WASHINGTON — A new analysis of the Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 defense budget finds that the proposed surge in Space Force spending is concentrated in missions like moving-target tracking, missile warning, command and control and classified programs.

The report, written by Robert Wilson, director of strategy and national security at The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy, examines the administration’s proposed $71.3 billion Space Force budget. If fully funded, that would amount to a 120 percent increase over fiscal 2026 and the largest percentage increase for any military service since 1952.

But the $71.3 billion figure is far from assured. The administration’s base Space Force request is $59.2 billion, with another $12.1 billion dependent on Congress approving a separate reconciliation package. Wilson said the eventual outcome could land anywhere between those figures.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty, right, on what the timing and what the amount for this eventual budget will be,” Wilson said in an interview.

Even so, Wilson said the administration’s longer-term planning sends an important signal. The White House projects a Space Force budget of roughly $69.6 billion in fiscal 2028, without relying on another reconciliation package to preserve most of the increase.

“I think that’s telling kind of how the White House and how the Pentagon is viewing space,” he said.

Wilson’s analysis finds that more than three-quarters of the proposed Space Force increase is concentrated in classified activities, moving-target indication, missile warning and command-and-control programs.

That concentration was one of the findings Wilson said surprised him most.

“If you imagine a service going to have 120 percent growth from one year to the next, you might expect that every capability area, every mission area that they support would grow,” he said. “And that’s not what you see with this request.”

A select group of missions

“There’s a clear vision for how they want to use space in this year’s request. It’s not just ‘let’s make every program healthy.’”

The largest program in the fiscal 2027 request is space-based air-moving target indication, or AMTI, at $7.9 billion. The system is intended to detect and track aircraft from orbit using space-based sensors, ground processing and secure communications.

“Moving target indication — again, this is a pretty new mission area for the Space Force,” Wilson said. “I think that these moving target indication programs are programs to watch.”

The Space Data Network is the second-largest Space Force program in the request. The Pentagon describes it as a proliferated low Earth orbit mesh network and associated ground infrastructure designed to move large volumes of military data with low latency. Budget documents also say the network would support space-based interceptors intended to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles.

Those programs illustrate the complicated relationship between the Space Force buildup and Golden Dome, President Donald Trump’s planned layered missile defense architecture.

In fiscal 2026, both airborne moving-target indication and the Space Data Network were initiated under Golden Dome. In the fiscal 2027 budget, however, both were moved out of the Golden Dome account and labeled as “Space Superiority” initiatives.

Wilson said last year’s proposed Space Force increase was driven in large part by Golden Dome. This year’s budget separates the Golden Dome account from the Space Force request, even though some of the service’s biggest programs remain closely connected to the missile-defense effort.

“The budget documents are no longer calling these programs Golden Dome,” Wilson said of AMTI and the Space Data Network. “They are now being characterized under a different header of space superiority, not Golden Dome.”

The distinction is mostly one of budget structure, not mission. Both programs support capabilities relevant to Golden Dome, and Wilson noted that their funding would also depend in part on passage of the reconciliation package.

The administration has separately proposed $17.1 billion for a Golden Dome funding account through reconciliation, including $4.5 billion identified for space programs. That money is outside the $71.3 billion proposed Space Force budget. The budget documents provide few details on how that $4.5 billion would be divided among military services and agencies.

Missile warning and tracking

Funding for the Space Force’s low Earth orbit Resilient Missile Warning and Missile Tracking program would rise to $3.6 billion, up $1.9 billion from fiscal 2026. A companion constellation in medium Earth orbit would receive $1.4 billion, more than double the $680 million provided the previous year.

Wilson said missile warning and tracking had consistently been a mission area of less than $3 billion when he began conducting his annual budget analysis six years ago. Its steady expansion has become one of the clearest trends in Space Force spending.

“One of the throughlines of the last five years has been more and more attention on missile warning and missile tracking,” he said.

For all the uncertainty surrounding reconciliation, Wilson said there is evidence of broad political support for a significantly larger Space Force. The House Appropriations Committee has already marked the service’s base budget at about 94 percent of the administration’s request.

“There’s absolutely a risk for this year,” Wilson said. But he added that congressional support for much of the increase suggests lawmakers increasingly view space as integral to Pentagon operations.