Space Force budget must keep growing to support mission, Thompson says – By Courtney Albon (Defense News) / Dec 14, 2023
WASHINGTON — In the four years since Congress established the U.S. Space Force, its budget has doubled. That growth needs to continue in order to meet the increasing demand for space capabilities, according to one of the service’s top officials.
Gen. David Thompson, who retires this week from his post as the vice chief of space operations, said that as the Space Force takes on new responsibilities and missions, it needs the resources to match.
“The budget needs to grow because there are still more missions that are migrating to space,” Thompson told C4ISRNET in an interview. “The challenge is, in this environment, defense budgets are likely not to grow significantly in the near future the way they have in the recent past. ”
Congress created the Space Force in December 2019, and a few months later revealed the service’s fiscal 2021 budget request of $15.4 billion. That funding grew to $17.4 billion in fiscal 2022 and then to $24.5 billion in 2023. Its fiscal 2024 request, which is still working through the appropriations process, called for $30 billion.
