military space

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Asked why we need Golden Dome, the man in charge points to a Hollywood film

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“If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war.”

A test of the nation’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense system at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in 2019. Credit: US Air Force/Senior Airman Clayton Wear

Near the end of the film A House of Dynamite, a fictional American president portrayed by Idris Elba sums up the theory of nuclear deterrence.

“Just being ready is the point, right?” Elba says. “It keeps people in check. Keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war.”

There’s a lot that goes wrong in the film, namely the collapse of deterrence itself. For more than 60 years, the US military has used its vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, constantly deployed on Navy submarines, at Air Force bomber bases, and in Minuteman missile fields, as a way of saying, “Don’t mess with us.” In the event of a first strike against the United States, an adversary would be assured of an overwhelming nuclear response, giving rise to the concept of mutual assured destruction.

The Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense shield, still in its nascent phase, could fundamentally transform nuclear strategy. One might argue that Golden Dome, if demonstrated as successful, could reshape deterrence in ways not seen since the United States and the Soviet Union first escalated their nuclear arms race in the 1950s.

Theory of deterrence

Production of A House of Dynamite, released in October, began well before President Donald Trump retook the White House and started issuing a bevy of executive orders, one of which directed the Pentagon to start work on a defense shield to protect the US homeland from missile and drone attacks. This initiative was later named Golden Dome, a twist on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

Proponents of the Golden Dome program say it’s necessary to defend the United States against evolving threats, especially in a time of “great power competition” with nuclear-armed China. Golden Dome is supposed to defend against traditional ballistic missiles, maneuverable hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, and slower-moving drones. All of these types of weapons have seen use on battlefields in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Russia in the last several years.

Opponents argue that Golden Dome will cost untold hundreds of billions of dollars, destabilize the global order, and increase the risk of a nuclear attack. Their thinking goes that if an adversary’s leaders believe the United States can protect itself from widespread destruction—and therefore remove the motivation for a massive US response—that might be enough for an adversary to pull the trigger on a nuclear attack.

Inevitably, at least a handful of nuclear-tipped missiles would make it through the Golden Dome shield in such a scenario, and countless Americans would die, critics say. People made similar arguments against former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as Star Wars, before its cancellation. Ars interviewed Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) earlier this year about why he’s against Golden Dome.

Getting boxed in

Following orders from the Trump administration, military officials have said little about Golden Dome after a flurry of White House announcements and Oval Office photo ops earlier this year. The shield will consist of hundreds or thousands of Space-Based Interceptors on satellites prepositioned in low-Earth orbit, ready to fire small rockets to strike any ballistic missile that threatens the United States. No one is prepared to say how many interceptors or how long it will take to deploy a comprehensive space-based defense system.

In order to work, Golden Dome also needs ground-based interceptors, radar arrays, missile tracking and data relay satellites, and a sophisticated computer network to tie it all together. Some of these capabilities exist today, but space-based interceptors (SBIs) do not. The Trump administration claims an initial homeland defense system could be ready by mid-2028 at a cost of $175 billion. But that won’t be the final product, and Pentagon officials haven’t said how long or how much it will cost to build out the entire network.

The four-star general in charge of developing Golden Dome, Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, defended the military’s reluctance to release more information to taxpayers. He said the military is sharing more about the Golden Dome architecture in “one-on-one” meetings with 200 to 300 companies vying for a lucrative slice of the program.

Gen. Michael Guetlein testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about joint force readiness in Washington, DC, on March 12, 2025. Credit: Eric Dietrich/US Air Force

“That transparency may not come in an industry symposium, but it is coming in one-on-ones,” Guetlein said in a discussion Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “It’s not coming in an industry symposium because you guys are not the only ones in the audience, and there are people in that audience that I don’t want to know what we’re doing.

“But I do know that… our industrial partners are all in on it and are supported, so they are pretty well-informed to the max amount I can inform them today,” Guetlein said. “We’ll continue to do more.”

Some public discourse is necessary to establish deterrence. Guetlein said he “hopes” to release more information to the public next year. For now, nearly 11 months after Trump’s order kick-started Golden Dome, nearly all of it remains under a veil of secrecy.

“We will have some things in place that allow us to start having those kind of conversations,” Guetlein said. “I think A House of Dynamite was a good place to start the dialogue. It opens up the dialogue to the American public that we have to change the defense equation. We have to provide decision space to the United States president so that we don’t get ourselves boxed in.”

Spoiler alert

The military’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which would be used to destroy an incoming missile before it ever reaches US airspace, has a success rate of less than 60 percent in testing. There are just 44 ground-based midcourse interceptors in the Pentagon’s inventory, enough to mount a defense against one or several missiles from a rogue state like North Korea, but not enough to put a dent in any large-scale nuclear attack.

The next part of this story contains spoilers.

In A House of Dynamite, the military launches two GBIs to destroy a single ballistic missile of unknown origin heading for the United States. Both interceptors fail. What’s more, for a nuclear-armed missile to actually reach a target in the United States, one assumes defense and deterrence have also failed. The president must decide what to do next. Respond with an attack? If so, attack where?

Idris Elba portrays an unnamed president of the United States in A House of Dynamite. Credit: Netflix

The film succeeds in creating suspense. It also gets a lot of technical details right, even if the ending left many viewers disappointed. According to at least two senior Pentagon leaders, the film helps illustrate why it’s time for Golden Dome. It is worth noting that the filmmakers behind A House of Dynamite—director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim—said one of their goals with the movie was to show that missile defense systems are not infallible.

But Troy Meink, the secretary of the Air Force, said no president should ever wrestle with the decisions facing Elba’s character in the final minutes of the film.

“One of the things that A House of Dynamite really highlighted is the fact that you can’t let yourself be in a situation where you either have a very low chance of stopping it, or you go full nuke in return,” Meink said. “You just can’t let yourself get in that situation, and that’s why we need this [Golden Dome].”

Non-disclosure

There was a bit of news that Guetlein briefly mentioned in Saturday’s discussion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Guetlein confirmed the Pentagon recently awarded 18 contracts to develop technology for SBIs capable of targeting enemy missiles during their boost phase, before they reach their top speeds and have an opportunity to deploy countermeasures.

The Space Force awarded the prototype development deals in November, but officials didn’t say how many or which companies received the contracts. Guetlein said the number was 18. The value of each contract falls below the $9 million public disclosure threshold for Pentagon programs.

At the same time, Guetlein said the military is working with companies on command-and-control and fire-control software.

“We are in discussions with the department on the need to acquire more transport capability, which is the ability to move data through space, more sensing capability, more missile warning, missile track capability,” he said. “We are waiting on those contracts to come in and to move forward on those, but we have given our needs to the department.”

This illustration released by Apex depicts a Space-Based Interceptor fired from a satellite in low-Earth orbit. Credit: Apex

Next, the Space Force plans to award prototype contracts for midcourse SBIs, perhaps as soon as February, according to a procurement document released by Space Systems Command’s program executive office for space combat power. Like their ground-based counterparts already on alert, these kinds of interceptors would be used to take out ballistic missiles as they coast through space.

Several death knells doomed the Reagan-era Star Wars plan. One was political: the fall of the Soviet Union. The others were economic and technical. It was not possible to affordably build and launch numerous SBIs, but the cost of space access is coming down, largely thanks to reusable rockets. Many of the technologies that will underpin Golden Dome, like automation and AI, sensor sensitivity, and laser communications in space, were simply not available 40 years ago.

It also helps that the Pentagon has a head-start on Golden Dome with GMD and an inventory of smaller interceptors for shorter-range missiles. Key elements of a space-based sensor network required for detecting, tracking, and targeting ballistic and hypersonic missiles started launching in 2024.

But SBIs don’t yet exist. They are among the most challenging, and most controversial, parts of Golden Dome. That’s why the Space Force is focusing on awarding the first batches of SBI contracts.

“We are meeting all of our… objectives to date,” said Guetlein, who previously compared Golden Dome to the Manhattan Project. “I think we’re on a good trajectory. But I will tell you, it is not a gimme putt. It is an extremely complex thing that we’re getting ready to do.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Asked why we need Golden Dome, the man in charge points to a Hollywood film Read More »

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ULA aimed to launch up to 10 Vulcan rockets this year—it will fly just once

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Engineers traced the problem to a manufacturing defect in an insulator on the solid rocket motor, and telemetry data from all four boosters on the following flight in August exhibited “spot-on” performance, according to Bruno. But officials decided to recover the spent expendable motor casings from the Atlantic Ocean for inspections to confirm there were no other surprises or close calls.

The hangup delaying the next Vulcan launches isn’t in rocket production. ULA has hardware for multiple Vulcan rockets in storage at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Instead, one key reason for Vulcan’s past delays has been the rocket’s performance, particularly its solid rocket boosters. It isn’t clear whether the latest delays are related to the readiness of the Space Force’s GSSAP satellites (the next GPS satellite to fly on Vulcan has been available for launch since 2022), the inspections of Vulcan’s solid rocket motors, or something else.

Vulcan booster cores in storage at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: United Launch Alliance

A Space Systems Command spokesperson told Ars that “appropriate actions are being executed to ensure a successful USSF-87 mission … The teams analyze all hardware as well as available data from previous missions to evaluate space flight worthiness of future missions.”

The spokesperson did not provide a specific answer to a question from Ars about inspections on the solid rocket motors from the most recent Vulcan flight.

ULA’s outfitting of a new rocket assembly hangar and a second mobile launch platform for the Vulcan rocket at Cape Canaveral has also seen delays. With so many launches in its backlog, ULA needs capacity to stack and prepare at least two rockets in different buildings at the same time. Eventually, the company’s goal is to launch at an average clip of twice per month.

On Monday, ground crews at Cape Canaveral moved the second Vulcan launch platform to the company’s launch pad for fit checks and “initial technical testing.” This is a good sign that the company is moving closer to ramping up the Vulcan launch cadence, but it’s now clear it won’t happen this year.

Vulcan’s slow launch rate since its first flight in January 2024 is not unusual for new rockets. It took 28 months for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and ULA’s Atlas V to reach their fourth flight, a timeline that the Vulcan vehicle will reach in May 2026.

The Delta IV rocket from ULA flew its fourth mission 25 months after debuting in 2002. Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket reached its fourth flight in 16 months, but it shares more in common with its predecessor than the others. SpaceX’s Starship also had a faster ramp-up, with its fourth test flight coming less than 14 months after the first.

ULA aimed to launch up to 10 Vulcan rockets this year—it will fly just once Read More »

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Rivals object to SpaceX’s Starship plans in Florida—who’s interfering with whom?

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“We’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency.”

Artist’s illustration of Starships stacked on two launch pads at the Space Force’s Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Credit: SpaceX

The commander of the military unit responsible for running the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida expects SpaceX to begin launching Starship rockets there next year.

Launch companies with facilities near SpaceX’s Starship pads are not pleased. SpaceX’s two chief rivals, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, complained last year that SpaceX’s proposal of launching as many as 120 Starships per year from Florida’s Space Coast could force them to routinely clear personnel from their launch pads for safety reasons.

This isn’t the first time Blue Origin and ULA have tried to throw up roadblocks in front of SpaceX. The companies sought to prevent NASA from leasing a disused launch pad to SpaceX in 2013, but they lost the fight.

Col. Brian Chatman, commander of a Space Force unit called Space Launch Delta 45, confirmed to reporters on Friday that Starship launches will sometimes restrict SpaceX’s neighbors from accessing their launch pads—at least in the beginning. Space Launch Delta 45, formerly known as the 45th Space Wing, operates the Eastern Range, which oversees launch safety from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s nearby Kennedy Space Center.

Chatman’s unit is responsible for ensuring all personnel remain outside of danger areas during testing and launch operations. The range’s responsibility extends to public safety outside the gates of the spaceport.

“There is no better time to be here on the Space Coast than where we are at today,” Chatman said. “We are breaking records on the launch manifest. We are getting capability on orbit that is essential to national security, and we’re doing that at a time of strategic challenge.”

SpaceX is well along in constructing a Starship launch site on NASA property at Kennedy Space Center within the confines of Launch Complex-39A, where SpaceX also launches its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. The company wants to build another Starship launch site on Space Force property a few miles to the south.

“Early to mid-next year is when we anticipate Starship coming out here to be able to launch,” Chatman said. “We’ll have the range ready to support at that time.”

Enter the Goliath

Starship and its Super Heavy booster combine to form the largest rocket ever built. Its newest version stands more than 400 feet (120 meters) tall with more than 11 million pounds (5,000 metric tons) of combustible methane and liquid oxygen propellants. That will be replaced by a taller rocket, perhaps as soon as 2027, with about 20 percent more propellant onboard.

While there’s also risk with Starships and Super Heavy boosters returning to Cape Canaveral from space, safety officials worry about what would happen if a Starship and Super Heavy booster detonated with their propellant tanks full. The concern is the same for all rockets, which is why officials evacuate predetermined keep-out zones around launch pads that are fueled up for flight.

But the keep-out zones around SpaceX’s Starship launch pads will extend farther than those around the other launch sites at Cape Canaveral. First, Starship is simply much bigger and uses more propellant than any other rocket. Second, Starship’s engines consume methane fuel in combination with liquid oxygen, a blend commonly known as LOX/methane or methalox.

And finally, Starship lacks the track record of older rockets like the Falcon 9, adding a degree of conservatism to the Space Force’s risk calculations. Other launch pads will inevitably fall within the footprint of Starship’s range safety keep-out zones, also known as blast danger areas, or BDAs.

SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy booster lift off from Starbase, Texas, in March 2025. Credit: SpaceX

The danger area will be larger for an actual launch, but workers will still need to clear areas closer to Starship launch pads during static fire tests, when the rocket fires its engines while remaining on the ground. This is what prompted ULA and Blue Origin to lodge their protests.

“They understand neighboring operations,” Chatman said in a media roundtable on Friday. “They understand that we will allow the maximum efficiency possible to facilitate their operations, but there will be times that we’re not going to let them go to their launch complex because it’s neighboring a hazardous activity.”

The good news for these other companies is that Eastern Range’s keep-out zones will almost certainly get smaller by the time SpaceX gets anywhere close to 120 Starship launches per year. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is currently launching at a similar cadence. The blast danger areas for those launches are small and short-lived because the Space Force’s confidence in the Falcon 9’s safety is “extremely high,” Chatman said.

“From a blast damage assessment perspective, specific to the Falcon 9, we know what that keep-out area is,” Chatman said. “It’s the new combination of new fuels—LOX/methane—which is kind of a game-changer as we look at some of the heavy vehicles that are coming to launch. We just don’t have the analysis on those to be able to say, ‘Hey, from a testing perspective, how small can we reduce the BDA and be safe?’”

Methane has become a popular fuel choice, supplanting refined kerosene, liquid hydrogen, or solid fuels commonly used on previous generations of rockets. Methane leaves behind less soot than kerosene, easing engine reusability, and it’s simpler to handle than liquid hydrogen.

Aside from Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan rockets use liquified natural gas, a fuel very similar to methane. Both rockets are smaller than Starship, but Blue Origin last week unveiled the design of a souped-up New Glenn rocket that will nearly match Starship’s scale.

A few years ago, NASA, the Space Force, and the Federal Aviation Administration decided to look into the explosive potential of methalox rockets. There had been countless tests of explosions of gaseous methane, but data on detonations of liquid methane and liquid oxygen was scarce at the time—just a couple of tests at less than 10 metric tons, according to NASA. So, the government’s default position was to assume an explosion would be equivalent to the energy released by the same amount of TNT. This assumption drives the large keep-out zones the Space Force has drawn around SpaceX’s future Starship launch pads, one of which is seen in the map below.

This map from a Space Force environmental impact statement shows potential restricted access zones around SpaceX’s proposed Starship launch site at Space Launch Complex-37. The restricted zones cover launch pads operated by United Launch Alliance, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space. Credit: SpaceX

Spending millions to blow stuff up

Chatman said the Space Force is prepared to update its blast danger areas once its government partners, SpaceX, and Blue Origin complete testing and analyze their results. Over dozens of tests, engineers are examining how methane and liquid oxygen react to different kinds of accidents, such as impact velocity, pressure, and mass ratio, or how much propellant is in the mix.

“That is ongoing currently,” Chatman said. “[We are] working in close partnership with SpaceX and Blue Origin on the LOX/methane combination and the explicit equivalency to identify how much we can … reduce that blast radius. Those discussions are happening, have been happening the last couple years, and are looking to culminate here in ’26.

“Until we get that data from the testing that is ongoing and the analysis that needs to occur, we’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency, and have a maximized keep-out zone, simply from a public safety perspective,” Chatman said.

The data so far shows promising results. “We do expect that BDA to shrink,” he said. “We expect that to shrink based on some of the initial testing that has been done and the initial data reviews that have been done.”

That’s imperative, not just for Starship’s neighbors at the Cape Canaveral spaceport, but for SpaceX itself. The company forecasts a future in which it will launch Starships more often than the Falcon 9, requiring near-continuous operations at multiple launch pads.

Chatman mentioned one future scenario in which SpaceX might want to launch Starships in close proximity to one another from neighboring pads.

“At that point in the future, I do anticipate the blast damage assessments to shrink down based on the testing that will have been accomplished and dataset will have been reviewed, [and] that we’ll be in a comfortable set to be able to facilitate all launch operations. But until we have that data, until I’m comfortable with what that data shows, with regards to reducing the BDA, keep-out zone, we’re going to continue with the 100 percent TNT equivalency just from a public safety perspective.”

SpaceX has performed explosive LOX/methane tests, including the one seen here, at its development facility in McGregor, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

The Commercial Space Federation, a lobbying group, submitted written testimony to Congress in 2023 arguing the government should be using “existing industry data” to inform its understanding of the explosive potential of methane and liquid oxygen. That data, the federation said, suggests the government should set its TNT blast equivalency to no greater than 25 percent, a change that would greatly reduce the size of keep-out zones around launch pads. The organization’s members include prominent methane users SpaceX, Blue Origin, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, all of which have launch sites at Cape Canaveral.

The government’s methalox testing plans were expected to cost at least $80 million, according to the Commercial Space Federation.

The concern among engineers is that liquid oxygen and methane are highly miscible, meaning they mix together easily, raising the risk of a “condensed phase detonation” with “significantly higher overpressures” than rockets with liquid hydrogen or kerosene fuels. Small-scale mixtures of liquid oxygen and liquified natural gas have “shown a broad detonable range with yields greater than that of TNT,” NASA wrote in 2023.

SpaceX released some basic results of its own methalox detonation tests in September, before the government draws its own conclusions on the matter. The company said it conducted “extensive testing” to refine blast danger areas to “be commensurate with the physics of new launch systems.”

Like the Commercial Space Federation, SpaceX said government officials are relying on “highly conservative approaches to establishing blast danger areas, simply because they lack the data to make refined, accurate clear zones. In the absence of data, clear areas of LOX/methane rockets have defaulted to very large zones that could be disruptive to operations.”

More like an airport

SpaceX said it has conducted sub-scale methalox detonation tests “in close collaboration with NASA,” while also gathering data from full-scale Starship tests in Starbase, Texas, including information from test flights and from recent ground test failures. SpaceX controls much of the land around its South Texas facility, so there’s little interruption to third parties when Starships launch from there.

“With this data, SpaceX has been able to establish a scientifically robust, physics-based yield calculation that will help ‘fill the gap’ in scientific knowledge regarding LOX/methane rockets,” SpaceX said.

The company did not disclose the yield calculation, but it shared maps showing its proposed clear areas around the future Starship launch sites at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. They are significantly smaller than the clear areas originally envisioned by the Space Force and NASA, but SpaceX says it uses “actual test data on explosive yield and include a conservative factor of safety.”

The proposed clear distances will have no effect on any other operational launch site or on traffic on the primary north-south road crossing the spaceport, the company said. “SpaceX looks forward to having an open, honest, and reasonable discussion based on science and data regarding spaceport operations with industry colleagues.”

SpaceX will have that opportunity next month. The Space Force and NASA are convening a “reverse industry day” in mid-December during which launch companies will bring their ideas for the future of the Cape Canaveral spaceport to the government. The spaceport has hosted 101 space launches so far this year, an annual record dominated by SpaceX’s rapid-fire Falcon 9 launch cadence.

Chatman anticipates about the same number—perhaps 100 to 115 launches—from Florida’s Space Coast next year, and some forecasts show 300 to 350 launches per year by 2035. The numbers could go down before they rise again. “As we bring on larger lift capabilities like Starship and follow-on large launch capabilities out here to the Eastern Range, that will reduce the total number of launches, because we can get more mass to orbit with heavier lift vehicles,” Chatman said.

Blue Origin’s first recovered New Glenn booster returned to the company’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, last week after a successful launch and landing. Credit: Blue Origin

Launch companies have some work to do to make those numbers become real. Space Force officials have identified their own potential bottlenecks, including a shortage of facilities for preparing satellites for launch and the flow of commodities like propellants and high-pressure gases into the spaceport.

Concerns as mundane as traffic jams are now enough of a factor to consider using automated scanners at vehicle inspection points and potentially adding a dedicated lane for slow-moving transporters carrying rocket boosters from one place to another across the launch base, according to Chatman. This is becoming more important as SpaceX, and now Blue Origin, routinely shuttle their reusable rockets from place to place.

Space Force officials largely attribute the steep climb in launch rates at Cape Canaveral to the launch industry’s embrace of automated self-destruct mechanisms. These pyrotechnic devices have largely replaced manual flight termination systems, which require ground support from a larger team of range safety engineers, including radar operators and flight control officers with the authority to send a destruct command to the rocket if it flies off course. Now, that is all done autonomously on most US launch vehicles.

The Space Force mandated that launch companies using military spaceports switch to autonomous safety systems by October 1 2025, but military officials issued waivers for human-in-the-loop destruct devices to continue flying on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System, and the US Navy’s ballistic missile fleet. That means those launches will be more labor-intensive for the Space Force, but the Atlas V is nearing retirement, and the SLS and the Navy only occasionally appear on the Cape Canaveral launch schedule.

Listing image: SpaceX

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Attack, defend, pursue—the Space Force’s new naming scheme foretells new era

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A little more than a century ago, the US Army Air Service came up with a scheme for naming the military’s multiplying fleet of airplanes.

The 1924 aircraft designation code produced memorable names like the B-17, A-26, B-29, and P-51—B for bomber, A for attack, and P for pursuit—during World War II. The military later changed the prefix for pursuit aircraft to F for fighter, leading to recognizable modern names like the F-15 and F-16.

Now, the newest branch of the military is carving its own path with a new document outlining how the Space Force, which can trace its lineage back to the Army Air Service, will name and designate its “weapon systems” on the ground and in orbit. Ars obtained a copy of the document, first written in 2023 and amended in 2024.

The changes could ultimately lead to the retirement, or at least the de-emphasis, of bulky bureaucratic acronyms. You might think of it as similar to how the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter program evolved into the F-35 Lightning II.

The memorandum outlining the Space Force’s new nomenclature was signed in 2023 by then-Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, who was the branch’s chief strategy and resource officer at the time. Bratton is now a four-star general serving as vice chief of space operations, the No. 2 uniformed position in the Space Force.

The document, titled Space Force Instruction 16-403, covers “Space Force weapon system naming and designations.” It provides guidance for creating new designators. The Space Force says compliance with the instruction is mandatory for new programs, but it does not require an update for existing satellites.

“All new weapon systems developed after the effective date of this instruction will require a designator,” the memorandum says. The new names will have letters identifying each system’s purpose and orbital regime, followed by numbers or letters describing its design number and design series.

Shawn Bratton, then a two-star general, gives remarks as the featured speaker for the 38th Space Symposium Satellite Forum Breakfast in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on April 19, 2023. Credit: US Space Force/Ethan Johnson

John Shaw, a retired Space Force lieutenant-general, was part of internal discussions about revamping the military satellite naming scheme several years ago.

“We were looking at this in 2018, before we had a Space Force, and trying to fit it into the Air Force nomenclature,” Shaw told Ars. “And it sort of hit a dead end because the Air Force just wasn’t set up well for this. You really needed to start over. That wasn’t going to happen very easily. Now that we have a Space Force, we can start over… I’m glad to see that it’s becoming reality.”

Attack, defend, pursue—the Space Force’s new naming scheme foretells new era Read More »

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Intuitive Machines—known for its Moon landers—will become a military contractor

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The company’s success in just reaching the Moon’s surface has put it in position to become one of NASA’s leading lunar contractors. NASA has awarded more robotic lunar lander contracts to Intuitive Machines than to any other company, with two missions complete and at least two more in development. Intuitive Machines is also one of the companies NASA selected to compete for a contract to develop an unpressurized Moon buggy for astronauts to drive across the lunar surface.

Branching out

The addition of Lanteris will make Intuitive Machines competitive for work outside of the lunar realm.

“This marks the moment Intuitive Machines transitions from a lunar company to a multi-domain space prime, setting the pace for how the industry’s next generation will operate,” said Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO.

Altemus said Lanteris will initially become a subsidiary of Intuitive Machines, followed by a complete integration under the Intuitive Machines banner.

Lanteris builds numerous satellites for the US Space Force, NASA, and commercial customers. The company can trace its history to 1957, when it was established as the Western Development Laboratories division of Philco Corporation, a battery and electronics manufacturer founded in 1892.

Philco constructed a satellite factory in Palo Alto, California, and produced its first spacecraft for launch in 1960. The satellite, named Courier 1B, made history as the world’s first active repeater communications relay station in orbit, meaning it could receive messages from the ground, store them, and then retransmit them.

The contractor underwent numerous mergers and acquisitions, becoming part of Ford Motor Company, Loral Corporation, and the Canadian company MDA Space before it was bought up by Advent more than two years ago. In nearly 70 years, the company has produced more than 300 satellites, many of them multi-ton platforms for broadcasting television signals from geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. Lanteris has contracts to build dozens more satellites in the next few years.

Intuitive Machines—known for its Moon landers—will become a military contractor Read More »

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California startup to demonstrate space weapon on its own dime

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“All of the pieces that are required to make it viable exist.”

This illustration released by Apex depicts a space-based interceptor fired from a satellite in low-Earth orbit. Credit: Apex

Defense contractors are in full sales mode to win a piece of a potentially trillion-dollar pie for development of the Trump administration’s proposed Golden Dome missile shield.

CEOs are touting their companies’ ability to rapidly spool up satellite, sensor, and rocket production. Publicly, they all agree with the assertion of Pentagon officials that US industry already possesses the technologies required to make a homeland missile defense system work.

The challenge, they say, is tying all of it together under the umbrella of a sophisticated command and control network. Sensors must be able to detect and track missile threats, and that information must rapidly get to weapons that can shoot them down. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top commander, likes to call Golden Dome a “systems of systems.”

One of these systems stands apart. It’s the element that was most controversial when former President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars” program, a concept similar to Golden Dome that fizzled after the end of the Cold War.

Like the Star Wars concept 40 years ago, Golden Dome’s pièce de résistance will be a fleet of space-based interceptors loitering in orbit a few hundred miles overhead, ready to shoot down missiles shortly after they are launched. Pentagon officials haven’t disclosed the exact number of interceptors required to fulfill Golden Dome’s mission of defending the United States against a volley of incoming missiles. It will probably be in the thousands.

Skin in the game

Last month, the Defense Department released a request for prototype proposals for space-based interceptors (SBIs). The Space Force said it plans to sign agreements with multiple companies to develop and demonstrate SBIs and compete for prizes. This is an unusual procurement strategy for the Pentagon, requiring contractors to spend their own money on building and launching the SBIs into space, with the hope of eventually winning a lucrative production contract.

Apex is one of the companies posturing for an SBI contract. Based in Los Angeles, Apex is one of several US startups looking to manufacture satellites faster and cheaper than traditional aerospace contractors. The company’s vision is to rapidly churn out satellite buses, essentially the spacecraft’s chassis, to be integrated with a customer’s payloads. So far, Apex has raised more than $500 million from investors and launched its first satellite in 2024, just two years after the company’s founding. Apex won a $46 million contract from the Space Force in February to supply the military with an unspecified number of satellites through 2032.

Apex says its satellites can perform a range of missions: remote sensing and Earth observation, communications, AI-powered edge processing, and technology demos. The largest platform in Apex’s portfolio can accommodate payloads of up to 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds), with enough power to support direct-to-cell connectivity and government surveillance missions.

A look inside Apex’s satellite factory in Los Angeles. Credit: Apex

Now, Apex wants to show its satellite design can serve as an orbiting weapons platform.

“Apex is built to move fast, and that is exactly what America and our allies need to ensure we win the New Space Race,” Ian Cinnamon, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement Wednesday. “In under a year, we are launching the host platform for space-based interceptors, called an Orbital Magazine, which will deploy multiple prototype missile interceptors in orbit.”

The demonstration mission is called Project Shadow. It’s intended to “prove that an operational SBI constellation can be deployed in the timeframe our country needs,” Cinnamon said. “Apex isn’t waiting for handouts or contracts; we are developing this Orbital Magazine technology on our own dime and moving incredibly fast.”

Star Wars redux

Just one week into his second term in the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order for what would soon be named Golden Dome, citing an imperative to defend the United States against ballistic missiles and emerging weapons systems like hypersonic glide vehicles and drones.

The Trump administration said in May that the defense shield would cost $175 billion over the next three years. Most analysts peg the long-term cost much higher, but no one really knows. The Pentagon hasn’t released a detailed architecture for what Golden Dome will actually entail, and the uncertainty has driven independent cost estimates ranging from $500 billion to more than $3 trillion.

Golden Dome’s unknown costs, lack of definition, and its unpredictable effect on strategic stability have garnered criticism from Democratic lawmakers.

But unlike the reaction to the Reagan-era Star Wars program, there’s not much pushback on Golden Dome’s technical viability.

“All of the pieces that are required to make it viable exist. They’re out there,” Cinnamon told Ars. “We have satellites, we have boosters, we have seekers, we have fire control, we have IFTUs (in-flight target updates), we have inter-satellite links. The key is, all those pieces need to talk to each other and actually come together, and that integration is really, really difficult. The second key is, in order for it to be viable, you need enough of them in space to actually have the impact that you need.”

This frame from an Apex animation shows a space-based interceptor deploying from an Orbital Magazine.

Apex says its Project Shadow demo is scheduled to launch in June 2026. Once in orbit, the Project Shadow spacecraft will deploy two interceptors, each firing a high-thrust solid rocket motor from a third-party supplier. “The Orbital Magazine will prove its ability to environmentally control the interceptors, issue a fire control command, and close an in-space cross-link to send real-time updates post-deployment,” Apex said in a statement.

The Orbital Magazine on Apex’s drawing board could eventually carry more than 11,000 pounds (5,000 kilograms) of interceptor payload, the company said. “Orbital Magazines host one or many interceptors, allowing thousands of SBIs to be staged in orbit.”‍

Apex is spending about $15 million of its own money on Project Shadow. Cinnamon said Apex is working with other companies on “key parts of the interceptor and mission analysis” for Project Shadow, but he wasn’t ready to identify them yet. One possible propulsion supplier is Anduril Industries, the weapons company started by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey in 2017. Apex and Anduril have worked together before.

“What we’re very good at is high-rate manufacturing and piecing it together,” Cinnamon said. “We have suppliers for everything else.”

Apex is the first company to publicly disclose any details for an SBI demonstration, but it won’t be the last. Cinnamon said Apex will provide further updates on Project Shadow as it nears launch.

“We’re talking about it publicly because I believe it’s really important to inspire both the US and our allies, and show the pace of innovation and show what’s possible in today’s world,” Cinnamon said. “We are very fortunate to have an amazing team, a very large war chest of capital, and the ability to go do a project like this, truly for the good of the US and the good of our allies.”

A solid rocket motor designed for the ascent vehicle for NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission was test-fired by Northrop Grumman in 2023. A similar rocket motor could be used for space-based interceptors. Credit: NASA

The usual suspects

Apex will have a lot of competition vying for a slice of Golden Dome. America’s largest defense contractors have all signaled their interest in tapping into Golden Dome cash flows.

Lockheed Martin has submitted proposals to the Pentagon for space-based interceptors, the company’s CEO, James Taiclet, said Tuesday in a quarterly earnings call.

“We’re actually planning for a real on-orbit, space-based interceptor demonstration by 2028,” Taiclet said, without providing further details. Taiclet said Lockheed Martin is also working on command and control solutions for Golden Dome.

“At the same time, we’re rapidly increasing production capacity across the missiles, sensors, battle management systems, and satellite integration opportunities that will be directly relevant to achieve the overarching objective of Golden Dome,” Taiclet said.

“SBI, the space-based interceptor, is one of those,” he said. “We are building prototypes—full operational prototypes, not things in labs, not stuff on test stands, things that will go into space, or in the air, or fly across a missile range. These are real devices that will work and that can be produced at scale. So the space-based interceptor is one we’ve been pursuing already, and that’s all I can say about that.”

Northrop Grumman officials have made similar statements. Kathy Warden, Northrop’s CEO, has said her company is currently conducting “ground-based tests” of SBI-related technology. She didn’t describe the tests, although Northrop Grumman is the nation’s top supplier of solid rocket motors, a key piece of space-based interceptors, and regularly fires them on test stands.

“The architecture and spend plan for Golden Dome are not published, so I won’t comment on those specifically,” Warden said Tuesday. “We are providing some high-fidelity operational analysis that can help the customer understand those requirements, as well as ourselves.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

California startup to demonstrate space weapon on its own dime Read More »

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SpaceX has plans to launch Falcon Heavy from California—if anyone wants it to

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There’s more to the changes at Vandenberg than launching additional rockets. The authorization gives SpaceX the green light to redevelop Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. SpaceX plans to demolish unneeded structures at SLC-6 (pronounced “Slick 6”) and construct two new landing pads for Falcon boosters on a bluff overlooking the Pacific just south of the pad.

SpaceX currently operates from a single pad at Vandenberg—Space Launch Complex 4-East (SLC-4E)—a few miles north of the SLC-6 location. The SLC-4E location is not configured to launch the Falcon Heavy, an uprated rocket with three Falcon 9 boosters bolted together.

SLC-6, cocooned by hills on three sides and flanked by the ocean to the west, is no stranger to big rockets. It was first developed for the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in the 1960s, when the military wanted to put a mini-space station into orbit for astronauts to spy on the Soviet Union. Crews readied the complex to launch military astronauts on top of Titan rockets, but the Pentagon canceled the program in 1969 before anything actually launched from SLC-6.

NASA and the Air Force then modified SLC-6 to launch space shuttles. The space shuttle Enterprise was stacked vertically at SLC-6 for fit checks in 1985, but the Air Force abandoned the Vandenberg-based shuttle program after the Challenger accident in 1986. The launch facility sat mostly dormant for nearly two decades until Boeing, and then United Launch Alliance, took over SLC-6 and began launching Delta IV rockets there in 2006.

The space shuttle Enterprise stands vertically at Space Launch Complex-6 at Vandenberg. NASA used the shuttle for fit checks at the pad, but it never launched from California. Credit: NASA

ULA launched its last Delta IV Heavy rocket from California in 2022, leaving the future of SLC-6 in question. ULA’s new rocket, the Vulcan, will launch from a different pad at Vandenberg. Space Force officials selected SpaceX in 2023 to take over the pad and prepare it to launch the Falcon Heavy, which has the lift capacity to carry the military’s most massive satellites into orbit.

No big rush

Progress at SLC-6 has been slow. It took nearly a year to prepare the Environmental Impact Statement. In reality, there’s no big rush to bring SLC-6 online. SpaceX has no Falcon Heavy missions from Vandenberg in its contract backlog, but the company is part of the Pentagon’s stable of launch providers. To qualify as a member of the club, SpaceX must have the capability to launch the Space Force’s heaviest missions from the military’s spaceports at Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX has plans to launch Falcon Heavy from California—if anyone wants it to Read More »

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Pentagon contract figures show ULA’s Vulcan rocket is getting more expensive

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A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA’s Psyche spacecraft launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 13, 2023. Credit: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

The launch orders announced Friday comprise the second batch of NSSL Phase 3 missions the Space Force has awarded to SpaceX and ULA.

It’s important to remember that these prices aren’t what ULA or SpaceX would charge a commercial satellite customer. The US government pays a premium for access to space. The Space Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, and NASA don’t insure their launches like a commercial customer would do. Instead, government agencies have more insight into their launch contractors, including inspections, flight data reviews, risk assessments, and security checks. Government missions also typically get priority on ULA and SpaceX’s launch schedules. All of this adds up to more money.

A heavy burden

Four of the five launches awarded to SpaceX Friday will use the company’s larger Falcon Heavy rocket, according to Lt. Col. Kristina Stewart at Space Systems Command. One will fly on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. This is the first time a majority of the Space Force’s annual launch orders has required the lift capability of a Falcon Heavy, with three Falcon 9 booster cores combining to heave larger payloads into space.

All versions of ULA’s Vulcan rocket use a single core booster, with varying numbers of strap-on solid-fueled rocket motors to provide extra thrust off the launch pad.

Here’s a breakdown of the seven new missions assigned to SpaceX and ULA:

• USSF-149: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Florida

• USSF-63: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-155: Classified payload SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-205: WGS-12 communications satellite on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• NROL-86: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-88: GPS IIIF-4 navigation satellite on a ULA Vulcan VC2S (two solid rocket boosters) from Florida

• NROL-88: Classified payload on a ULA Vulcan VC4S (four solid rocket boosters) from Florida

Pentagon contract figures show ULA’s Vulcan rocket is getting more expensive Read More »

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US intel officials “concerned” China will soon master reusable launch

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“They have to have on-orbit refueling because they don’t access space as frequently as we do.”

File photo of a reusable Falcon 9 booster moments before landing on a recent flight at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX scored its 500th landing of a Falcon 9 first stage booster on an otherwise routine flight earlier this month, sending 28 Starlink communications satellites into orbit. Barring any unforeseen problems, SpaceX will mark the 500th re-flight of a Falcon first stage later this year.

A handful of other US companies, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, are on the way to replicating or building on SpaceX’s achievements in recycling rocket parts. These launch providers are racing a medley of Chinese rocket builders to become the second company to land and reuse a first stage booster.

But it will be many years—perhaps a decade or longer—until anyone else matches the kinds of numbers SpaceX is racking up in the realm of reusable rockets. SpaceX’s dominance in this field is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday.

“It’s concerning how fast they’re going,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists.”

Taking advantage

China has used 14 different types of rockets on its 56 orbital-class missions this year, and none have flown more than 11 times. Eight US rocket types have cumulatively flown 142 times, with 120 of those using SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. Without a reusable rocket, China must maintain more rocket companies to sustain a launch rate of just one-third to one-half that of the United States.

This contrasts with the situation just four years ago, when China outpaced the United States in orbital rocket launches. The growth in US launches has been a direct result of SpaceX’s improvements to launch at a higher rate, an achievement primarily driven by the recovery and reuse of Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings. Last month, SpaceX flew one of its Falcon 9 boosters for the 30th time and set a record at nine days for the shortest turnaround between flights of the same booster in March.

“They’ve put more satellites on orbit,” Sidari said, referring to China. “They still do not compare to the US, but it is concerning once they figure out that reusable lift. The other one is the megaconstellations. They’ve seen how the megaconstellations provide capability to the US joint force and the West, and they’re mimicking it. So, that does concern me, how fast they’re going, but we’ll see. It’s easier said than done. They do have to figure it out, and they do have some challenges that we haven’t dealt with.”

One of those challenges is China’s continued reliance on expendable rockets. This has made it more important for China to make “game-changing” advancements in other areas, according to Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch, the Space Force’s senior enlisted advisor for intelligence.

Lerch pointed to the recent refueling of a Chinese satellite in geosynchronous orbit, more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. China’s Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 satellites, known as SJ-21 and SJ-25 for short, came together on July 2 and have remained together ever since, according to open source orbital tracking data.

No one has refueled a spacecraft so far from Earth before. SJ-25 appears to be the refueler for SJ-21, a Chinese craft capable of latching onto other satellites and towing them to different orbits. Chinese officials say SJ-21 is testing “space debris mitigation” techniques, but US officials have raised concerns that China is testing a counter-space weapon that could sidle up to an American or allied satellite and take control of it.

Lerch said satellite refueling is more important to China than it is to the United States. With refueling, China can achieve a different kind of reuse in space while the government waits for reusable rockets to enter service.

“They have to have on-orbit refueling as a capability because they don’t access space as frequently as we do,” Lerch said Monday at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space, and Cyber Conference. “When it comes to replenishing our toolkit, getting more capability (on orbit) and reconstitution, having reusable launch is what affords us that ability, and the Chinese don’t have that. So, pursuing things like refueling on orbit, it is game-changing for them.”

The Nebula 1 rocket from China’s Deep Blue Aerospace just before attempting to land on a vertical takeoff, vertical landing test flight last year. Credit: Deep Blue Aerospace

SpaceX’s rapid-fire cadence is pivotal for a number of US national security programs. The Pentagon uses SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which take up most of the Falcon 9 launch capacity, for commercial-grade global connectivity. SpaceX’s Starshield satellite platform, derived from the Starlink design, has launched in stacks of up to 22 spacecraft on a single Falcon 9 to deploy a constellation of hundreds of all-seeing spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. The most recent batch of these Starshield satellites launched Monday.

Cheaper, readily available launch services will also be critical to the Pentagon’s aspirations to construct a missile shield to defend against attacks on the US homeland. Sensors and interceptors for the military’s planned Golden Dome missile defense system will be scattered throughout low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX’s inventory of Falcon 9 rockets has enabled the Space Force to move closer to realizing on-demand launch services. On two occasions within the last year, the Space Force asked SpaceX to launch a GPS navigation satellite with just a few months of lead time to prepare for the mission. With a fleet of reusable rockets at the ready, SpaceX delivered.

Meanwhile, China recently started deploying its own satellite megaconstellations. Chinese officials claim these new satellite networks will be used for Internet connectivity. That may be so, but Pentagon officials worry China can use them for other purposes, just as the Space Force is doing with Starlink, Starshield, and other programs.

Copycats in space

Lerch mentioned two other recent Chinese actions in space that have his attention. One is the launch of five Tongxin Jishu Shiyan (TJS) satellites, or what China calls communication technology test satellites, into geosynchronous orbit since January, something Lerch called “highly unusual.” Chinese authorities released (rather interesting) patches for four of these TJS satellites, suggesting they are part of a family of spacecraft.

“More importantly, these spacecraft sitting at GEO (geosynchronous orbit) are not supposed to be sliding all around the GEO belt,” Lerch said. “But the history of these experimental spacecraft have shown that that’s exactly what they do, which is very uncharacteristic for a system that’s supposed to be providing satellite communications.”

US officials believe China uses at least some of the TJS satellites for missile warning or spy missions. TJS satellites filling the role of a reconnaissance mission might have enormous umbrella-like reflectors to try to pick up communication signals transmitted by foreign forces, such as those of the United States.

A modified Long March 7 rocket carrying the Yaogan 45 satellite lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on September 9, 2025, in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China. Credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

China also launched a spy satellite called Yaogan 45 into a peculiar orbit earlier this month. (Yaogan is a cover name for China’s military spy satellites.) Yaogan 45 is a remote sensing platform, Lerch said, but it’s flying much higher than a typical Earth-imaging satellite. Instead of orbiting a few hundred miles above the Earth, Yaogan 45 circles at an altitude of some 4,660 miles (7,500 kilometers).

“That, alone, is very interesting,” Lerch said.

But US intelligence officials believe there’s more to the story. China launched the country’s first two communications satellites into a so-called medium-Earth orbit, or MEO, last year. These satellites are the first in a network called Smart Skynet.

“It looks like a year ago they started to put the infrastructure at MEO to be able to move around data, and then a year later, the Chinese are now putting remote sensing capability at MEO as well,” Lerch said. “That’s interesting, and that starts to paint a picture that they value remote sensing to the point where they want resiliency in layers of it.”

China launched a satellite named Yaogan 41 into geosynchronous orbit in 2023 with a sharp-eyed telescope with enough sensitivity to track car-sized objects on the ground and at sea. From its perch in geosynchronous orbit, Yaogan 41 will provide China’s military with a continuous view of the Indo-Pacific region. A single satellite in low-Earth orbit offers only fleeting views.

Some of this may sound familiar if you follow what the US military and the National Reconnaissance Office are doing with their satellites.

“Our military power has served as a bit of an open book, and adversaries have watched and observed us for years,” said Lt. Gen. Max Pearson, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence.

China’s military has “observed how we fight, the techniques we use, the weapons systems we have,” Pearson said. “When you combine that with intellectual property theft that has fueled a lot of their modernization, they have deliberately developed and modernized to counter our American way of war.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

US intel officials “concerned” China will soon master reusable launch Read More »

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Trump’s Golden Dome will cost 10 to 100 times more than the Manhattan Project

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Instead, the $252 billion option would include additional Patriot missile batteries and air-control squadrons, dozens of new aircraft, and next-generation systems to defend against drone and cruise missile attacks on major population centers, military bases, and other key areas.

At the other end of the spectrum, Harrison writes that the “most robust air and missile defense shield possible” will cost some $3.6 trillion through 2045, nearly double the life cycle cost of the F-35 fighter jet, the most expensive weapons program in history.

“In his Oval Office announcement, President Trump set a high bar for Golden Dome, declaring that it would complete ‘the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland and the success rate is very close to 100 percent,'” Harrison writes.

The numbers necessary to achieve this kind of muscular defense are staggering: 85,400 space-based interceptors, 14,510 new air-launched interceptors, 46,904 more surface-launched interceptors, hundreds of new sensors on land, in the air, at sea, and in space to detect incoming threats, and more than 20,000 additional military personnel.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket could offer a much cheaper ride to orbit for thousands of space-based missile interceptors. Credit: SpaceX

No one has placed missile interceptors in space before, and it will require thousands of them to meet even the most basic goals for Golden Dome. Another option Harrison presents in his paper would emphasize fast-tracking a limited number of space-based interceptors that could defend against a smaller attack of up to five ballistic missiles, plus new missile warning and tracking satellites, ground- and sea-based interceptors, and other augmentations of existing missile-defense forces.

That would cost an estimated $471 billion over the next 20 years.

Supporters of the Golden Dome project say it’s much more feasible today to field space-based interceptors than it was in the Reagan era. Commercial assembly lines are now churning out thousands of satellites per year, and it’s cheaper to launch them today than it was 40 years ago.

A report released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in May examined the effect of reduced launch prices on potential Golden Dome architectures. The CBO estimated that the cost of deploying between 1,000 and 2,000 space-based interceptors would be between 30 and 40 percent cheaper today than the CBO found in a previous study in 2004.

But the costs just for deploying up to 2,000 space-based interceptors remain astounding, ranging from $161 billion to $542 billion over 20 years, even with today’s reduced launch prices, according to the CBO. The overwhelming share of the cost today would be developing and building the interceptors themselves, not launching them.

Trump’s Golden Dome will cost 10 to 100 times more than the Manhattan Project Read More »

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Pentagon begins deploying new satellite network to link sensors with shooters

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“This is the first time we’ll have a space layer fully integrated into our warfighting operations.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with a payload of 21 data-relay satellites for the US military’s Space Development Agency. Credit: SpaceX

The first 21 satellites in a constellation that could become a cornerstone for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile-defense shield successfully launched from California Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Falcon 9 took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7: 12 am PDT (10: 12 am EDT; 14: 12 UTC) and headed south over the Pacific Ocean, heading for an orbit over the poles before releasing the 21 military-owned satellites to begin several weeks of activations and checkouts.

These 21 satellites will boost themselves to a final orbit at an altitude of roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). The Pentagon plans to launch 133 more satellites over the next nine months to complete the build-out of the Space Development Agency’s first-generation, or Tranche 1, constellation of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites.

“We had a great launch today for the Space Development Agency, putting this array of space vehicles into orbit in support of their revolutionary new architecture,” said Col. Ryan Hiserote, system program director for the Space Force’s assured access to space launch execution division.

Over the horizon

Military officials have worked for six years to reach this moment. The Space Development Agency (SDA) was established during the first Trump administration, which made plans for an initial set of demonstration satellites that launched a couple of years ago. In 2022, the Pentagon awarded contracts for the first 154 operational spacecraft. The first batch of 21 data-relay satellites built by Colorado-based York Space Systems is what went up Wednesday.

“Back in 2019, when the SDA was stood up, it was to do two things. One was to make sure that we can do beyond line of sight targeting, and the other was to pace the threat, the emerging threat, in the missile-warning and missile-tracking domain. That’s what the focus has been,” said Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, the SDA’s acting director.

Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) pose with industry and government teams in front of the Space Development’s first 21 operational satellites at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Cramer is one the most prominent backers of the Golden Dome program in the US Senate. Credit: US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Daekwon Stith

Historically, the military communications and missile-warning networks have used a handful of large, expensive satellites in geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. This architecture was devised during the Cold War and is optimized for nuclear conflict and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

For example, the military’s ultra-hardened Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites in geosynchronous orbit are designed to operate through an electromagnetic pulse and nuclear scintillation. The Space Force’s missile-warning satellites are also in geosynchronous orbit, with infrared sensors tuned to detect the heat plume of a missile launch.

The problem? Those satellites cost more than $1 billion a pop. They’re also vulnerable to attack from a foreign adversary. Pentagon officials say the SDA’s satellite constellation, officially called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, is tailored to detect and track more modern threats, such as smaller missiles and hypersonic weapons carrying conventional warheads. It’s easier for these missiles to evade the eyes of older early warning satellites.

What’s more, the SDA’s fleet in low-Earth orbit will have numerous satellites. Losing one or several satellites to an attack would not degrade the constellation’s overall capability. The SDA’s new relay satellites cost between $14 and $15 million each, according to Sandhoo. The total cost of the first tranche of 154 operational satellites totals approximately $3.1 billion.

Multi-mission satellites

These satellites will not only detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missile launches; they will also transmit signals between US forces using an existing encrypted tactical data link network known as Link 16. This UHF system is used by NATO and other US allies to allow military aircraft, ships, and land forces to share tactical information through text messages, pictures, data, and voice communication in near real time, according to the SDA’s website.

Up to now, Link 16 radios were ubiquitous on fighter jets, helicopters, naval vessels, and missile batteries. But they had a severe limitation. Link 16 was only able to close a radio link with a clear line of sight. The Space Development Agency’s satellites will change that, providing direct-to-weapon connectivity from sensors to shooters on Earth’s surface, in the air, and in space.

The relay satellites, which the SDA calls the transport layer, are also equipped with Ka-band and laser communication terminals for higher-bandwidth connectivity.

“What the transport layer does is it extends beyond the line of sight,” Sandhoo said. “Now, you’re able to talk not only to within a couple of miles with your Link 16 radios, (but) we can use space to, let’s say, go from Hawaii out to Guam using those tactical radios, using a space layer.”

The Space Development Agency’s “Tranche 1” architecture includes 154 operational satellites, 126 for data relay and 28 for missile tracking. With this illustration, the SDA does its best to show how the complex architecture is supposed to work. Credit: Space Development Agency

Another batch of SDA relay satellites will launch next month, and more will head to space in November. In all, it will take 10 launches to fully deploy the SDA’s Tranche 1 constellation. Six of those missions will carry data-relay satellites, and four will carry satellites with sensors to detect and track missile launches. The Pentagon selected several contractors to build the satellites, so the military is not reliant on a single company. The builders of the SDA’s operational satellites include York, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris.

“We will increase coverage as we get the rest of those launches on orbit,” said Michael Eppolito, the SDA’s acting deputy director.

The satellites will connect with one another using inter-satellite laser links, creating a mesh network with sufficient range to provide regional communications, missile warning, and targeting coverage over the Western Pacific beginning in 2027. US Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees military operations in this region, is slated to become the first combatant command to take up use of the SDA’s satellite constellation.

This is not incidental. US officials see China as the nation’s primary strategic threat, and Indo-Pacific Command would be on the front lines of any future conflict between Chinese and US forces. The SDA has contracts in place for more than 270 second-generation, or Tranche 2, satellites, to further expand the network’s reach. There’s also a third generation in the works, but the Pentagon has paused part of the SDA’s Tranche 3 program to evaluate other architectures, including one offered by SpaceX.

Teaching tactical operators to use the new capabilities offered by the SDA’s satellite fleet could be just as challenging as building the network itself. To do this, the Pentagon plans to put soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines through “warfighter immersion” training beginning next year. This training will allow US forces to “get used to using space from this construct,” Sandhoo said.

“This is different than how it has been done in the past,” Sandhoo said. “This is the first time we’ll have a space layer actually fully integrated into our warfighting operations.”

The SDA’s satellite architecture is a harbinger for what’s to come with the Pentagon’s Golden Dome system, a missile-defense shield for the US homeland proposed by President Donald Trump in an executive order in January. Congress authorized a down payment on Golden Dome in July, the first piece of funding for what the White House says will cost $175 billion over the next three years.

Golden Dome, as currently envisioned, will require thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to track missile launches and space-based interceptors to attempt to shoot them down. The Trump administration hasn’t said how much of the shield might be deployed by the end of 2028, or what the entire system might eventually cost.

But the capabilities of the SDA’s satellites will lay the foundation for any regional or national missile-defense shield. Therefore, it seems likely that the military will incorporate the SDA network into Golden Dome, which, at least at first, is likely to consist of technologies already in space or nearing launch. Apart from the Space Development Agency’s architecture in low-Earth orbit (LEO), the Space Force was already developing a new generation of missile-warning satellites to replace aging platforms in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), plus a fleet of missile-warning satellites to fly at a midrange altitude between LEO and GEO.

Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of US Northern Command, said in April that Golden Dome “for the first time integrates multiple layers into one system that allows us to detect, track, and defeat multiple types of threats that affect us in different domains.

“So, while a lot of the components and the requirements were there in the past, this is the first time that it’s all tied together in one system,” he said.

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Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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trump’s-move-of-spacecom-to-alabama-has-little-to-do-with-national-security

Trump’s move of SPACECOM to Alabama has little to do with national security

Alabama, Colorado, Donald Trump, military space, national security, redstone arsenal, Science, Space, us space command, US Space Force / /

The Pentagon says the move will save money, but acknowledges risk to military readiness.

President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office at the White House on September 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that US Space Command will be relocated from Colorado to Alabama, returning to the Pentagon’s plans for the command’s headquarters from the final days of Trump’s first term in the White House.

The headquarters will move to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office, flanked by Republican members of the Alabama congressional delegation.

The move will “help America defend and dominate the high frontier,” Trump said. It also marks another twist on a contentious issue that has pitted Colorado and Alabama against one another in a fight for the right to be home to the permanent headquarters of Space Command (SPACECOM), a unified combatant command responsible for carrying out military operations in space.

Space Command is separate from the Space Force and is made up of personnel from all branches of the armed services. The Space Force, on the other hand, is charged with supplying personnel and technology for use by multiple combatant commands. The newest armed service, established in 2019 during President Trump’s first term, is part of the Department of the Air Force, which also had the authority for recommending where to base Space Command’s permanent headquarters.

“US Space Command stands ready to carry out the direction of the president following today’s announcement of Huntsville, Alabama, as the command’s permanent headquarters location,” SPACECOM wrote on its official X account.

Military officials in the first Trump administration considered potential sites in Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Texas before the Air Force recommended basing Space Command in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 13, 2021, a week before Trump left office.

Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation protested the decision, suggesting the recommendation was political. Trump won a larger share of votes in Alabama in 2016, 2020, and 2024 than in any of the other states in contention. On average, a higher percentage of Colorado’s citizens cast their votes against Trump than in the other five states vying for Space Command’s permanent headquarters.

Trump’s reasons

Trump cited three reasons Tuesday for basing Space Command in Alabama. He noted Redstone Arsenal’s proximity to other government and industrial space facilities, the persistence of Alabama officials in luring the headquarters away from Colorado, and Colorado’s use of mail-in voting, a policy that has drawn Trump’s ire but is wholly unrelated to military space matters.

“That played a big factor, also,” Trump said of Colorado’s mail-in voting law.

None of the reasons for the relocation that Trump mentioned in his remarks on Tuesday explained why Alabama is a better place for Space Command’s headquarters than Colorado, although the Air Force has pointed to cost savings as a rationale for the move.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation concluded in 2022 that the Air Force did not follow “best practices” in formulating its recommendation to place Space Command at Redstone Arsenal, leading to “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.”

A separate report in 2022 from the Pentagon’s own inspector general concluded the Air Force’s basing decision process was “reasonable” and complied with military policy and federal law, but criticized the decision-makers’ record-keeping.

Former President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, stood by the recommendation in 2023 to relocate Space Command to Alabama, citing an estimated $426 million in cost savings due to lower construction and personnel costs in Huntsville relative to Colorado Springs. However, since then, Space Command achieved full operational capability at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.

Now-retired Army Gen. James Dickinson raised concerns about moving Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. Credit: US Space Force/Tech. Sgt. Luke Kitterman

Army Gen. James Dickinson, head of Space Command from 2020 until 2023, favored keeping the headquarters in Colorado, according to a separate inspector general report released earlier this year.

“Mission success is highly dependent on human capital and infrastructure,” Dickinson wrote in a 2023 memorandum to the secretary of the Air Force. “There is risk that most of the 1,000 civilians, contractors, and reservists will not relocate to another location.”

One division chief within Space Command’s plans and policy directorate told the Pentagon’s inspector general in May 2024 that they feared losing 90 percent of their civilian workforce if the Air Force announced a relocation. A representative of another directorate told the inspector general’s office that they could say “with certainty” only one of 25 civilian employees in their division would move to a new headquarters location.

Officials at Redstone Arsenal and information technology experts at Space Command concluded it would take three to four years to construct temporary facilities in Huntsville with the same capacity, connectivity, and security as those already in use in Colorado Springs, according to the DoD inspector general.

Tension under Biden

Essentially, the inspector general reported, officials at the Pentagon made cost savings their top consideration in where to garrison Space Command. Leaders at Space Command prioritized military readiness.

President Biden decided in July 2023 that Space Command’s headquarters would remain in Colorado Springs. The decision, according to the Pentagon’s press secretary at the time, would “ensure peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period.” Alabama lawmakers decried Biden’s decision in favor of Colorado, claiming it, too, was politically motivated.

Space Command reached full operational capability at its headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, two years ahead of schedule in December 2023. At the time, Space Command leaders said they could only declare Space Command fully operational upon the selection of a permanent headquarters.

Now, a year-and-a-half later, the Trump administration will uproot the headquarters and move it more than 1,000 miles to Alabama. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Space Command in Colorado.

A new report by the GAO published in May said Space Command faced “ongoing personnel, facilities, and communications challenges” at Peterson, despite the command’s declaration of full operational capability. Space Command officials told the GAO the command’s posture at Peterson is “not sustainable long term and new military construction would be needed” in Colorado Springs.

Space Command was originally established in 1985. The George W. Bush administration later transferred responsibility for military space activities to the US Strategic Command, as part of a post-9/11 reorganization of the military’s command structure. President Trump reestablished Space Command in 2019, months before Congress passed legislation to make the Space Force the nation’s newest military branch.

Throughout its existence, Space Command has been headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. But now, Pentagon officials say the growing importance of military space operations and potentially space warfare requires Space Command to occupy a larger headquarters than the existing facility at Peterson.

Peterson Space Force Base is also the headquarters of North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, US Northern Command, and Space Operations Command, all of which work closely with Space Command. Space Command officials told the GAO there were benefits in being co-located with operational space missions and centers, where engineers and operators control some of the military’s most important spacecraft in orbit.

Several large space companies also have significant operations or headquarters in the Denver metro area, including Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, BAE Systems, and Sierra Space.

In Alabama, ULA and Blue Origin operate rocket and engine factories near Huntsville. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command are located at Redstone Arsenal itself.

The headquarters building at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Credit: US Space Force/Keefer Patterson

Colorado’s congressional delegation—six Democrats and four Republicans—issued a joint statement Tuesday expressing their disappointment in Trump’s decision.

“Today’s decision to move US Space Command’s headquarters out of Colorado and to Alabama will directly harm our state and the nation,” the delegation said in a statement. “We are united in fighting to reverse this decision. Bottom line—moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time.”

The relocation of Space Command headquarters is estimated to bring about 1,600 direct jobs to Huntsville, Alabama. The area surrounding the headquarters will also derive indirect economic benefits, something Colorado lawmakers said they fear will come at the expense of businesses and workers in Colorado Springs.

“Being prepared for any threats should be the nation’s top priority; a crucial part of that is keeping in place what is already fully operational,” the Colorado lawmakers wrote. “Moving Space Command would not result in any additional operational capabilities than what we have up and running in Colorado Springs now. Colorado Springs is the appropriate home for US Space Command, and we will take the necessary action to keep it there.”

Alabama’s senators and representatives celebrated Trump’s announcement Tuesday.

“The Air Force originally selected Huntsville in 2021 based 100 percent on merit as the best choice,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama). “President Biden reversed that decision based on politics. This wrong has been righted and Space Command will take its place among Huntsville’s world-renowned space, aeronautics, and defense leaders.”

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that the Trump administration should provide “full transparency” and the “full details of this poor decision.”

“We hope other vital military units and missions are retained and expanded in Colorado Springs. Colorado remains an ideal location for future missions, including Golden Dome,” Polis said, referring to the Pentagon’s proposed homeland missile defense system.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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