House Passes Compromise NDAA; Here’s What’s in It for the Space Force

The House of Representatives voted to pass a new, compromise version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act on Dec. 8, sending the annual defense policy bill to the Senate and setting up its passage before the end of the year. 

Congressional leaders unveiled the mammoth 4,408-page piece of legislation late Dec. 6, with provisions covering everything from the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to multiyear munition buys to the development of hypersonic weapons. 

But for the Defense Department’s youngest service, the Space Force, the bill included dozens of sections covering strategy, structure, and more, as legislators continue to define and shape the service. 

More Money Coming? 

While the NDAA does not appropriate funds for the Defense Department or any of the services to spend, it does authorize funding for different accounts and generally offers an indication of what lawmakers want to spend on. 

And for the Space Force, in particular, the compromise NDAA offers sizable increases on top of the 2023 budget request that was already set to grow by 36 percent

The biggest jump came in research, development, testing, and evaluation, where authorizers tacked on nearly $770 million to the service’s request of $15.8 billion. 

Procurement saw a sizable increase as well, more than $447 million, on top of the $4.08 billion originally requested. Even the operations and maintenance account got a plus-up of $150 million. 

Strategy and Policy 

While those funding increases still have to be finalized by an appropriations bill—still being negotiated in Congress—the NDAA mostly affects the Pentagon through policy changes. And perhaps the most direct move the NDAA makes on how the Space Force operates is its requirement that before any major satellite acquisition program achieves Milestone A approval—the earliest milestone point and before acquisitions begin—the Space Force must develop “requirements for the defense and resilience of the satellites.” 

Another similar provision requires the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, to make publicly available the department’s strategy for protecting and defending satellites in orbit.  

Such requirements and a strategy could lead to new levels of transparency within the Space Force, which has struggled with issues of over-classification that even its own leaders have bemoaned. The service’s defensive and offensive space weapons remain shrouded in mystery, which some say has harmed deterrence by not allowing the service to clearly convey its capabilities to adversaries. 

Another section included in the bill would expand plans for the Space Force’s “tactically responsive space capability”—the ability to quickly launch new satellites as needed. For several years now, congressional leaders have pushed the service to establish such a program, and this latest NDAA goes further in emphasizing the need for the Space Force to not only be able to launch satellites quickly, but also to be able to sustain and control those satellites.  

Among the requirements included, Congress wants the Secretary of the Air Force to provide long-term continuity for such tactically responsive capabilities through the Future Years Defense Program, which stretches five years into the future, and to oversee the development of “tactics, training, and procedures” for such operations. The bill also would require the Secretary of Defense to submit a plan for the tactically responsive space program every year through 2026. 

Finally, the NDAA also includes a section that would impact one of the Space Force’s newest additions—the Space Development Agency. Specifically, the bill calls for a review by the Office of the Secretary of Defense as to “whether the Space Development Agency should be exempt from the Joint Integration and Development System in order to speed overall fielding of proliferated space systems.” 

The SDA has been lauded by many within the Pentagon for its aggressive efforts to launch a proliferated constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, dubbed the National Defense Space Architecture. However, the agency has never had to follow the JCIDS process that governs almost all Defense Department acquisition programs. 

Structure 

As in years past, the NDAA includes several provisions giving the Chief of Space Operations the latitude to vary end strength, both for the entire service and for specific ranks, as needed. With the Space Force still accepting interservice transfers and recruiting highly trained personnel from industry, the exact numbers and ratios of Guardians are still stabilizing. 

Beyond end strength, though, the NDAA also touches on several basic organizational questions facing the Space Force. 

Most prominently, the bill discards a provision that was included in a previous version passed by the House that would have established a Space National Guard. While several National Guard leaders have pushed for the creation of a Space National Guard, saying it is needed to properly align Guard units with space missions to the Space Force, President Joe Biden’s administration has opposed such a move, instead endorsing the idea of a hybrid “Space Component” that folds the traditional Active-duty and Reserve/Guard components into one, with full-time and part-time Guardians. 

The NDAA doesn’t go so far as to openly endorse the Space Component concept. But it does ask the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress on how the Space Component would work, getting into specific details on how rules, regulations, and policies would be formed to allow Guardians to move between duty statuses, retire, and face promotion boards.  

The report would have to have an analysis of how other government agencies would deal with the Space Component, such as determining the proper pay and benefits for current and former Guardians. It would also include a study on what laws might need to be changed to make the Space Component work, and an analysis of other potential issues such as budgetary impacts, the effect on diversity and inclusion, and possible conflicts of interest if a Guardian moves to part-time status while working a private industry job connected to space. 

Such a study would follow one required by the 2022 NDAA that tasked the Pentagon with conducting a broader analysis of how the Space Force should organize its reserve component and issuing a recommendation on the formation of a Space National Guard. This latest provision is far more detailed in the questions that Congress wants answers to and suggests lawmakers are looking to proceed with figuring out the logistics of the Space Component before its implementation. 

The Space Component isn’t the only Space Force structure that is poised to get a closer look as part of the NDAA. Another section would require the Director of National Intelligence and the Chief of Space Operations to submit a report by March 1, 2023, reviewing the status of the new National Space Intelligence Center. 

Through the language in the bill, lawmakers seem to express skepticism about the fact that the NSIC, currently run by Space Delta 18, is subordinate to Space Operations Command, “rather than a field operating agency aligned to the Director of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance of the Space Force.” 

The report would have to address any “perceived mission misalignment, potential mitigating measures, or other structural organization concerns” related to the current structure. 

Another report required under the NDAA would be one addressing “the manning required to fully staff the current and planned cyber squadrons of the Space Force.” Specifically, lawmakers want to know: 

  • The specific sourcing of existing billets of the Space Force optimally postured for transfer to cyber squadrons; 
  • The administrative processes required to shift billets and existing funding to cyber squadrons; 
  • The responsibilities and functions performed by military personnel and civilian personnel; 
  • The benefits and risks to the Space Force’s approach of transferring billets to cyber squadrons. 

The Space Force currently has a number of cyber-focused squadrons, some within Space Delta 6 focused on defensive cyber operations for space systems and others nested within the Space Force element in the National Reconnaissance Office.