Lawmakers from both parties grilled top Pentagon brass on June 5 about delays to the fiscal year (FY) 2026 defense budget and proposed cuts to U.S. Space Force funding despite the force’s importance in building out the Golden Dome missile defense program.
Those bipartisan frustrations were on full display Thursday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of the Air Force’s funding priorities for FY 2026.
Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., opened the session with a stark warning to the administration: the continued delay in releasing a full defense budget is not only unhelpful — but it could force Congress to take matters into its own hands.
Rogers stressed that without a formal budget proposal, Congress is left hamstrung in its role to offer strategic direction and allocate necessary funding for national defense.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman were unable to answer many questions during the hearing, as the administration’s budget proposal has yet to be made public.
Pentagon officials have said a more comprehensive request from the Department of Defense (DoD) is expected later in June.
“We need a budget to help inform decisions,” Rogers stressed, adding that the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) delay on the budgeting front won’t stop Congress from acting on its own terms.
“[OMB] not getting us a budget will not compel us to comply with what they give us late,” Rogers said. “Congress will decide what we do and don’t spend.”
“To whoever from OMB is listening to this hearing, we want to have a healthy dialogue with military leaders. If we don’t get it, we will write a budget without it. We need to acknowledge the fact that being delayed is not helpful,” he said.
While Republicans focused on the broader impact of the budget delay, Democrats zeroed in on what they called “glaring contradictions” between DoD’s stance on space and the administration’s proposed cuts to the Space Force.
Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., warned that the proposed reductions risk undermining gains made in space capabilities under the Biden Administration.
“I am concerned with rumors we are hearing of this budget request that it would potentially reverse some of the progress we have made to date in both of these areas,” Smith said.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., also voiced concerns on proposed cuts to the Space Force budget and noted a disconnect between those cuts and DoD’s rhetoric that China has become a competitive threat in space.
“If China has advanced so much in space, why are you cutting the space budget?” Moulton questioned.
In response Meink, noted that final budget totals haven’t been released.
The administration, however, has released a preliminary budget which would provide the Department of the Air Force with $260.8 billion, a modest increase of $3.7 billion, or 1.4 percent, over the previous year. However, the funding boost is uneven: while the Air Force’s budget would rise to $234.4 billion, the Space Force’s allocation would shrink to $26.4 billion.
Saltzman Urges Larger Space Force Funding
Saltzman echoed similar budget concerns during his testimony, warning that proposed budget cuts could hinder the Space Force’s ability to meet its growing mission demands and maintain its critical role in the space domain.
“All of these effects and more are provided by your Space Force at a cost of only about three percent of the larger DoD budget, and with less than one percent of the personnel,” Saltzman said. “It is imperative that we match the dramatic rise in threats and increasing importance of space with resources to arm the Space Force.”
He emphasized that while space has become more strategically important, the Space Force’s resources have not kept pace with growing demands from combatant commands for missile warning, satellite surveillance, and other key space-based missions. Saltzman pointed to the administration’s ambitious Golden Dome missile defense initiative as a prime example of a mission that demands stable and sustained funding.
“If the resources are made available, the Space Force will be postured to use them effectively in pursuit of these critical priority missions at a time of increasing adversarial challenges in the space domain,” Saltzman said.
“To be successful in our expanding mission portfolio, we must be able to control the space domain – protecting our capabilities in space while denying an adversary the ability to use space against us in pursuit of our critical missions,” he said.
Saltzman emphasized that despite budget uncertainty, the Space Force’s priorities remain unchanged: building comprehensive domain awareness, deploying resilient mission architectures, and developing the capacity to hold adversary space assets at risk.