Space Force leaders prep for FY27 budget jump, personnel increases

WASHINGTON ― A trio of senior Space Force officers voiced optimism that the service would see a large growth in its budget and force strength starting in fiscal 2027 — with the expectation that a large chunk of the President Donald Trump’s planned $1.5 trillion defense budget will be coming their way.

Indeed, Gen. Shawn Bratton, vice chief of space operations, said Thursday he believes the Space Force could very well double in size over the next decade.

“If [the FY26 budget] lands, depending on how that goes, we’ve doubled the budget within a few years,” Bratton told the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. “I’m super optimistic about ’27; we’ll see how that comes out.”

First of all, Bratton explained, the Space Force is “tiny” compared to the other services. “It is really, really small. There’s like single organizations in the Air Force and Army that are bigger than the entire Space Force. So 10,000 military, about 5,000 civilians on top of that. So we’re about 15,000 today. It’s been going up about 500 a year. We got to pick up the pace. We need to grow on the military side.”

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, who heads the service’s Space Systems Command (SSC) responsible for most space acquisition programs, said yesterday that while the FY27 budget is still in the planning stages he envisions the service getting a large share of the increased budget pot and, subsequently, a lot more work coming to his team.

“The exact dollar amounts, the exact breakdown, [is] very much pre-decisional,” he said. “I would offer — and you heard [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] talk about this, and you saw the recent Army contract award with Patriot — [there is] very much an emphasis [at the Pentagon] on increasing the capacity of existing capabilities,” he told reporters at a briefing during SSC’s annual Industry Days conference in Los Angeles.

Garrant said he also expects a number of new programs to start transitioning from technology demonstrations ongoing at Pentagon research organizations such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) and the Defense Innovation Unit to SSC as formal acquisition programs.

Further, he said that as the Space Force moves to establish new Portfolio Acquisition Executive offices (PAEs) in line with Hegseth’s acquisition reform plans and picks up new work, SSC will “absolutely need more acquisition professionals across all expertise and career fields to be able to get after executing these programs.”

Gen. Stephen Purdy, who for the past year has been double-hatted as the acting Air Force’s head of space acquisition and integration and military deputy at that office, on Thursday told the Industry Days audience that he too is optimistic about a coming budget boost for the Space Force.

“We are hopeful that we will get funding increases. If that’s the case, we need to have our act together because that’s a lot of money and a lot of programs coming down, with few resources to be able to manage that. It’s gonna be all hands on deck. We don’t have time to be screwing around with our programs frankly and getting down the wrong track,” he said.

To that end, Purdy noted that the Space Force already has established two new PAEs and now has named their leaders: Col. Eric Zarybnisky has been tapped to head the Space Access portfolio and Col. Ryan Frazier to head the Space Sensing and Targeting shop.

Purdy further announced that he has relinquished the acting role as space acquisition czar, with his replacement Tom Ainsworth now “performing the duties of the SAE [Space Acquisition Executive].”

Purdy said he and Ainsworth are “very much of the same mindset,” noting that Ainsworth formerly worked at SCO and has a wealth of technical and program management experience.

“He did a little bit in the [Space Force] Futures Task Force, and he was Gen. [Michael] Guetlein’s kind of chief architect for a little bit on Golden Dome,” Purdy added. “So, I’m really looking forward to working with him and following his leadership.”