For the Space Force, terrestrial turf wars and rising budgets await: 2025 preview

WASHINGTON — Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld elicited some snickers back in 2002 with his famous quote about “known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns” bedevilling US intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. But those words seem pretty appropriate when trying to prognosticate what 2025 will look like for the US Space Force.

From bureaucratic turf wars to extra-terrestrial combat, the old crystal ball is just pretty darn cloudy right now.

[This article is one of many in a series in which Breaking Defense reporters look back on the most significant (and entertaining) news stories of 2024 and look forward to what 2025 may hold.]

Known Knowns: Likely Budget Increase, New Capabilities Debut

There are a few things that pundits by and large agree are clearly on the agenda next year, with outcomes that are fairly likely.

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First is the likely growth in both the Space Force’s budget and force size. As this humble scribe predicted at the end of last year, service leaders over the past 12 months sought to make its case for growth in personnel numbers, in mission areas and in budget. Indeed, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall — who, according to sources, has on more than one occasion and only half-jokingly called the newest military service his “biggest unfunded priority” — called for the Space Force’s budget to be doubled or even tripled.

Given that President-elect Donald Trump takes personal credit for the Space Force’s creation, service advocates appear pretty confident on social media that the service’s budget and status within the Defense Department will rise. But given the administration’s much-touted effort to cut costs by finding efficiency in government departments including DoD, few analysts are putting their bets on a funding increase anywhere close to Kendall’s call.

Second, Congress is already making noise about looking to 2025, the Space Force’s fifth year, as a kind of deadline for the service to show first results from efforts to pivot to new ways of doing business — that is, to demonstrate tangible progress toward new, more resilient capabilities based on “proliferated” constellations and the use of commercial satellites and technologies. Service leaders are likely to have to answer the question: Five years on, what new capabilities to meet the growing threat actually are in the field?

And Space Force officials swear that they will have something to show for the investment so far.

In particular, the Space Development Agency (SDA) is expected to begin launching its first set of satellites with limited operational capabilities, called Tranche 1, in March or April. Tranche 1 includes 126 Transport Layer data relay satellites, and 35 Tracking Layer birds for missile tracking, and the agency plans to have all of them on orbit by early 2026. Tranche 1 will be the first opportunity for SDA and the Space Force to prove that constellations made up of large numbers of smaller satellites in low Earth orbit can speed needed data to warfighters while complicating adversary targeting efforts.

In addition, Col. Rich Kniseley, the head of the Space Force’s Commercial Space Office, told Breaking Defense on Dec. 17 that he is confident his shop will award the first contracts under the service’s fledgling Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) program early next year. CASR is being developed as the Space Force’s answer to the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, and those first awards will be focused on commercial providers of space tracking data and analysis. Commercial industry officials are hoping CASR also will serve as a market stabilizer by providing predictable funding lines.

Known Unknowns: Space Force-IC Boundaries, Tilt Towards Offensive Ops

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Despite the intervention of White House budgetmeisters and the National Space Council, the long-running turf battle between the Space Force and the two key Intelligence Community agencies with space mandates, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), will continue to fester into next year.

The most pressing source of strife is the question of who is in charge of buying commercial remote sensing imagery and products when and under what circumstances — an issue that a industry officials say threatens to undercut the nascent market. Government sources have told Breaking Defense that draft memos have been inked to clarify the lanes, in particular one between NGA and the Space Force, but that squabbling has broken out again in light of the pending administration change. It is anyone’s guess whether, or how, the issue will be resolved over the next year.

Savvy betters will be putting money on a marked shift in budget priorities next year towards the development of new kit and capabilities for targeting Russian and Chinese space systems, whether those be suspected killer satellites or more traditional military support systems such as intelligence-gathering satellites. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has spent much of this year advocating for such a shift — one that from all past evidence the incoming Trump administration likely will support.

The unknown here is how far that tilt will go, given that the Space Force is still struggling to make a number traditional satellite systems foundational for warfighting fit for purpose. And as noted above the budget will not be unlimited.

Unknown Unknowns: ???

All things considered — the churn in domestic politics, the famous unpredictability of the incoming POTUS, the increasingly volatile international security scene and the runaway pace of technology innovation in the commercial space market — 2025 seems even more ripe than this year for supernova-sized surprises.

Honestly, who had the fall of Syria or North Korean garbage balloons on their 2024 bingo card? What’s next, extra-terrestrial craft among the ever-increasing drone swarms? Chemical weapons production in space? A materials breakthrough enabling a (squee!) space elevator?

Obviously, all of those are pretty far out — but you never know. Proceed at your own risk, and hardhats are highly recommended.