The Pentagon has picked two companies to build prototypes for the key technology in Trump’s controversial Golden Dome plan, a report says.
Satellite startup Impulse Space and defense tech company Anduril were tapped to develop prototypes for the space-based missile tracking and targeting technology that will make up the Golden Dome, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.
The Golden Dome is the Trump administration’s ambitious plan to create a network of space-based satellites to detect and thwart any potential aerial attack on American soil, something that is not a particularly looming, urgent threat to be resolved, considering that a successful military attack on American soil has not happened since World War II.
Trump announced the project in an executive order when he took office in January 2025, but since then, its timeline has largely been kept under wraps. A Congressional Budget Office report from May 2025 said it could take 20 years to build, but a CNN report from August 2025 claimed that the first major test of the Golden Dome was scheduled for just before the 2028 presidential election. Reports of the contracts signed between the Pentagon and the space and defense tech companies provide a glimpse into how the Administration is moving forward with the program.
At the heart of this satellite network would be space-based interceptors, which would find and destroy enemy missiles and drones in the early stages. The technology itself does not exist yet and is deemed theoretically ineffective and impractical.
According to a request for information from June 2025, the Space Force began conducting market research on space-based interceptor capabilities last summer, saying that after reviewing responses, they could meet with select companies to discuss next steps. Now, the Bloomberg report claims that Impulse Space, led by Tom Mueller, Elon Musk’s first hire to SpaceX, would work as a subcontractor to Anduril to develop the technology.
A previous Reuters report claimed that defense contractors Northrop Grumman, True Anomaly, and Lockheed Martin, along with Anduril, were also working with the government to build prototypes for space-based interceptors and other related systems for the Golden Dome. The companies have so far won initial awards and will be competing for final production contracts, Reuters said at the time.
Similar moonshot plans of an ironclad missile defense system have been touted since former President Reagan’s time, but the plans have never been truly and completely translated to reality. Some critics have called the program scientifically impossible and likely to be very expensive, with one study estimating costs as high as $3.6 trillion through 2045.
Prominent political think tank The Brookings Institution called the plan “a costly and destabilizing deployment of space-based interceptors,” and warned that it could encourage similar deployments by China and Russia, creating “a new arms race that will make us less, rather than more, secure.”
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