In 2018, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan dismissed reports that Space Force would cost $13 billion, arguing that it would be “single digits (of billions), not a double digit,” and that it “could be lower than five (billion dollars).” We found that unconvincing.
Fast forward to the release of the President’s FY25 budget request, which includes $29.4 billion for Space Force, and color us not at all surprised.
This year’s $29.4 billion is about $600 million less than last year’s $30 billion request—a 2 percent cut. But looking at the last several years, this decrease is the exception, and a marginal one at that. The FY24 request marked a 22 percent increase over FY23’s $24.5 billion request. In FY22, the request was $17.4 billion, and that was a 13 percent increase over FY21’s budget request of $15.4 billion.
In other words, Space Force’s budget nearly doubled over the three prior fiscal years. Given this rapid growth, this year’s cut should be viewed with about 14 billion grains of salt. While this kind of growth is not entirely unexpected for a relatively new military service, this year’s request raises the question of whether funding for the force has begun to plateau, or whether the cut is more symptomatic of constraints imposed by last year’s budget deal that capped growth across the budget at one percent. Time will tell.
Within the Space Force budget request, some accounts saw an increase. Operations and Maintenance accounted for $5.2 billion of the request, an increase of about $300 million, or six percent, over last year’s request. Military Personnel accounted for $1.3 billion, an increase of about $44 million, or 3.5 percent, over FY24.
Other accounts saw a cut. Procurement accounted for $4.3 billion, a cut of about $400 million, or 8.5 percent, compared to the FY24 request. Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E), by far the largest account within Space Force, accounted for $18.7 billion, a cut of about $500 million, or nearly three percent.
Given that congressional appropriators are in the habit of offering program increases to fund procurement and RDT&E projects, often raiding funds from operations and maintenance to cover the cost, these numbers may not hold. A Taxpayers for Common Sense database of congressional program increases published last year shows that lawmakers proposed 46 program procurement or RDT&E increases for Space Force alone, with a price tag of $531 million.
As of this writing, Congress has not passed the FY24 Pentagon spending bill, so we don’t yet know if all of these increases will end up in the final budget, but until members of Congress are forced to put their name of them, there’s little in the way of transparency and accountability with which to rein in these types of budget increases. So, what started as a cut over last year’s request could well end up as an increase once Congress is done with it.
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