Pentagon sets funds and dates for secret Golden Dome space programme

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon aims to conduct the first tests for its futuristic space-based missile defence programme by year end, with flight demonstrations of the unproven technology slated for 2027, people familiar with the matter said.

The key milestones are central to pioneering space-based missile interceptors, a pillar of US President Donald Trump’s US$185 billion (S$236.5 billion) Golden Dome defence shield.

The administration has set aside US$3.2 billion to develop prototypes of weaponised satellites to shoot down missiles, with potentially tens of billions of dollars in future contracts.

The US Space Force is using an innovative acquisition strategy to attract both traditional and non-traditional vendors, a spokesperson said, adding that details around timelines and specific capabilities would not be released due to operational security.

The programme marks one of the most ambitious efforts to develop space-based missile defence since Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) during the Cold War, which was ultimately abandoned due to massive costs, technical challenges and lukewarm political support. 

Now, the Pentagon says the technology is needed more than ever to counter increasing threats from nuclear-armed nations like Russia and China. 

“A new generation of advanced air and missile threats, unprecedented in their speed, numbers and lethality, now holds the American homeland at risk,” said General Michael Guetlein, the Space Force official leading the Golden Dome effort, in a hearing to lawmakers in April. 

Space-based interceptors, which no country has yet deployed, are spacecraft that orbit the earth at thousands of metres per second and are intended to track, detect and shoot down incoming ballistic missiles in the few minutes they travel through space to their intended target. 

In April, the Space Force announced that it had awarded 12 different companies, including SpaceX, Anduril Industries and Lockheed Martin, contracts to develop prototypes of these orbital interceptors. 

The Space Force’s prototype programme identified three types of interceptors it needed: boost-phase, just after a missile launches; mid-course, when it is travelling in space; and glide-phase, when it is back in the atmosphere.

The programme also includes contracts for firing systems, ground support and integrating future technology, according to people familiar with the matter.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because the strategy is confidential.

Pentagon officials have set a prize competition that pits teams against one another in a race to score funding each time they hit incremental milestones on the way to a final prototype. 

The milestones include a ground test, two flight tests in space and an intercept demonstration of the technology in 2029, according to people familiar with the matter.

Along the way, companies will be weeded out based on cost, speed and performance.

The government has not disclosed how large the reward for each milestone will be.

However, a person familiar with the matter said the companies building mid-course interceptors can win roughly US$60 million for completing a ground test by the end of 2026. 

This ground test, at least for some companies, will require moving data from sensors to an interceptor and demonstrating their spacecraft’s propulsion systems, said people familiar with the matter. 

Milestones two and three, the people said, are flight tests, in which the teams competing in that area will fire their interceptors into a target area in space, and are planned for 2027 and 2028.

For the first flight test, companies building mid-course interceptors can win about US$126 million, and the team that completes that test first will be awarded an additional US$40 million, a person familiar with the matter said.

After that, the Space Force may select only three out of the five teams to move forward, the person said. 

During the final demonstration planned for 2029, companies must show that their space-based interceptor can detect and shoot down a test target, people familiar with the matter said.

The Space Force will then look to procure systems in 2030 from at least some teams that pass the final test.

Still, experts are sceptical that the current effort is not doomed to meet its end like Reagan’s SDI. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cost more than US$700 billion to launch a network of space-based interceptors to counter just a few missiles. 

Guetlein, the Space Force official, has said he has only about US$185 billion to spend on the entire programme.

Even if it could be done affordably, Democratic lawmakers, such as Senator Ed Markey and Representative John Garamendi, have raised concerns that placing weapons in orbit could lead to a destabilising arms race with China and Russia.

“It will quickly become obvious how expensive and challenging the system is,” said Laura Grego, a senior director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “I just have a hard time imagining this not collapsing under its own weight like it has every time before.” BLOOMBERG