The U.S. Space Force is strategizing a shift in its approach to space technology acquisition, planning to offload legacy capabilities in favor of commercially available and allied technologies, according to a senior official.
“We are looking at offloading some of our legacy capabilities to commercial or to our allies,” Vice Chief of Space Operations, Gen. Michael Guetlein, said on March 18 at the McAleese & Associates 16th Annual Defense Programs Conference.
The Space Force’s new space tech acquisition approach comes as the services prepare to deliver proposed cuts to their upcoming fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget request.
The cuts are part of broader budget realignment efforts at the Pentagon, driven by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive to reallocate 8 percent of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) FY2026 budget. This mandate requires all military services to identify areas for potential funding cuts and prioritize where reinvestments should be made.
Military leaders are expected to submit these proposed cuts to Congress soon, alongside their budget requests for FY2026.
For the Space Force, Guetlein explained, the plan is to examine “where [they] can actually stop some development programs and make an immediate pivot to commercial or an immediate pivot to allies.”
“We want to exploit what we have … in ways we haven’t thought about before,” Guetlein said, adding that this is the mindset Space Force leaders are taking on in the DoD’s 2026 budget realignment process.
While cuts to legacy programs are anticipated, Guetlein outlined several priority areas where the service is seeking additional funding. These include advancing space superiority technologies, enhancing space domain awareness for better tracking of objects in orbit, and developing mesh networks to strengthen satellite command-and-control capabilities.
