COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—As defense contractors await firm direction from the Pentagon on Golden Dome, executives say the technology already exists to start developing space-based interceptors capable of hitting missiles in their boost phase—but admit it’s no easy feat.
“Golden Dome” surfaced in almost every conversation at this year’s Space Symposium here, with aerospace giants to startups pitching their wares for President Trump’s next-generation missile shield. Space Force officials, meanwhile, remained less forthcoming about the effort—acknowledging they still don’t have a concrete architecture or a plan for the system that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
A highly ambitious part of Trump’s Golden Dome plan is his call to deploy interceptors in space that can shoot down missiles just after launch, also called the boost phase. This concept revives the Reagan-era “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative. But while technology has advanced since the United States first attempted a space-based missile shield in the 1980s, it’s still a massive undertaking for industry and government.
Lockheed Martin, which has already launched a website and trailer devoted to Golden Dome, said it aims to use its experience with land and sea-based interceptors to compete. But moving an interceptor to space and hitting a missile in its boost phase is still a “pretty wicked hard problem physics-wise,” said Jeff Schrader, vice president of strategy & business development at Lockheed’s space division.
“I see this as a very hard problem to address, but not one that’s all technology hard,” Schrader said. “We’ve got to know what the priority is so that we can get going and involve our deep technological experts and engineers to speed that up.”
Executives from L3Harris echoed that sentiment, saying there are numerous challenges to developing a boost phase interceptor. But, they said, the “technology is there.” In the interim, the government should buy what works today, while it does the research and development for future Golden Dome tech, said Ed Zoiss, president of L3Harris’s space & airborne systems.
As industry mulls concepts for novel interceptors, Pentagon officials are wrestling with a bigger problem—how it will scale the architecture and pay for the massive number of space-based interceptors it would need to stop a barrage of missiles in the boost phase.
The economics are challenging, if not impossible, analysts argue. Even with thousands of interceptors in space, ground-based missiles will always be easier and cheaper, so the enemy could easily overwhelm the system at a relatively low cost. It would take around 950 interceptors spread out in orbit to make sure there is one that could hit a missile during its boost phase, according to Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute—so the government would need some 10,000 interceptors if an enemy launches 10 missiles.
“Scale is manna from heaven for industry, and it’s a daunting problem for the government,” one industry analyst said during the symposium.
Companies are particularly eager to get a slice of Golden Dome funding now, since the effort could be axed in four years under a new administration. But while the long-term funding remains uncertain, executives say the need for expanded missile defense crosses the aisles.
The effort will spark a new era of competition, with defense start-ups challenging the old guard of established defense contractors. The Pentagon has already seen interest from more than a hundred companies hoping to build a piece of Golden Dome. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly teaming up with Anduril and Palantir to bid for a part of the project, Reuters reported on Thursday. The trio is reportedly going after the space-based sensing and tracking layer, with some interest in interceptors. But experts said that the project is so massive, long-standing contractors will get a big chunk as well.
Trump’s January executive order gave the Pentagon 60 days to provide the president with initial options and costs for the effort, but it’s unclear if the DOD will share those deliverables with the public. Defense officials are reportedly discussing options with the president.
Industry is still largely in the lurch—waiting to get clear direction from the administration on which agency will buy the systems, whether acquisition will be split among various agencies, or if there will be a new agency all together. The Pentagon is creating a new office to manage the effort, Defense One previously reported, which could give the service new authorities to move out faster.
“You need somebody at the OSD-level or something to be driving an answer. And to me, the fact that the 60 days is up and we haven’t heard back means that it’s harder than they think, which is why I think if you want to get some progress on it, you’ll do some of the easier things that are working now,” one industry executive said.
Industry hopes the government will move fast and buy kit now. Otherwise, the effort is going to “fall under its own weight from inaction,” the executive said.
At the symposium, industry was already pitching current systems. L3Harris executives said they could go into full-rate production for their interceptor systems and missile-tracking sensor called Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program, HBTSS. “One thing that we’re hopeful for is that things that are already proven, we just go into production,” Zoiss said.
But defense officials cautioned that planning is still in its nascent phase: “We’re nowhere near” finalizing an architecture, said Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. “We’re doing the planning. We’re [looking at] what resources might be available, which programs are currently in development that might contribute to it, and that is all still way pre-decisional,” he told reporters at Space Symposium.
To guide the next steps and take a closer look at industry’s ideas, the Defense Department plans to host two events with industry in Huntsville, Alabama. Those events, the Next-Generation Missile Defense Summit and the Space-Based Interceptor Industry Engagement, were initially planned for the end of April, but have been postponed to an undetermined date.
The events will help determine what the “art of the possible is,” and what can get done in the next two to four years, Saltzman told reporters at the symposium.
“There’s an iterative process to this. If we wait and try to engineer this to the perfect solution, we will never get started. We will not get there fast enough, and so mission analysis is step one of this iterative process,” he said.
Saltzman envisions the effort as many programs stitched together, noting that there won’t be a “‘Golden Dome’ delivered” as a single entity.
“I think the better way to think about it is a system of systems. Some of those systems are already in development—you can imagine the sensors to try to track threats and such. And some are not—space based interceptors were in the executive order, and that’s work to be done,” he said.
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