Defense Space Budget and Congressional Bills Flag Potential Fights on Missile Warning and Tracking

For FY23, the administration requested $24.7 billion for the Space Force, a whopping 36% increase—$6.5 billion (not adjusted for inflation)—from the enacted FY22 appropriations. Despite this significant bump, much of the requested budget for the newest military services is relatively flat. In fact, the funding levels for 31 of the 85 budget lines from last year’s appropriations are lower in this year’s budget. As shown in the figure, the top-line Space Force budget would only be a modest increase from last year’s appropriations except for four areas: classified spending; military personnel and Space Development Agency, which transferred into the Space Force from other parts of DOD; and missile warning and tracking, which was the biggest growth area in the requested budget.

The growth in missile warning and tracking allows a new approach to the mission. In 2021, the Space Force established the Space Warfighting Analysis Center to lead architecture design for the service. The center focused its first study on the missile warning and tracking mission area, recommending a constellation of 135 LEO satellites and 16 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites working in concert through an integrated ground system.

The central debate revolves around which orbits DOD should exploit for the next generation of systems. In July 2022, Derek Tournear, the Director of the Space Development Agency, said that SWAC found that “the department should move away from larger satellites in highly elliptical orbits and the satellites at geosynchronous… and in the future go to a proliferated layer at LEO and a proliferated layer at MEO.” Tournear notes that because it’s a “critical no-fail mission,” there will be overlap in which DOD continues to deploy geosynchronous missile warning systems as the department builds the MEO and LEO satellites. Eventually, he says the mission will “go to all LEO and all MEO.” As the Department tests its new approach, the FY23 budget funds efforts across all orbits, with the bulk of the funding being in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and polar.

This year’s appropriations and authorization bills differ in the funding levels they offer for the administration’s missile warning and tracking programs. These differences speak to questions over whether and, if so, how quickly, DOD should transition from GEO and polar-orbiting systems to a LEO and MEO architecture.

The House appropriations bill and House and Senate authorization bills largely keep the administration’s missile warning and tracking approach intact. In contrast, the Senate appropriations bill pursues a more aggressive transition to lower orbits. The Senate bill would cut $674 million from Next Gen OPIR, $612 million of which would come from the Next Gen Polar project, slicing the polar program by 68%. Despite these cuts, the Senate Appropriations bill contains the biggest overall cost for missile warning and tracking, because it would add $916 million to LEO and MEO, increasing the LEO and MEO effort by 89%.

The Senate appropriations bill advocates for a more direct transition from current capabilities to LEO and MEO systems. Under this approach, it is unclear how much of a role Next Gen OPIR, or the pieces of Next Gen OPIR that are retained, would play. This is question that concerns many stakeholders, including Strategic Command, which relies on missile warning and tracking. The budget request and the congressional action that has followed highlight the growing agreement around the importance of the domain but also foreshadow potential fights, none looming larger than missile warning and tracking

This article is an excerpt from Robert (Sam) Wilson 's latest paper "Fiscal Year 2023 Space Force Budget Analysis: Missile Warning and Tracking Looms Large." You can read more papers from the Center for Space Policy and Strategy here.