By Sandra Erwin
Welcome to this week's edition of SpaceNews' Military Space, your source for the latest developments at the intersection of space and national security. In this week's edition: Golden Dome's funding strategy faces scrutiny on Capitol Hill, commercial tech is reshaping how Space Force buys and the Space Force tees up $981 million training range contract.
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Senator questions partisan funding path for Golden Dome missile shield
The Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense program faced criticism on Capitol Hill at a budget hearing on Monday. A concern is the Trump administration’s decision to fund the effort through budget reconciliation rather than the traditional appropriations process.
At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), the panel’s ranking member, told Pentagon officials he supports the concept of a missile defense shield for the United States but objected to the way it is being financed.
Bypassing appropriations process
Golden Dome, a proposed $185 billion architecture to defend the homeland against ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, is being funded for a second consecutive year through reconciliation. The Pentagon received $24 billion in fiscal 2026 and is seeking $17 billion in 2027 through that process, which allows legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority and bypasses the filibuster.
King said that approach risks turning traditionally bipartisan national security programs into partisan initiatives.
“In this year's budget, almost 25% of the budget is in this reconciliation slush fund that doesn't go through the normal appropriations process,” he said. “It makes defense a partisan process, which I think is unfortunate.”
The funds are technically approved by Congress, King added, “but in a purely partisan way. And since I've been sitting on this committee, all of our work has been bipartisan until now, and I don't understand how this all happened.”
Beyond partisanship, King warned that the use of reconciliation shifts congressional power to the executive branch, particularly the Office of Management and Budget, by giving agencies large pools of funding with fewer constraints and less oversight.
“I'm very disturbed by the precedent that this has created,” he said. “That's not the way our system is supposed to work.”
Pentagon officials the approach
Marc Berkowitz, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, told King the reconciliation funding was intended “to accelerate the president's initiative and to provide flexibility.” He added that it reflects “the rapidly changing dynamic of advanced technology.”
Berkowitz pointed to looming threats as justification for moving quickly.
“We are in a very complex and dangerous security environment where our rivals have dramatically expanded their missile and aerial arsenals,” he said, citing ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons and advanced cruise missiles.
He said the United States currently has a “very limited, ground based, single layer homeland defense system” designed primarily to counter a small-scale attack from North Korea, with little capability against more advanced weapons.
The head of the program, Gen. Michael Guetlein, echoed that assessment, telling lawmakers that existing missile defense has focused on a narrower set of threats.
“It’s really focused on the rogue nation's intercontinental ballistic missile threat to protect the homeland, and then we relied on our oceans to take the fight to the enemy,” Guetlein said. “That distance has been quickly eroded by their technology.”
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Commercial tech reshaping how Space Force buys
Just by scanning the topline, the Space Force doesn’t look like a big spender on commercial space. Its dedicated funding for the integration of commercial services — about $92 million in fiscal year 2027 — is a small slice of the overall $71 billion budget.
But officials say that number misses the bigger story.
Col. Timothy Trimailo, who leads the Space Force’s Commercial Space Office, argues that commercial technology is now threaded throughout nearly every major procurement effort, even when it doesn’t show up as a line item.
Speaking with reporters at the recent Space Symposium, Trimailo noted that the Space Force is increasingly buying satellites and systems based on commercial designs, tapping into faster production cycles and lower costs from private industry. That includes major acquisition programs that historically would have relied on bespoke, government-built systems.
The approach reflects a broader “commercial first” strategy adopted by the Department of the Air Force and the Pentagon, aimed at leveraging private-sector innovation wherever possible, he said.
The money that's programmed in the commercial services budget line “is not the only place where commercial integration is happening,” Trimailo said. If that were the case, the Space Force would be failing in its effort to leverage commercial innovation, he added. “We actually want commercial money to flow into the programs themselves. That means buying commercial components, satellite buses, payloads, or it can be using commercial data. “
Shift reflected in future procurements
Trimailo pointed to the RG-XX program as an example of how commercial technology is being folded into military space architecture. RG-XX is intended as the follow-on to the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, or GSSAP, a constellation that monitors activity in and around geosynchronous orbit.
Instead of building the next generation of GEO surveillance satellites entirely through a traditional bespoke military model, the Space Force is looking to use commercial satellite designs, buses and production approaches. “There is a deliberate focus on commercial first integration,” Trimailo said. “I would argue that it should be throughout all of our program elements.”
That model could extend to future procurements as well. Trimailo suggested a similar approach could be used for satellites designed for what the Space Force calls “dynamic space operations” — systems that can maneuver, reposition and operate flexibly in geosynchronous orbit.
These satellites would be able to shift coverage, inspect other spacecraft or respond to threats in real time. Rather than building them from scratch, the Space Force is signaling interest in procuring maneuverable platforms derived from commercial designs, drawing on advances in propulsion, autonomy and satellite buses already underway in the private sector.
“We meet with a lot of companies that are developing those sort of next generation propulsion systems, that's been a really big trend that we've seen,” Trimailo said.
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Space Force kicks off new procurement of testing, training infrastructure
The Space Force is preparing to select vendors to compete for as much as $981 million in contract awards over 10 years as part of a program called NITE-STAR — short for National Space Test and Training Complex (NSTTC) Innovative Technology & Engineering – Space Test and Range.
The long acronym captures a broad category of equipment and software the Space Force seeks to train operators and test hardware. This includes on-orbit test assets that can mimic adversary behavior, as well as ground-based systems capable of simulating cyber and electronic warfare attacks.
The NITE-STAR contract will be structured as an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract. This is a commonly used Pentagon contracting vehicle that sets a maximum ceiling value — in this case, $981 million over a decade — and then awards task orders over time for specific work. Companies compete for those task orders after being selected for a spot on the contract.
The Space Systems Command issued a request for proposals for NITE-STAR in March and bids were due April 17.
Col. Craig Hackbarth, director of capability for the Operational Testing and Training Infrastructure program, said the IDIQ will “establish a pool of qualified industry partners who can compete for work across the portfolio with a focus on physical and live,” he said, referring to training and testing ranges.
“Think about hardware development, infrastructure, software and the modern sim tools, so that that can come together as a complete package,” he said last week at a Mitchell Institute event. “It could be new on-orbit assets, it could be ground based sensors.” Hackbarth said having a pre-vetted vendor pool is going to help expedite procurements.
Focus from the top
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has made training and readiness a central priority, arguing that space superiority will depend on whether guardians can operate in a contested environment where adversaries can jam, dazzle or even destroy satellites. He has repeatedly emphasized that the service needs operators who not only understand their systems, but also the threats they face and the tactics required to counter them.
Today much of the Space Force’s training relies on a mix of legacy systems, classroom instruction and limited simulations. Leaders argue that approach is no longer sufficient for a domain where engagements unfold across vast distances, at high speeds and often without direct visibility.
The service is working toward a “live, virtual, constructive” training environment combining real-world assets, high-fidelity simulations and synthetic threat scenarios into an integrated architecture. The goal is to allow operators to rehearse complex missions, test tactics and experiment with new capabilities without risking operational satellites.
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