President's FY24 Budget - Analysis

Space Force Spending Request

Springing Forward, Kinda Like Daylight Saving Time

Budget & Tax, National Security, | Analysis

Mar 14, 2023 | 1 min read | Print Article

This article is part of our President’s FY2024 Budget Request Coverage. Visit our Rolling Analysis Page for more.

Spending at the Space Force is springing forward, just in time for Daylight Saving Time.

To refresh you, here is our Five Fast Facts about the Fiscal Year 2023 Space Force budget request…which reads like a historical novel compared to the FY24 budget request.

Space Force spending is on a fast, upward trajectory as the new military service is carved out of existing services, but mostly from the Air Force. Overall, the request is up from 20-23% over the Fiscal Year 2023 request. But then, there is what the Congress actually appropriated for FY23, which we have listed in the “FY23 Enacted” column in the chart below:

Space Force Account	FY23 Request in Thousands	FY23 Enacted in Thousands	FY24 Request in Thousands	% increase over FY23 Request	% increase over FY23 Enacted
Topline	$24,500,000	$26,100,000	$30,000,000	~22%	~21%
Operations & Maintenance	$4,000,000	$4,000,000	$4,900,000	~23%	~23%
Procurement	$3,600,000	$4,500,000	$4,700,000	~31%	~4.5%
Personnel	$1,000,000	$1,000,000	$1,200,000	20%	20%
RDT&E	$15,800,000	$16,600,000	$19,200,000	~22%	~16%

As you can see, Congress added substantially to the Procurement and Research, Development, Test & Evaluation (RDT&E) accounts last year. So, the FY24 request is only a roughly 4.5% increase (Procurement) and 16% increase (RDT&E) over what the lawmakers appropriated for those accounts.

Knowing Congress, as we do, there is no reason to believe lawmakers won’t do exactly the same thing as this budget request wends its way through the process.

We’ll be watching and reporting about it.