As the U.S. Department of Defense continues jockeying for funding for the next fiscal year, one of the hot-button topics involves how a continuing resolution would affect not just the U.S. Space Force (USSF), but U.S. defense in general.

“Would a continuing resolution be a problem for the priorities that you all have identified?” Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked during a recent hearing by the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, which King chairs.

King said he had previously asked U.S. Air Force (USAF) Sec. Frank Kendall if a continuing resolution would be a threat to national security, “and his answer was ‘absolutely'."

King then asked Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF vice chief of space operations, if he agreed with that assessment, and got a positive response.

“It would,” Thompson said in his testimony, adding that the unit’s budget has grown by nearly $4 billion, which would be gone should a continuing resolution take effect.

One area that would suffer would be the missile warning/missile tracking enterprise, which “is vital to tracking the hypersonic threats” from Russia and China, according to Thompson.

The Department of the Air Force has put in a $259.3 billion budget request for Fiscal Year 2024 (FY2024) beginning Oct. 1, an increase of $9.3 billion from the FY2023 budget. The budget request includes $30 billion for the USSF, up from $26.1 billion a year ago. Approximately $19.2 billion would go for research, development, testing and evaluation, according to the request. 

The budget request for the missile warning system would double from FY2023 to FY2024, as the USSF is on a path to field that by 2027, a schedule “that would immediately be called into question” under a continuing resolution.

Kendall has said the USAF’s budget increase is critical to ensure the USAF and USSF are sufficiently modernized to meet today's challenges, Space Force reported. 

“We are united in our commitment to modernizing the Air and Space Forces and in achieving the transformation we must have to be competitive with our pacing challenge – China, China, China,” Kendall said in the report.

Against that backdrop, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) asked if the existing national security launch schedule would keep America ahead of China.

“I do,” Thompson said. “I would tell you that in the last several years I have gone from ‘very concerned’ to ‘confident’ that we can, given that we stay on the trajectory we’re on.”

The senators also heard testimony from John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, and Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the USAF for space acquisition and integration. They talked about the increased threats from Russia and China and discussed how the country is changing its space architecture — going to smaller satellites, for example — to improve awareness capabilities.

Tuberville also asked whether we need additional space launch providers, which Plumb affirmed.

Ranking member Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) asked for information about improved sharing of information among U.S. agencies and with allies, and the witnesses said strides had been made in that area.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) pointed to the war in Ukraine as an example of Russia targeting satellite technology, whether military or commercial, and she asked how the U.S. should approach incursions into technology that has joint military-commercial purposes. 

Plumb said the department is examining the military-commercial partnerships, looking into ways to ensure access to commercial satellites in times of crisis. He said one step in the right direction is to share threat assessments with commercial partners. The prospect of sharing classified information has been a point of contention in that regard, though, he said.                       

In the months before the hearing, Gen. Nina M. Armagno, staff director of the Space Force, has been among those speaking of the need to stay ahead of China in the space technology race.

"I think it's entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us, absolutely,” Armagno told Military.com in an interview last August. “The progress they've made has been stunning, stunningly fast.”  

Likewise, Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of Space Operations, told attendees at April’s Space Symposium that space is an evolving domain, Space Force reported. 

"Now is not the time to allow for any measure of complacency,” Saltzman said. “We are now at the precipice of a new era in space.”