Space Force must continue to rebuild civilian personnel staff after cuts, chief nominee says

A year after massive civilian personnel layoffs swept through the federal government and across military services, the U.S. Space Force is still rattled from its loss of a third of its total personnel.

About 14% of the service’s civilian workforce, roughly 780 employees, got cut last year in what Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, called “mindless.” The cuts have left senators questioning how the Space Force can rebuild the loss of personnel.

“I worry that a lot of expertise walked out the door during that period,” King said during Thursday’s hearing to discuss the nomination of Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess to become the third-ever Space Force Chief of Space Operations.

Committee members argued that space is increasingly becoming a warfighting domain, accelerating the need to increase resources for the service, which includes an “agile workforce.”

Schiess said that a lot of civilian personnel took the Deferred Resignation Program, or DRP, and other voluntary separation initiatives, which was a “significant cut” to the force. He said that Space Systems Command is looking to hire 100 civilians a month to mitigate that loss.

“The Space Force doesn’t have a problem with people wanting to join it,” Schiess said in the hearing when asked if the service is able to find that amount of civilians each month. “It’s just finding the right spot for them.”

The Space Force requested an additional 2,800 civilian employees in their fiscal year 2027 budget request, according to budget documents, for a total of 7,200 civilian jobs.

The Space Force is the smallest military service with a total workforce of 9,400 guardians, with civilians making up roughly half of the force.

A Government Accountability Office report released on July 14 found that the Space Force has not consistently and accurately determined its personnel requirements to meet its mission needs or accurately tracked the number of contractor personnel and the work they perform.

The report states that the Space Force continues to rely on Air Force processes and guidance that may not effectively suit their needs of a smaller service with evolving missions.

“The Space Force’s reliance on potentially outdated legacy requirements, Air Force-assessed requirements, and unit-assessed requirements that have been determined through different methods means that the service is likely operating with an inconsistent and potentially inaccurate measure of its personnel needs,” the report says.

The report recommends that the Space Force chief develop service-specific guidance to accurately determine personnel requirements; track the number of contractor personnel across the service; create a strategic workforce plan tailored to address competency gaps; and reevaluate the effectiveness of the current arrangement of Air Force-provided functions.

In the hearing, Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., pointed toward how Congress has strived to help the service boost their personnel through the Personnel Management Act, which allows the service to utilize full-time and part-time workers to attract more specialized talent.

“The ability for our folks to be part time or full time is a kind of a novel thing that the Space Force is doing,” Schiess said.

Schiess highlighted how the ability for workers to be either part or full time allows the influx of guardians that want to serve while also having a job elsewhere, whether it is in the industry or government, and bring that expertise back to the force. If needed, it also gives guardians the flexibility to be able to take care of family.

Wicker said that the Space Force’s workforce is needed to counter evolving threats and to deliver operational advantage.

“Our competitors are rapidly expanding their forces and fielding new capabilities,” Wicker said. “The United States cannot afford to respond with incremental growth while the threat accelerates.”