Space Force braces for stalled progress amid lack of full funding

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Space Force modernization efforts could slow if Congress doesn’t pass a full budget at the end of the year, the service’s leaders said. 

“We're on this ramp-up, right, consistent with our overall strategy and the recognition that the space domain is a critical domain, in and of itself, but also for the joint force,” Erich Hernandez-Baquero, the Space Force’s top buyer, told reporters Tuesday. “Now we're going to run into [fiscal year 2027]—and you saw that our budget request was to continue on that—and this [continuing resolution] is definitely going to put the brakes on that for a time period.”

The Space Force has requested $71.1 billion for 2027, including $19.1 billion for procurement. But with little time remaining before fiscal 2027 begins on Oct. 1, Congress has passed stopgap legislation—a continuing resolution—to keep funding the Pentagon at 2026 levels through Dec. 11. The CR permits no new programs to begin.

“We certainly appreciate at least not being shut down. So…that's a good thing, but on the CR, it really does pace us at a time where we really need to go faster. So we are obviously encouraging Congress to do what they can to help support the president's budget on that,” Hernandez-Baquero said. “In the meantime, we'll just do what we always do: prioritize the things that will yield the most mission capability soonest, and make sure we're executing on those.”

Hernandez-Baquero, who was sworn into the chief space acquisition role last month, declined to specify which priorities could be most affected by a continuing resolution because things were “pre-decision at this point.”

Gen. Doug Schiess, the chief of space operations, said about 10 percent of the service’s programs could be slowed down due continuing resolution. 

“About 90 percent of the programs we have are programs from last year—so we can still get after those,” but there’s a remaining 10 percent of programs that require full budget funding, Schiess said. “It's going to slow us down, and the threat is not slowing down.”

Amid a broader push for acquisition reform, Hernandez-Baquero said he’s focused on streamlining and speeding up military purchasing. And when it comes to technology initiatives, there will be a new senior leadership role dedicated to it.  

The Air Force’s new program acquisition executives, or PAEs, are “establishing those pathways for onboarding new technology, but I'm just conscious that that by itself is not going to support drawing in the right technologies,” he said. “I want somebody that's focused—100 percent—on looking at the most promising tech and driving the prototyping initiatives that are going to help mature it to the level where a PAE can say, ‘Ah, it meets my criteria for this onboard path, and I can go do that’.”

That person is a technology portfolio executive, who “will have the most promising technology coming out of the [research and development] side, and…will work with industry to ensure that we have the right pathways to do that. Conceptually, there would be prototype efforts that get executed out of that to support the mission areas.”

The technology portfolio executive office already exists but the role hasn’t yet been filled, he said. 

“When I designate a TPE, for example, that person is going to report directly to me and represent my authority when it comes to the technology transition,” Hernandez-Baquero said. “I cannot do this without the buy-in of the PAEs that are executing the mission areas, and so my charter to them is going to be not only to deliver on those missionaries, but be part of the enterprise team that's going to deliver on those cross-cutting capabilities.”