07/14/2026

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Space Force acquisition arm looks to add 100 workers a month

The Space Systems Command is trying to hire roughly 100 people per month through the end of the year as the Space Force’s main acquisition organization rebuilds from last year’s workforce losses and prepares for a sharp increase in procurement activity.

SSC manages a $15.6 billion annual space acquisition budget and is responsible for developing, buying, launching and sustaining the military’s space systems. Its ability to fill contracting, engineering and program management positions will help determine how quickly the Space Force can turn a larger budget into signed contracts and fielded capabilities.

“With the rapid growth occurring within SSC, we are recruiting for all occupational series at all levels,” the command said last week in a news release.

Openings range from contracting, project and program management to logistics, finance, cyber, human resources, firefighting and base security.

SSC is headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, Calif., but the positions are spread across major space hubs, including Cape Canaveral and Patrick Space Force Base in Florida; Huntsville, Ala.; Washington; Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Pressures hit the command at once

SSC is still trying to fill vacancies left by departures in 2025, including losses associated with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative and voluntary retirements. At the same time, the command expects its workload to grow as Space Force funding drives more acquisition activity.

Natalie Riedel, SSC’s executive director, said her immediate priority is to “fill critical vacancies.”

“More funding is coming in fiscal year 2027 that will come with more billets, a larger execution role, and we need to fill these vacancies in order to execute. We need talent,” she said. “We obviously took a big hit in 2025 – that was a rough year for everyone across the board. We lost a lot of civilians, and we are now in a rebuilding year. We are working on targeting top candidates and making sure we get the talent that we need to execute the mission going forward.”

The most sizeable gaps are in contracting offices, Riedel said.

“We are also hiring firefighters at our Space Launch Deltas. We are hiring engineers; we’re hiring program managers. Cyber is at the top of the list. We need recent college graduates and we need mid-career professionals. We’re hiring at all levels.”

To widen the applicant pool, SSC is attending career fairs and recruiting events around the country and working with NobleReach, which engages students and recent graduates at more than 450 colleges and universities about federal employment. The command has also posted a QR code that allows candidates to submit résumés directly.

New workforce demands amid procurement overhaul

The Space Systems Command's push to hire hundreds of workers comes just as the Space Force begins implementing the most sweeping overhaul of its acquisition organization since the service's creation.

The Space Force in late June completed its transition to nine mission-focused Portfolio Acquisition Executives, or PAEs, replacing an acquisition model centered on individual programs with one organized around operational missions. The new executives are expected to oversee broad capability portfolios spanning launch, missile warning, satellite communications, command and control, and space operations, with greater authority to shift funding, shape requirements and integrate commercial technology.

The reorganization is part of the Pentagon's broader effort to accelerate defense acquisition by giving senior leaders more flexibility to make tradeoffs across entire mission areas instead of managing programs one platform at a time.

Executing the new model will depend on the contracting officers, engineers, program managers and financial specialists responsible for turning those portfolio decisions into contracts and fielded capabilities.

Officials have said the PAEs will play a larger role in defining requirements themselves, giving them more flexibility to decide whether missions are best served by developing new government systems or buying commercially available products and services.

That approach is intended to shorten acquisition timelines and make it easier to incorporate commercial technology. It also places greater demands on the government workforce, which must evaluate technologies across multiple programs, balance cost, schedule and performance and integrate capabilities across mission portfolios.

For industry, the stakes are equally high. The new acquisition structure is designed to make it easier for commercial technologies to move into operational programs, but only if the workforce has the capacity to award contracts, manage competitions and execute a growing procurement pipeline.

A shortage of contracting officers and program managers could become a bottleneck as those executives take on larger portfolios and more procurement authority.

SSC said the expansion will continue beyond the current hiring campaign. “SSC is rapidly growing with new mission requirements and projects that will increase our workforce dramatically over the next five years,” the command said.

NATO's next space bet: A network of allied satellites in a shared network

NATO is moving to link allied military satellites into a shared operational network, marking a new phase in the alliance's effort to build space capabilities through multinational cooperation rather than NATO-owned systems.

The alliance last week unveiled HALO (Hybrid Alliance Layered Operations in Space), a multinational initiative that aims to connect participating allies' sovereign military satellites into what NATO calls a "networked mega constellation." Rather than building a NATO-owned fleet, HALO is designed as a federated architecture that allows national satellite systems to operate together while remaining under national ownership and control.

The announcement, made at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum in Ankara, reflects a broader shift in the alliance's approach to space. NATO increasingly sees its role as coordinating capabilities across allies.

HALO is not another Starlink or Europe's planned IRIS² constellation. Instead, it functions as a network layer that connects existing and future military satellites operated by participating allies.

"HALO will focus on improving connectivity and integration of sovereign, nationally owned and controlled military satellites into a networked mega constellation," NATO said in a statement. "It aims to improve alliance resilience and military advantage in space, enabling high-speed communications, intelligence and missile tracking. It will overcome the cost, time and coverage limitations of single-nation satellite fleets."

Eight nations announce plans to participate

By pooling national assets, NATO hopes to deliver capabilities — including secure communications, intelligence collection, missile warning and tracking, and broader geographic coverage — that many European allies would struggle to afford independently.

Eight countries are participating in HALO's initial phase: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Turkey.

If successful, HALO could reshape how European governments procure military space capabilities by emphasizing interoperability, common standards and networking across sovereign systems rather than standalone national programs. That aligns with NATO's new Commercial Space Strategy, which encourages greater use of commercial technologies and standardized approaches across the alliance.

HALO wasn't the only multinational space effort highlighted in Ankara.

Canada became the 15th member of NATO's STARLIFT initiative, which is exploring a network of allied launch capabilities for rapid access to space.

Germany's Isar Aerospace signed an agreement with Canada's Maritime Launch Services to secure launch access through Spaceport Nova Scotia.

Meanwhile, Spain became the 19th member of NATO's Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space (APSS), the alliance's largest multinational investment in space capabilities to date, contributing imagery from its Atlantic Constellation satellites to strengthen coastal surveillance.

Turkey also announced plans to develop two additional Imece high-resolution Earth observation satellites to expand regional capabilities.

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