Space Force: one in ten programs at risk as the US runs without a budget

At this year’s Air & Space Forces Association conference (AFA 2026), Chief of Space Operations Gen. Doug Schiess warned that roughly one in ten Space Force programs are now at risk for lack of an enacted budget. “I would really be more thankful if we had a budget,” he said, as the US military enters fiscal year 2027 under a continuing resolution in place since October 1.

A continuing resolution mechanically rolls over the prior year’s funding, line by line, until Congress passes a full-year budget. It generally bars any “new start” — a program that didn’t exist the year before — absent an explicit anomaly granted by Congress. The newest programs, often the most AI- and autonomy-heavy (space domain awareness, missile warning and tracking via proliferated constellations), are therefore structurally first in line to be frozen out.

The warning echoes our October 10 analysis of the Pentagon’s new Autonomous Warfare Command: the same week the US Defense Department restructures its autonomous capabilities, it is doing so without its own enacted budget to fund them. The FY2027 NDAA has cleared committee in the Senate but still awaits a House vote.

Cardan-AI take: for industrial suppliers into the Space Force, budget-calendar risk isn’t a one-off accident — it’s a recurring structural feature of the US space-defense and military-AI market. Our companion analysis explains why it’s precisely the newest programs that pay the price, through the economics of the budgetary “common pool” problem.