The satellite companies in the U.S. are protesting against the reduction of the space budget, claiming that this will jeopardize national security, innovation and commercial levels of integration in the defense activities.

The ranks of some of the most successful U.S. satellite imaging firms are pleading with Congress not to go through with the space budget slashing proposed by President Trump saying it would endanger national security and decades of commercial space imagination. The CEOs of Maxar, Planet, BlackSky, Capella Space, Iceye US, and KSAT, however, spoke in a troubled tone in the June 16 joint letter and said the cuts in the commercial remote sensing programs of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) were a matter of great concern.

The leaders of the space industry characterized the cuts as sweeping and contrary to bipartisan policy that embraces the issue of the involvement of the private sector in national defense. The projected budget proposal of Fiscal Year 2026 would end the commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery funding and minimize investment in the electro-optical and radio frequency space instruments.

The letter was strong in terms of pointing out that satellite constellations have cost commercial space companies billions of dollars, have brought thousands of jobs and have improved the American intelligence infrastructure. According to the CEOs, declining funding weakens the space competitiveness of the U.S. not only but also goes against the Commercial Space Integration Strategy of the Pentagon in 2024.

As tensions rise between government systems and commercial entities, the companies warned against reducing investments in space technology, as doing so would allow potential competitors like China to gain an advantage. Such concerns were also voiced earlier by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in June, which said that further investment in space is essential to strategic and technological leadership.