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The Space Force is getting a big budget increase in FY23. (Greg Nash – Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON: The Space Force’s fiscal 2023 budget request of a whopping $24.5 billion reflects the service’s first real steps toward a more resilient force structure — including $1 billion slated for developing a new missile warning and tracking constellation with satellites in multiple orbits to complicate any adversary attack, according to senior Pentagon officials.

“On the Space Force side … you’ll see the significant investment as a Space Force pivots to an architecture that is much more resilient, survivable and defendable,” Deputy Air Force Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones told reporters at a budget pre-brief March 25.

The FY23 request is $7 billion more than the $17.4 billion the service asked for in FY22, Maj. Gen. Jim Peccia, Air Force deputy assistant secretary for budget, said during the briefing.

And while the Air Force officials did not provide a comparison to actual FY22 allocations, citing the lateness of the omnibus federal spending bill signed by President Joe Biden only on March 16, a scan of the bill’s text shows a total of approximately $18 billion was appropriated for the Space Force.

Further, budget briefing materials released by Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) show a total of $27.6 billion for space programs in the Defense Department’s FY23 budget. DoD doesn’t break down that number, so it is unclear what exactly is being counted in its section on space investment, but that total may well include some planned spending by the Missile Defense Agency.

No matter how you cut it, that’s a big boost for the newest and smallest of the military service. But for size comparison, it still pales besides the roughly $40 billion in the Department of the Air Force’s FY23 request that just passes right to the Intelligence Community, much of which will go towards classified space efforts.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE FY23 BUDGET ROLLOUT

The majority of the spending increase is aimed at overhauling how the Pentagon develops, buys and structures its satellite fleets. The goal: move away from reliance on a small numbers of very expensive satellites that former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten famously called “big fat juicy targets” to a more resilient force posture based on larger numbers of cheaper, dispersed satellites was one of the key drivers behind the creation of Space Force. The slow pace of movement in that direction has been the subject of congressional criticism, and getting from here to there will be the service’s top priority for the next decade, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond said earlier this month.

“The reason there was the Space Force, the reason the Obama administration changed its strategy for space was because of the threat — the widespread investment that both China and Russia have in anti-space, counterspace capabilities, including things that threaten us in all different orbital regimes,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall explained during the briefing.

Revamping missile warning and tracking capabilities is a first priority for the Space Force in that “transformation” effort, Kendall added.

Indeed, creating a new and improved missile warning and tracking network, to include satellites that can keep tabs on highly maneuverable hypersonic weapons being developed by Russia and China, was the subject of the first “force design” effort by the new Space Warfighting Analysis Center (SWAC). That analysis is classified, but senior officials have said it involves creating a so-called hybrid architecture missile warning/tracking network with satellites in Low, Medium and Geosynchronous Earth orbits.

Kendall said that the plan is to finish a “first phase” of development for the new force design by the end of the five-year Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). However, the Air Force has yet to release its budget justification books, or j-books, that normally include FYDP planning figures.

Besides missile warning/tracking, Jones pointed to increased funding for space domain awareness and a new space-based capability to track moving targets on the ground as key Space Force investments in “integrated deterrence” — a new buzzword referring to all-domain operations debuted last April by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Where the Money Goes

The “biggest plus-up” in the Department of the Air Force’s FY23 request comes in the ask for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RTD&E) funding, Peccia said, and the Space Force benefited big time from that. The Space Force is requesting $15.8 billion in FY23, up from the $11.3 billion it asked for in FY22. That also represents a significant increase from the $11.6 billion included in the omnibus funding bill.

Highlights include:

  • About $1 billion in new funds for what Peccia called “resilient missile warning and missile tracking.” (OSD’s numbers show a total of $4.7 billion for “new Resilient Missile Warning/Missile Tracking architectures, including the $1 billion request for Next-Gen OPIR below, as well as “the associated enterprise ground system.”)
  • About $1.4 billion for the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) two largest development efforts: the Tracking Layer of missile warning sats in LEO, now called the Space Technology Development and Prototyping program and budgeted at $987 million; and the Transport Layer, now called the Space Science and Technology program, at $461 million. Under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, SDA must transfer to Space Force by this coming October.
  • Nearly $3.5 billion for the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) program, up $1 billion from FY22, with the extra funds specifically aimed at the ground segment and the three Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) satellites in the constellation being built by Lockheed Martin.
  • $566 million for the the Evolved Strategic SATCOM program to replace the aging Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) for encrypted national security communications, up $406 from the FY22 request; and another $121 million for the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service, which is a ground-based system for implementing the service’s new Protected Tactical Waveform anti-jam software, currently focused on the Indo-Pacific theater. (OSD’s charts show a request of $1.6 billion for Protected Tactical & Wideband and Narrowband robust/secure/survivable/jam-resistant capabilities.)
  • $231 million, up from the FY22 request of $123 million, for the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC),which will track space objects in GEO 24/7, aimed at Site 1 rapid prototyping.
  • $36 million in investment related to climate change, largely targeted at reducing the Space Force’s energy consumption.

The procurement account also received an increase from FY22, going from some $2.8 billion to $3.6 billion — also an increase from the some $3 billion allocated in the omnibus spending bill.

While launch services continue to take a big bite of the procurement budget, the number of planned launches in FY23 has fallen from this year’s total. The request includes nearly $1.1 billion for three National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program launches for Space Force, down from five set for FY22; and $314 million for SDA to launch three satellites, vice the six it has slated for FY22. (OSD’s charts put the request for the same number of launches at $1.6 billion.)

The procurement request further includes two new GPS III Follow-On satellites, 22 of which are being developed by Lockheed Martin — another move designed “to provide increased resiliency,” said Peccia. The service’s budget charts show a total of $761 in procurement funds for GPS III and the GPS III Follow-On programs. (OSD’s charts cite a request for $1.8 billion covering the 2 GPS III Follow-On sats and “continued testing and lead platform integration” of the Military GPS User Equipment 1.)

Finally, the Space Force operations and maintenance budget also shows an increase in the FY23 request: $4 billion versus the FY22 request of $3.4 billion. “We added more money for weapons system sustainment,” Peccia said, allowing funding to cover 83 percent of readiness requirements, up from 79 percent last year. The O&M request also includes new funds aimed at bringing six of the eight Space Force Deltas (the equivalents of Army brigades) up to full mission capability, he noted.

It also includes $18 million for buying commercial data to improve space domain awareness, something industry and Congress have been pushing for several years.