[ad_1]
Golden Dome, the Trump administration’s gambit to construct a next-generation missile protection system, has startups and longstanding protection contractors making ready to duke it out for a chunk of a $151 billion multi-year contract.
The method to qualify for the $151 billion contract car, basically an umbrella program, is stacked in opposition to most startups – not due to their tech. As a substitute, smaller corporations could also be thwarted by a multi-layered, costly bureaucratic course of used to make sure an organization can meet safety and different compliance necessities.
Finally, Golden Dome is probably not the zero-sum battle of rising tech versus incumbents. The startups that do breakthrough might be these which are in a position to persuade the largest protection contractors to take them on as subcontractors.
The Pentagon’s Missile Protection Company launched final week a draft solicitation for a $151 billion, multi-award contract, the prelude to the federal government’s forthcoming protection tech-buying spree.
The ten-year contract, referred to as SHIELD, or Scalable Homeland Enterprise Layered Protection, acts as an umbrella that might be used to purchase know-how for the Golden Dome system. That program, which the White Home likened to Israel’s Iron Dome, will embody techniques that span house, land, and sea to guard the continental United States in opposition to a wide range of missile threats.
With a view to construct out this method, the federal government might be seeking to buy a spread of cutting-edge know-how, like space-based interceptors, ground-based radars, and terrestrial and sea-based techniques able to taking out an enemy missile in flight. The primary hurdle for corporations hoping to win one of many contracts is to qualify for the umbrella program, or car.
Getting onto the $151 billion car doesn’t assure federal {dollars}; as an alternative, corporations will compete for contracting work on particular person activity orders. The ultimate request for proposals might be launched someday within the fourth quarter of this yr, although that hasn’t stopped corporations from already beginning their lobbying efforts.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
Bryce Dabbs, CEO of consulting agency Method Enterprise, instructed TechCrunch that he estimates between 5% and 10% of the pot may realistically go to non-traditional distributors – not by startups competing as a major contractor, however reasonably via “teaming and subcontracting preparations,” he stated, noting that not all startups are equal. As an illustration, SpaceX and Anduril, whereas backed by enterprise capital, are already on the scale of small primes, and the chance for smaller startups will doubtless look significantly totally different.
A startup with a compelling know-how would wish to collaborate with a protection prime, like Northrop Grumman or Lockheed, to supply a functionality that the prime doesn’t at present supply in-house.
That’s as a result of many early-stage corporations lack facility clearances, personnel, IT safety, or different necessities to carry out extremely categorized authorities work – and the pre-solicitation warned that these boundaries to entry might be in place for would-be suppliers.
Enterprise-backed corporations like Anduril and SpaceX will be capable to meet these safety and compliance necessities, however everybody else will doubtless must sub beneath a major with a view to compete.
Dabbs stated his agency is seeing extra early-stage founders reference Golden Dome of their decks, and that this system is continuously referenced when VCs do diligence on startups Method helps. However the traders “could not absolutely perceive how authorities procurement or bigger contracts work,” he stated.
In the meantime, extra mature and cash-rich startups like SpaceX and Anduril are higher poised to compete with the legacy protection contractors, additionally generally referred to as, such RTX (previously Raytheon), Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and L3 Harris.
Reuters reported earlier this yr {that a} staff composed of SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril has already began assembly with federal officers. Lockheed, in the meantime, launched a “Golden Dome for America” web page on its web site highlighting the way it may contribute to the hassle.
FAR, not honest
William Greenwalt, senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute and former deputy undersecretary of protection industrial coverage on the DOD, was much less optimistic. “I’m not overwhelmed by the prospects for non-traditionals to realize something in any respect from this,” he stated.
That’s due to the construction of the contract, which is being run beneath the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Competitors in Contracting Act (CICA).
Whereas FAR requires “full and open competitors,” the pathway’s excessive compliance requirements implicitly hold newcomers out. As a substitute, Greenwalt stated this system needs to be completed as an Different Transaction Authority (OTA), which supplies the DOD extra flexibility to work with non-traditional distributors and fund prototypes with follow-on manufacturing alternatives.
“A CICA IDIQ contract is in regards to the dumbest approach to do that if you’d like innovation as it should preclude non-traditionals from bidding. This needs to be completed as an OTA — plain and easy,” he stated.
Trump appointed Basic Michael Guetlein, second in control of the U.S. House Drive, to spearhead the initiative. He might be accountable for finalizing this system’s remaining structure, which the White Home desires to be in place in simply three brief years. That timeline favors applied sciences which are able to be deployed now, not nonetheless being labored out in R&D labs.
“Golden Dome is a daring and aggressive strategy to rush up and shield the homeland from our adversaries,” he stated in Might.
[ad_2]
{content material}
Supply: {feed_title}