Space Force Chief Saltzman Retires Next Month as House GOP Guts Reconciliation Funding Request

Gen. Chance Saltzman, the outgoing chief of the U.S. Space Force, spent his final major public address defending a budget request that House Republicans are already signaling they won't fully fund.

Speaking at the Global Air and Space Chiefs' Conference in London on July 15, Saltzman told international military leaders that space is a warfighting domain and framed the moment as a choice about where the U.S. invests, according to Defense One. He confirmed he will retire next month, ending a tenure that began in 2022 when he became the Space Force's second Chief of Space Operations.

The timing was rough. On the same day as Saltzman's remarks, House Republican leaders said they'd support a reconciliation bill of just $60 billion, according to Defense One. That's a fraction of what the White House actually wants.

The Money Doesn't Add Up Yet

The Trump administration asked Congress for $1.1 trillion through the normal defense budget process, plus another $350 billion through reconciliation, a partisan budget maneuver rarely used for defense spending before last year, according to Defense One. That reconciliation money was supposed to fund major Space Force programs including the Air Moving Target Indicator, a space data network, and most of the funding for the Golden Dome missile defense program.

If the House caps reconciliation defense spending at $60 billion total, the Space Force's slice of that $350 billion ask shrinks dramatically. Saltzman wouldn't say directly whether a smaller package would hurt the service, but he didn't back down either.

"I stand behind the requirements and the resources that we requested, and now over to Congress to determine what that appropriation looks like," Saltzman said, according to Defense One. He called the funding request "a dramatic increase in resourcing requests for what I think are vital" space capabilities.

Saltzman built the case for these programs over four years and has every reason to defend the number his staff put together. Whether Congress agrees is a separate question, and it's one lawmakers are entitled to answer differently, especially with a reconciliation process that wasn't designed for this kind of defense spending in the first place.

A Third Budget Layer: The Iran War Bill

Making things messier, the White House also sent Congress an $87.6 billion supplemental request to cover costs from the Iran war, according to a separate Defense One report. That request came on top of the record $1.5 trillion defense budget already submitted in April, creating what Defense One described as a three-part budget process: a $1.1 trillion base request, a $350 billion reconciliation request, and now the supplemental.

Of the supplemental, $67.1 billion, or 77% of the total, would go to the Pentagon. The single largest line item is $21 billion for munitions, to rebuild stockpiles after the opening months of the Iran conflict burned through thousands of missiles and bombs. Combined with the FY27 base request's $76.3 billion munitions ask, up 185% from FY26's $26.8 billion, the government is now seeking $97.3 billion for munitions in a single year, more than three times the Army's entire FY26 procurement budget of $30.5 billion.

Another $17.3 billion in the supplemental covers operational costs, and $2.4 billion is earmarked for drones to replace losses that reportedly included at least two dozen MQ-9A Reapers. The Air Force has a problem there: the MQ-9A isn't in production anymore, so any replacement means either an accelerated new program or buying the larger MQ-9B instead.

The Growth Mandate Nobody's Funded Yet

Whoever takes over the Space Force inherits more than a budget fight. Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, tapped by the White House to replace Saltzman and first reported by Defense One back in April, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing on July 16.

According to Breaking Defense, Schiess would inherit an order to roughly double the Space Force's size, from about 10,000 to 20,000 military members by 2030. Breaking Defense argues that's not simple math. The service can't just recruit thousands of new second lieutenants; it has to grow at every rank to avoid creating a force with too flat a base, which would cause promotion bottlenecks for decades.

Breaking Defense floated fixes Schiess could pursue quickly: restoring service members separated for non-disciplinary reasons under recent Pentagon policy changes and DOGE-driven cuts, and re-examining the roughly 3,000 military personnel still doing space-related work inside the Army, Navy, and Air Force rather than the Space Force itself.

Saltzman, for his part, used his farewell remarks to argue the Space Force shouldn't chase every fix. "Not all challenges must be solved," he said at the London conference, according to Aviation Week. "Some challenges should simply be managed." He named space domain awareness, launch capacity, satellite defense, and commercial satellite integration as the priorities that should survive any budget squeeze.

House Republicans have set a $60 billion reconciliation ceiling far below the administration's $350 billion ask, the Senate hasn't weighed in publicly on that number, and Schiess faces confirmation this week without knowing what budget he'll actually get to work with once he's in the job.