The Pentagon announced on Friday that it had tapped a dozen companies to build the space-based interceptor (SBI) component of the Golden Dome missile-defense system.
Though the awards were announced last week, SSC shared that the other transition authority (OTA) agreements were actually awarded late last year and early this year. The 20 awards to 12 companies are worth up to $3.2B combined.
Context: President Donald Trump announced his intention, at the beginning of his second term, to build a missile-defense system to protect the US. Since then, the program has driven a flurry of interest and investment in the space industry—even though developments have mostly been happening behind closed doors, with both the administration and industry quiet on progress.
The last major contracting milestone came in December, when the Missile Defense Agency announced 2,000+ companies were eligible to compete for a $151B pool of money to build the missile defense architecture.
Who’s who: The new set of awardees for Golden Dome SBI tech are:
- Anduril Industries
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- General Dynamics Mission Systems
- GITAI
- Lockheed Martin
- Northrop Grumman
- Quindar
- RTX Raytheon
- Sci-Tec
- SpaceX
- True Anomaly
- Turion Space
“Utilizing Other Transaction Authority agreements, we attracted both traditional and non-traditional vendors, while harnessing American innovation, and ensuring continuous competition,” Col. Bryon McClain, the Space Force’s program executive officer for space combat power, said in a statement. “With the commitment and collaboration of these industry partners, the Space Force will demonstrate an initial capability in 2028.”
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COLORADO SPRINGS, CO—Skeet shooting only works with a target. The same is true of interceptor tests.
Astra is pitching its small rockets to the Pentagon as a potential target for Golden Dome interceptor tests, CEO Chris Kemp told Payload.
“We’re going to do target practice. We’re going to make the clay-pigeon rocket,” Kemp said. “That’s great, because that will drive scale for us…and allow us to bring our cost down for commercial customers, and other government customers.”
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