The Pentagon has taken a major step toward building a future missile-defence shield in space, advancing a programme aimed at intercepting enemy missiles during the earliest moments of their flight. The US Space Force has awarded Golden Dome contracts to multiple defence firms — including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, True Anomaly and Anduril — to create competing prototypes for space-based missile interceptors.
These initial contracts mark the first phase of an effort designed to test and eventually deploy kill vehicles that can target ballistic or hypersonic missiles as they rise into space, long before they re-enter the atmosphere. Internal Pentagon briefings, cited by Reuters, indicate that the full programme could ultimately be worth tens of billions of dollars once mass production begins, even though prototype awards are comparatively small in the initial stage.
The Golden Dome programme calls for several interceptor classes capable of striking missiles at different altitudes and speeds, from early atmospheric ascent to the boost-phase portion of spaceflight. Contractors are currently developing multiple variants, although planners may reduce the pool as the programme progresses.
Alongside the interceptor designs, companies have been tasked with early-stage development of fire-control stations that will fuse real-time satellite tracking with engagement algorithms to direct interceptors toward their targets. These stations will serve as the command-and-control backbone for future space-based launch platforms, ensuring that interceptors can coordinate with interconnected constellations of military satellites.
To accelerate progress, the Pentagon has structured the competition around large performance-based prize pools. The July 2025 briefing described a $340 million pot tied to successful on-orbit testing; the best-performing contractor would receive $125 million, while the fifth-ranked participant would still receive $40 million. Winners of this phase will later compete to manufacture an operational system.
Taken together, these actions show that the United States is now moving beyond theoretical planning and toward the practical deployment of a missile-defence layer in space, a goal that has been discussed for decades but never previously materialised.
