When the Defense Department received a $23 billion down payment for the Golden Dome initiative through a reconciliation bill, lawmakers demanded a detailed plan for how the Pentagon plans to spend that money.

Six months later, lawmakers are still waiting for the Pentagon to provide “complete budgetary details and justification of the $23,000,000,000 in mandatory funding.” That includes a comprehensive deployment schedule, cost, schedule and performance metrics and a finalized system architecture. 

As a result, Congressional appropriators were unable to conduct oversight of Golden Dome programs for fiscal 2026.

The department’s $175 billion Golden Dome initiative President Donald Trump first ordered last January aims to build a network of satellites — possibly numbering in the hundreds or even thousands — that would detect, track and intercept incoming missiles. Pentagon officials have described the program as a “top priority for the nation.”

The effort has been shrouded in secrecy, and lawmakers’ demand for more detail on how the Pentagon plans to spend the initial tranche of funding is another sign of Congress’s limited visibility into the program’s early spending plans.

“Due to insufficient budgetary information, the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees were unable to effectively assess resources available to specific program elements and to conduct oversight of planned programs and projects for fiscal year 2026 Golden Dome efforts in consideration of the final agreement,” appropriators wrote.

Elaine McCusker, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said it is not unusual or surprising for lawmakers to seek complete budget information for a complex program like the Golden Dome that pulls in multiple complex ongoing efforts and includes classified components.

“Congress often requests new budget exhibits and supplementary information for evolving, complicated programs with potentially high price tags so they can better understand what is existing and ongoing funding and what is really new or accelerated in the budget request,” McCusker told Federal News Network.

But Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, said Congress’ request for complete budgetary information highlights a broader challenge with how the administration has rolled out major initiatives without providing sufficient detail.

“Golden Dome is an extraordinarily complex and ambitious program, for which we should expect extraordinarily comprehensive information. Instead, the American people and Congress have the opposite. The fiscal 2026 Defense Appropriations Act and its explaining document appear to appropriately reflect that disparity,” Williams told Federal News Network.

The House passed the final 2026 minibus funding package Thursday, which includes money for the Defense Department. If the spending bill becomes law, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Golden Dome director, will have two months to provide a comprehensive spend plan for the initiative. Lawmakers want to see planned obligations and expenditures by program, descriptions, justification and the corresponding system architecture mission areas for fiscal 2025 through 2027. 

The Pentagon comptroller would also have to submit a separate budget justification volume annually beginning in fiscal 2028.

McCusker said Congress bears some responsibility for the delay — budget uncertainty has complicated the department’s efforts to develop the program.

“The Pentagon is pursuing new ideas in how it partners with industry to rapidly develop, build and deploy the myriad systems that make up Golden Dome while also navigating annual delays and uncertainty in getting its budget,” she said. “Congress has an understandable thirst for information on high profile defense programmatic priorities and may perceive a delay in getting the level of detail it seeks, but failing to pass annual appropriations on time has become so common it is a perpetual factor to mitigate. Congress has to accept responsibility for this and be willing to take some risk in providing funds in advance of all the information it needs.”

President Donald Trump said in May that the Golden Dome’s architecture had been “officially selected,” but details about the initiative remain scarce and the Pentagon has restricted officials from publicly discussing the initiative.

McCusker said that Congress’ request for detailed planning, performance and budget information doesn’t say much about the program itself other than “its level of complexity and maturity and the need to develop and convey the overall strategy and projected timeframe for its execution.”

There is no single “Golden Dome” line item in the 2026 spending bill, though it includes billions for related programs that will most likely support the broader system.

The Pentagon leadership received its first official briefing on the Golden Dome architecture in September, and an implementation plan was expected to be delivered in November.

Williams said producing a detailed plan of this complexity in a short period of time is understandably difficult, but added that crafting a plan that credibly explains how its goals will be achieved is “likely impossible according to many experts.”

“Golden Dome is a program of unprecedented, arguably reckless, complexity and ambition.” Williams said. 

“The lack of information is also a result of Congress’s choice to use reconciliation to increase defense spending: The reconciliation process does not provide for the formal submission of budget request materials from the executive branch and so risks exactly this kind of lack of information. Congress should return to the statutory process for clean Defense authorization and appropriations acts to ensure adequate information,” he added.

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.

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The nation’s newest military service still has a lot of work to do to chart its future. The Space Force had been planning to use a new “Futures Command” to handle that work, and it was supposed to be up and running by last year. That didn’t happen as scheduled, but the idea’s not dead either.

Leaders say they’re still planning a new organization to help shape the service’s future, but they also needed to make sure it aligns with the new administration’s priorities.

The Space Force first unveiled its plans for a new Futures Command almost two years ago. The idea at the time was to combine the existing Space Warfighting Analysis Center and the Concepts and Technologies Center with a new Wargaming Center. Those plans were put on pause late in 2024 when it became apparent new political leadership was on the way.

But Gen. Chance Saltzman, the chief of space operations, said Air Force Secretary Troy Meink is on board with the overall idea.

“Secretary Meink 100% understands what we were trying to accomplish with Futures Command and the importance of it,” he said during the annual Spacepower conference in Orlando, Florida, last month. “How are we looking at the future? How are we categorizing and characterizing the threats we’re going to face, the missions we’re going to be asked to do, and how are we going to respond so that we can put the force in place to meet those challenges? We will look at concepts, we will do the war gaming, we will do the simulations, we will do all the manpower assessment, we will do the military construction surveys to figure out what facilities are needed, and then document that so that everybody can see what we’re progressing towards. It is this idea of establishing a command that’s focused on what is it we’re going to need in the future and making sure all the planning is done, synchronized with the resources so we get that right.”

And while the Space Force certainly isn’t the first military service in recent years to contemplate a new command as part of big organizational changes, it is the first time in modern history that a service is having to do that from scratch.

“In December of 2019, the law said, ‘There is a Space Force,’ and nothing could have been further from the truth,” Saltzman said. “It legally made there be a Space Force, but it was still in work. It was a thought process, it was pulling things together as rapidly as possible. So I think the hardest thing is overcoming this mentality that there’s been a Space Force for decades, that we’ve got all this figured out. These are hard things to do on a government scale with government oversight and government resources. And so convincing people that we had to start from scratch on almost every process we had, on every decision we make, that was unprecedented. Convincing people that we don’t really have anything to fall back on. If I don’t deliver a service dress [uniform], then we’re using an Air Force service dress — there wasn’t something else. We had plenty of uniform changes when we were growing up, but there was always an Air Force uniform before those changes that we were in until we transitioned. Not the case for the Space Force. We had to start from scratch. We’re not just enhancing the Space Force, we’re actually creating one. And that’s been a real challenge.”

New leadership education initiatives

The Space Force traces most of its roots to the Air Force, and until now, it’s leaned heavily on its sister service within the Department of the Air Force for combat support and other functions. But it’s increasingly working to build infrastructure, doctrine and culture of its own.

As one example, Saltzman said just last month, the Space Force launched its own Captains Leadership Course. That initiative is a partnership with Texas A&M University and led by the Space Force’s Space Training and Readiness Command.

“The bottom line is each service brings something unique in terms of what it focuses on for professional military education. I remember General [Jay] Raymond, when he stood up the service, talked about some of the things that services have to do. You have to have your own budget, you have to have your own doctrine, you have to develop your own people. And that’s kind of stuck with me,” he said. “We have to develop our Guardians for the specifics of the Space Force. And this basic understanding at the captain’s level is going to be foundational to what follows in the rest of their career. And so while we need to find ways to give them experience with other services, I wanted to make sure that the service had a core offering at that grade to educate our officers on the Space Force. Now we’re going to include joint doctrine, will include communications and leadership. But they need that foundational understanding of the service first before they start to branch out and figure out how they integrate with the other services.”

First Space Force OTS graduates

And in 2025, the service graduated its first group of newly-minted officers from officer training school. Those first 80 officers, Saltzman said, represent a mentality within the service that seeks to build “multidisciplinary” leaders. The enlisted force, he says, will be tactical experts, while officers will need expertise in “joint integration.”

“Do we need deep expertise? Absolutely. Do we need people that broadly understand how to integrate with a joint force? Absolutely. How do you do both? This is the tough part of the job, you have to get that balance just right,” he said. “If you go down to kind of the micro management side of this and ask how you develop a single Guardian to best perform, then you get caught in that conundrum. I have to think about what I need the entire service to be able to do. Do I need deep experts? Yes. Do I need broad integrators? Yes. So we have to find a way to, across the entire service, create opportunities to maximize what people can do, what they do best, and fill the jobs that are required based on those skills and those competencies. You have to make sure you think about it from an enterprise perspective, and what might apply to any one Guardian doesn’t necessarily have to apply to all Guardians.”

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The year 2025 has been transformational for the Defense Department. The Air Force scrapped most of its sweeping reoptimization initiative announced under previous leadership, while the Army undertook one of its most significant acquisition and organizational reform efforts in decades. 

Air force drops Biden-era reoptimization efforts 

Months after pausing its sweeping reoptimization initiative launched under former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the service announced earlier this month that it would abandon more than half of its sweeping efforts. The proposed changes under the previous leadership were enormous in scope, spanning acquisition, recruiting, training and the management processes that deliver support services.

When Kendall announced the changes in 2023, he said it had “become clear to the entire senior leadership team” that the service was not well positioned for great power competition after spending more than two decades supporting post-9/11 conflicts and demands.

Meanwhile, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said some of the most sweeping reorganization efforts would be too disruptive.

For example, the Air Force announced it would create a new Air Base Wing organizational model under the sweeping reoptimization effort. The idea was to establish separate Air Base Wings with their own command structures to allow Combat Wings to focus solely on training and warfighting. 

Meink said the decision to abandon these plans was made to “minimize change-fatigue to Airmen and enable commanders to concentrate on readiness, lethality, and mission accomplishment.”

Perhaps most notably, the Air Force scrapped plans to stand up a new Integrated Capabilities Command that would have overseen the service’s requirements process. A provisional version of the command was stood up a year ago, and functioned as the primary organization overseeing requirements for purchasing weapons. Instead, the leadership will fold its functions into the Air Force Futures, known as A5/7 by April 1, 2026.

One of the most popular changes, to bring back warrant officers within the cyber and information technology professions, will remain. For decades, the Air Force was the only service without warrant officers. 

Meanwhile, the Space Force will continue implementing key elements of  re-optimization efforts that were specific to the service.

Marine Corps Force Design update 

The service kicked off its major “Force Design 2030” initiative in 2020 to better align itself with the National Defense Strategy and redesign its force for naval expeditionary warfare. The 10-year initiative is now simply known as “Force Design,” and while the service is still on track with the effort, budget uncertainty could affect the service’s ability to meet the initiative’s critical milestones, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said earlier this year. 

In its 2025 Force Design update, released in October after the service skipped a public update in 2024, the Marine Corps said it continues to stand up Marine Littoral Regiments — specialized units within the Marine Corps that are designed to operate in contested coastal areas.

The Corps is extending many of the advanced capabilities fielded in those regiments — including the air defense system, resilient command-and-control systems, unmanned platforms and advanced sensors — across Marine Expeditionary Units.

“This modernization strengthens the MEU’s role as a versatile, multi-domain naval expeditionary force from the sea, able to project power, seize and hold key maritime terrain, sense and make sense of the operating environment, integrate with the fleet, and directly contribute to joint kill webs,” the Force Design update reads.

In addition, the service is undertaking what it calls the most significant modernization of its Marine Air Command and Control System in a generation, merging legacy air support and air defense functions and reorganizing Marine Air Control Groups so Marines can be trained and employed in multiple roles within Marine Air Operations Centers.

The Corps is also embracing the idea of managing the acquisition system as portfolios of capabilities rather than individual programs. One example is the new capability portfolio approach in Program Executive Officer Land Systems, which will give a program responsibility for a suite of programs under a common capability area. Marine leaders say the shift will allow multiple systems to be developed and fielded together, with continuous input from the Fleet Marine Force, instead of advancing programs in isolation with a primary focus on cost.

The service’s Force Design sparked a great deal of debate, with critics arguing that the changes would weaken the Marine Corps as a combined arms force due to its divestments in armor, artillery, and aviation capabilities, limit its ground mobility and that the Marines would be less capable fighting in urban environments.

Army Transformation Initiative 

Shifting away from managing individual programs to a portfolio-based structure is a big part of the Army’s transformation initiative announced in May. Stan Soloway, president and CEO of Celero Strategies and federal acquisition expert, said the move is a continuation of what the service has already been doing and “maybe somewhat of an acceleration.”

“There’s nothing radical about it,” Soloway told Federal News Network.

But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s move to require the Army to include right-to-repair provisions in all new and existing contracts to cut costs and reduce delays caused by relying on original manufacturers for maintenance and support “might be one of the most important lines on the whole memo,” he said.

“In many ways, it is one of the huge issues they have to deal with,” Soloway said. 

Modifying existing contracts to fix intellectual property issues is not ideal, but the government also has no choice — there are too many existing contracts, some of which may have been created years ago, with flawed IP clauses. It remains to be seen whether the Army’s acquisition workforce is equipped to negotiate these kinds of provisions effectively.

Meanwhile, right-to-repair provisions that had broad bipartisan support in the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill, were stripped from the final version of the legislation after industry pushback. 

Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, said while this is the opportunity for the Pentagon to exercise its existing authorities, without legislation that enforces consistency, it’s very unlikely that contracting officers will be able to effectively implement right to repair across thousands of contracts. 

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.

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