AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force’s acquisition arms are preparing to lose civilian workers as the Trump administration makes dramatic cuts to the federal workforce—sparking concerns about the service’s ability to carry out crucial programs.
The Space Rapid Capabilities Office, a 200-person team tasked with quickly delivering operational space capabilities, is losing some civilian employees to the administration’s deferred-resignation offer, while other employees are resigning to pursue “better opportunities” and a “better environment” elsewhere, said Kelly Hammett, who leads the office.
These teams are already “extremely lean,” so losing any employees at all makes it “very challenging” to execute missions, Hammett told reporters Wednesday at the AFA Warfare Symposium.
There are likely more losses to come. Pentagon leaders have announced plans to fire some 5,400 probationary employees—generally, workers hired, transferred or promoted in the past year or two—as the first step in a 5- to 8-percent reduction in the Pentagon’s roughly 764,000-member civilian workforce. The first cuts apparently began on Monday, when the Defense Logistics Agency dismissed workers.
The office has a small number of probationary employees, none of whom have been fired yet, but other space-acquisition arms, such as Space Systems Command and Space Development Agency, have a “fairly large number,” Hammett said.
“It’s going to be tough if that [is] followed through and all are dismissed without some look at mission criticality,” he said.
SSC, the Space Force’s main acquisition arm, had a “considerable number of employees” apply for the deferred-resignation offer, which is being implemented this week, SSC commander Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant told reporters Monday.
The command is also preparing for probationary employees to be fired in the “next week or two,” Garrant said.
The workforce cuts, coupled with the potential for a year-long continuing resolution instead of a real budget, is “incredibly challenging,” he said.
“As the commander, we are going to focus on how we can continue to deliver the mission with the human resources that we have,” he said. “So it is a very stressful time, mostly because it’s kind of all on top of each other.”
To mitigate the effects, SSC has already started planning to shift those employees’ work to others in the command, Garrant said.
“Just because someone leaves doesn’t mean that work doesn’t get done. It just means the ability they were sitting on goes away. So we’re being pretty deliberate in our planning to the extent we can to minimize those impacts,” he said. “Probably the biggest impact is the rapid off-ramp and then making sure those folks are taken care of and making sure that we catch the work.”
The five-year-old Space Force has about 4,500 officers, 4,800 enlisted service members, and 5,400 civilians, according to a service spokesperson.
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