconnect exists, however, between the plans to maintain space superiority and the operational reality, he noted. The service does not have all the training tools to prepare its personnel for a warfighting scenario. The Space Force is making these investments with lower funding levels than its fellow services and in an uncertain budget environment. Indeed, it was born lean and crafted from space-focused elements of the U.S. military—namely, the Air Force.
The Space Force’s fiscal 2025 budget request was $29.6 billion, about 3.5% of the Defense Department’s total budget for the period, down from the previous year.
Space Force advocates have called for funding increases. The National Security Space Association in a recent report recommended boosting the budget evenly across fiscal 2026-30 to $60 billion. This would support the service’s Golden Dome initiatives, bolster operational capabilities and expand resources for U.S. Space Command, the unit responsible for military operations in space.
Even if the next budget request were to double Space Force funding, no more money would be available if lawmakers continue to punt the passage of a new bill and instead issue continuing resolutions to maintain government spending at current levels. Trying to operate under such budgetary constraints is like “fighting with one hand tied before your back,” Saltzman told reporters. Any efforts to pivot away from current contracts and start new programs are hamstrung until a new budget is passed.
Space acquisition officials are trying to do more with less by exploring commercial options for legacy systems where viable, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, military deputy at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, said in Washington on March 11. The Space Force is analyzing the potential trade-offs of using existing technologies to replace large spacecraft programs with lengthy schedules and high costs, Purdy said.
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