The Space Force activated its U.S. Northern Command component Jan. 30, which will provide the combatant command greater access to space capabilities and expertise amid the Pentagon’s increasing focus on homeland defense.
Missile Warning & Defense
U.S. and Canadian military aircraft are on their way to Greenland for a “long-planned” North American Aerospace Defense Command exercise as the future of the Arctic territory’s sovereignty remains in the spotlight.
Some U.S. personnel are evacuating Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, America’s main military base in the Middle East, as President Donald Trump is weighing military action against Iran in response to its crackdown on protestors, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space ...
The Pentagon is making progress developing a new target round for test the effectiveness of U.S. missile defenses. Contractor Northrop Grumman announced the first flight of a redesigned vehicle Jan. 8.
The Space Force is requesting prototype proposals for space-based interceptors that can destroy a missile during the midcourse phase of flight, on top of its previous efforts to develop interceptors that take down missiles in their boost phase.
The Golden Dome air and missile defense shield to protect the United States will have some “operational capability” in 2028, the program’s leader said Dec. 6 at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
The Missile Defense Agency chose a diverse pool of more than 1,000 companies to compete for task orders through its Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered defense effort—a $151 billion contract mechanism to experiment, test, and prototype capabilities for Golden Dome and other homeland defense needs.
The need to defend air bases was made painfully clear at Hickam Field in December 1941. Yet even now we continue to park aircraft in the open, often wingtip-to-wingtip, all over the country and have essentially no way of providing terminal defense against air attack.
Industry proposals were initially due Oct. 10, but after a flurry of responses, the agency extended the deadline to Oct. 16. MDA received more than 1,500 questions from companies over the last three weeks, it said in an Oct. 2 memo.
