>McCain budget (China is the real enemy)
SPACE
For decades, the U.S. military has assumed that space was a sanctuary. No more. Near-peer competitors such as Russia and China are developing military capabilities explicitly to deny U.S. forces the use of space, including by targeting our satellites. This space threat has developed with alarming speed. And yet, during the same time period, the Department of Defense has significantly reduced research and development dedicated to space systems, dropping from $5 billion to less than $1 billion over the past six years (Fiscal Years 2009 to 2016).
The Department of Defense has finally awoken to the reality that we must invest in the next generation of space capabilities, and recent budgets have begun to arrest the decline in those investments. Over the next five years, space must be a priority for additional funding to ensure that the United States maintains its space superiority and has the capabilities and capacity to deter and defend our critical space assets in future conflicts. Many of these investments will, by necessity, be classified. Congressional oversight is thus even more vital to ensuring that the Department of Defense is spending sufficiently, and wisely, on space.