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.
Missile Warning & Defense
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.
The U.S. military launched 21 satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., Sept. 10, carrying out the first phase of the Space Development Agency’s plan to put more than 100 operational “Tranche 1” data transport spacecraft in orbit over the next year.
The U.S. homeland is vulnerable to air and missile attack across the Arctic because the network of ground, air, and space-based defenses guarding those approaches have atrophied over time, according to a new paper from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb attack on Russian air bases is causing the Pentagon to revise its approach to air and homeland defense.
In the race to out-innovate adversaries, the U.S. Space Force has one key advantage over its international rivals: a robust, dynamic commercial space industry.
