Defense industry is filling the Golden Dome vacuum
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President Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in May. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Golden Dome is the most publicly discussed U.S. defense project in years — except by the people commissioning it.
The big picture: The Trump administration is mum about its $175 billion hemispheric missile shield, but U.S. defense contractors are maneuvering and messaging as they seek a piece of the action.
Driving the news: Golden Dome was verboten for certain speakers on stage at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, last week. It was a different scene, though, in the hallways and at the happy hours.
Check this split-screen:
- From industry: Ads. Announcements. News hits. Sci-fi-style graphics with colorful grids, dramatic missile arcs and explosions. Promises.
- From the Pentagon: Very little, as headline after headline after headline made clear. As Breaking Defense put it: "The first rule of Golden Dome is don't talk about Golden Dome."
The intrigue: There is engagement — it's just behind closed doors. And contractors are pushing forward while still deciphering what, exactly, the administration wants and the military needs.
Here are some of the latest examples:
- Lockheed Martin launched a command-and-control incubator in Virginia to work on battle management, mission planning and AI integration. The company is also planning a test of space-based interceptors by 2028, according to Robert Lightfoot, who leads the company's space efforts.
- Peraton is eyeing a "system of systems integration approach" while leaning on its offensive and defensive cyber expertise, Milton Carroll, vice president of business development for space and intelligence, told Axios. "We don't build space assets," he said. "We don't build radars."
- AV and Sierra Nevada Corporation teamed up. Their announcement specifically mentioned sensors, directed energy and electronic warfare, as well as drone and missile defense.
- And L3Harris Technologies named Rob Mitrevski president of Golden Dome strategy and integration, a new role. The company is already involved with the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program, namedropped in President Trump's original decree.
Between the lines: Tom Karako, a missile-defense expert at CSIS, told Axios on the sidelines of the symposium that Pentagon silence is "probably temporary" and based on "internal machinations around public affairs."
- In the meantime? "We've got to create the consensus, and we've got to create the shared understanding of what is it that we're doing here and why," he said.
- "That's why my message is … Golden Dome: Start talking."
What's next: This administration needs to move with haste if it wants to meet its 2028 deadline, revealed during an Oval Office address earlier this year.
- If the project takes longer or costs more than promised, the next administration could see it as an expensive boondoggle.
Go deeper: Beltway bloat could doom Trump's Golden Dome
