The Pentagon, the United States Department of Defense has proposed $15.4 billion budget for the establishment of Space Force for Fiscal year 2021. The round requested for the new branch of military, will help in a number of missions to be launched ahead and to recruit over 10,000 personnel in the new military branch over 2021.
This amount is considered as the part of an overall Defense budget proposal worth of $705 billion. According to Pentagon, they would use the amount to “consolidate the preponderance of space missions, units, resources, and personnel from the existing Military Services into the new US Space Force.” The defense department is expecting to complete the whole process by 2024.
The proposed fund, a huge part of which has been transferred from current Air Force programs, will be distributed in various departments such as $10.3 billion for research and development, $2.5 billion for operations and maintenance, $2.4 billion for procurement and $77 million for OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) or simply as a war fund.
The budget overview released by Pentagon on Monday displays, “legally establishing the US Space Force does not guarantee the United States preeminence in the space domain — the nation must commit sufficient and appropriate resources to properly accomplish its assigned responsibilities. These investments will provide for freedom of operations in space, strengthen the mission assurance of capabilities to support US and allied forces in all domains, as well as protecting these forces against potential adversaries’ space-enabled capabilities.”
According to a White House budget document, it has been decided to provide $111 million to establish a headquarter of Space Force with 553 personnel. In the proposed budget, it has also been decided to include 10,000 personnel in the existing group of 122 civilians and 38 military personnel among which 35% will be the civilians and the rest will be the military (mostly from the Air Force Space Command).