04/07/2026

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Trump's $1.5 trillion defense plan supercharges Space Force

The Trump administration is teeing up a massive expansion of military spending, with space and missile defense among the biggest beneficiaries.

The White House's fiscal 2027 budget blueprint, released April 3, calls for $1.5 trillion in national defense spending, a roughly 42% jump that would shatter previous records. The pitch: rebuild the defense industrial base and accelerate next-gen systems, with particular focus on space-enabled missile defense for the Golden Dome for America program.

Space Force is a big winner

The service's budget would surge to more than $71 billion — about $40 billion above its 2026 level. But the news is not just the size of the request, it's how the administration wants to pay for it.

Roughly $350 billion of the defense total would come through budget reconciliation, alongside $1.15 trillion in traditional appropriations. The Space Force is deeply tied to that strategy. About $12 billion of its request would flow through reconciliation, much of it in procurement and R&D accounts that normally sit in the base budget.

Reconciliation allows the majority party to move spending with a simple Senate majority. It's still unclear whether Congress will accept using reconciliation to fund defense at this scale.

Missile defense increase

The proposal includes about $17 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense shield, with just $400 million in the traditional budget and the rest dependent on reconciliation.

The budget supports a significant expansion of tracking constellations. Funding for low Earth orbit missile-tracking satellites would jump by nearly $2 billion, with another $700 million for medium Earth orbit systems. Programs to field sensors capable of tracking moving targets from space would get a $2 billion boost, including about $800 million routed through mandatory funding.

Funding for national security space launches would increase from $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2026 for 13 launches to $4.2 billion for 22 launches in fiscal year 2027.

The budget also seeds new infrastructure: a $1.5 billion Space Data Network, automated satellite command-and-control systems and expanded procurement of proliferated LEO communications satellites.

Altogether, the Space Force request breaks down to $40.6 billion for R&D, $19 billion for procurement, $9.6 billion for operations and maintenance, and $1.8 billion for personnel.

Space Force to accelerate programs

"Our team has done a really good job of explaining why Space Force capabilities are so critical," Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force's top officer, said last week at the Mitchell Institute's Spacepower Security Forum. "The leadership … agree with our advocacy that space capabilities need to grow."

The plan, he said, is to scale existing programs and compress timelines. "You can't wait five, six, seven years to be where we need to be," Saltzman said. "We need to be there in two years, three years."

Space's supply chain problem is coming into focus

The Pentagon's push to scale up satellite production is running into a familiar problem: the supply chain.

Officials and industry leaders warn that key parts of the space industrial base — especially lower-tier suppliers — may not be ready to support a shift toward high-volume satellite production.

The concern: the Space Force's strategy of rapidly replacing satellites in a conflict depends on production capacity that may not exist yet. The Space Force is looking to shift toward a model that treats satellites as replaceable assets rather than long-lived platforms, a concept that depends on being able to ramp production quickly in a crisis.

A recent report from the Aerospace Industries Association and PwC warns the sector's supply network, built for low-volume, bespoke systems is struggling to keep up with rising demand.

The pressure is showing up in components such as optical inter-satellite communications terminals, radiation-hardened microelectronics and propulsion systems. These are produced by a small number of suppliers, and risks can go unnoticed until production stalls.

Programs showing strain

The Space Development Agency's proliferated satellite constellation has faced delays tied to supply chain issues, including problems with optical communications terminals and encryption devices.

Industry analysts say the biggest weaknesses aren't always in headline technologies, but in less visible components — valves, microelectronics and propulsion materials — where capacity hasn't kept pace with demand.

"We're going to hit a whole bunch of critical constraints in the industrial base," said Jamie Morin of Aerospace Corp., pointing to persistent gaps in scaling high-reliability components.

The AIA report says government procurement swings, driven by budget cycles, continuing resolutions and shifting priorities, make it difficult for suppliers to justify investing in new capacity.

The issue gets attention on Capitol Hill

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers are expected to focus on supplier base expansion in the fiscal 2027 defense policy bill.

"In many places we have single points of failure," Wittman said.

Government and industry are pushing for better visibility into the supply chain, a persistent challenge given that much of the data sits with contractors.

The AIA report recommends creating a shared platform linking government demand with supplier capacity, with the goal of giving companies clearer signals to invest.

FROM SPACENEWS

Pages from the April 2026 issue of SpaceNews magazine

Read the April issue now: In the latest edition of the magazine: Debra Werner reports how companies are meeting the demand for Earth imagery in mere minutes and Sandra Erwin explores how key parts of the space industrial base could struggle to keep up with the Space Force's plan to scale satellite production. Subscribe now and access the digital issue.

After 15 years, Pentagon poised to scrap OCX ground system for GPS

The Pentagon is preparing to end development of the long-delayed Next Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, one of the military's most troubled space programs.

OCX, awarded in 2010 to RTX for about $1.5 billion, was designed to modernize the ground system that commands and controls the U.S. military's Global Positioning System satellites. The program aimed to handle both legacy and next-generation spacecraft, strengthen cybersecurity and enable full use of M-code, the military's jam-resistant GPS signal.

Instead, it became a case study in software-driven acquisition problems. The program slipped roughly seven years past its original 2018 delivery target, with costs climbing to nearly $4.6 billion in awarded contracts. To date, only an early version — OCX Block 0 — has been fielded, supporting launch and early orbit operations for GPS III satellites.

Now, according to people familiar with the program, development and testing of follow-on increments Block 1 and Block 2 have effectively stopped.

The shift became clearer April 1, when the Pentagon awarded RTX a $45 million contract modification for OCX Block 0. The award covers support for the final GPS III launch and funds studies on how parts of OCX could be reused in the existing ground system, rather than continuing full development.

That existing system, known as the Architecture Evolution Plan, or AEP, is operated by the U.S. Space Force and has been steadily upgraded by Lockheed Martin over the past several years as OCX fell behind schedule. Originally intended as a stopgap, AEP has matured into a viable alternative, now performing many of the functions OCX was meant to deliver.

A combination of persistent technical issues, rising costs and a credible fallback has led Pentagon leaders to reconsider whether OCX should continue. Instead, officials are negotiating with RTX to salvage usable elements of the system and integrate them into the AEP baseline.

The final decision rests with the Pentagon's senior acquisition leadership. Michael Duffey, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, is expected to issue an Acquisition Decision Memorandum formally ending the program.

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