By Sandra Erwin
Welcome to this week's edition of SpaceNews' Military Space newsletter, your source for the latest developments at the intersection of space and national security. In this week's edition: The four layers of Golden Dome, high stakes for L3Harris in NTS-3 and a Space Force wargame goes coalition-first.
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A multi-layer vision for Golden Dome
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency pulled back the curtain — slightly — on the nation's most ambitious homeland missile defense project in decades.
MDA officials laid out a multi-layer architecture for Golden Dome during an industry summit in Huntsville, Alabama. The unclassified gathering held Aug. 7 drew more than 3,000 defense and space professionals.
The briefings were conceptual presentations and macro-level discussions about the future of U.S. missile defense against fast-evolving threats that span hypersonic glide vehicles, maneuvering ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles.
Slides presented by MDA outlined a four-layer construct: A space layer to provide global sensing and targeting from proliferated constellations.
An upper layer building on today's limited homeland defense against ICBMs.
An under layer incorporating existing regional missile defense systems currently deployed in hotspots like Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
A limited area defense providing focused protection for specific high-value locations. Command and control: The presentations confirmed what defense experts have long identified as Golden Dome's central challenge: command and control integration. Officials emphasized the need for a "common operating picture" across all layers, seamlessly integrating legacy systems with next-generation capabilities. Automation, AI-enabled tools and resilient communications were recurring themes in the briefings.
To facilitate engagement with vendors, MDA highlighted two contracting vehicles: Multiple Authority Announcement: A flexible procurement mechanism allowing defense agencies to pursue various acquisition types under one umbrella, including Broad Agency Announcements, Commercial Solutions Openings, Other Transaction Agreements, Procurement for Experimental Purpose, and Cooperative Research and Development Agreements. SHIELD IDIQ: The Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense indefinite delivery/ indefinite quantity contract, projected to be worth $151 billion over 10 years. The vibe in Huntsville: Officials urged industry to "go fast and think big," setting a three-year clock for early demonstrations.
Other takeaways: Golden Dome is less a single system than a campaign to rewire how the U.S. thinks about defending the homeland — layered, distributed and software-defined. But DoD and its contractors have to overcome the C2 challenge.
As the Pentagon races to deliver an operational architecture this fall, the industry summit revealed the ambitious scope of Golden Dome and the technical challenges ahead. The four-layer concept provides a framework, and the next phases of the program will have to address critical details about space-based interceptor deployment, sensor integration protocols and battle management systems. | | |
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High stakes for L3Harris following NTS-3 launch
Last week's launch of USSF-106, the debut national security mission for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, carried the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), a $250 million Air Force experimental navigation satellite.
The stakes are high for both the Pentagon and for the satellite's manufacturer, L3Harris.
NTS-3 is a testbed in geostationary orbit for future positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems — capabilities the U.S. military depends on for everything from precision weapons to troop movements. The success of this experiment could accelerate plans for a more resilient GPS enterprise at a time when China's BeiDou system is expanding its reach and demonstrating advanced features from geosynchronous orbit. L3Harris built NTS-3 as the first fully reprogrammable PNT satellite, equipped with a digital signal generator and phased array antenna that allow operators to update waveforms, beam coverage and security protocols using software upgrades — a shift from GPS satellites that require hardware refreshes. If the experiment proves out, L3Harris could emerge as a prime contractor for the next-generation "Resilient GPS" constellation, a competitive program that also includes commercial players Astranis and Sierra Space. L3Harris executives say the satellite's performance will validate their R-GPS prototype, which is built on NTS-3's reprogrammable payload. Strategic context: L3Harris has been a backbone supplier of GPS payloads since the 1970s, providing atomic clocks, processors and transmitters. A move to prime contractor status would give the company a direct role in shaping the architecture of future military navigation systems. The Pentagon sees NTS-3 as a hedge against the vulnerabilities of today's GPS constellation, which operates in medium Earth orbit and is increasingly targeted by jamming and spoofing threats. By testing new signals and GEO-based concepts, the Air Force Research Laboratory hopes to expand options for augmenting or disaggregating PNT coverage. Bottom line: While L3Harris has provided the technological "brains" for every GPS generation since the program's inception, Lockheed Martin has maintained its grip as the nation's sole GPS satellite manufacturer. The NTS-3 mission presents L3Harris an opportunity to pivot from payload supplier to prime contractor. | | |
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Space Force wargame goes coalition-first
The U.S. Space Force's flagship wargame is shifting from a U.S.-centric exercise to a coalition event.
At this year's Schriever Wargame Capstone held Aug. 10–21, at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, representatives from nine allies — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and the UK — joined the U.S. in tackling a notional Indo-Pacific conflict set 10 years in the future.
The bigger change is what comes next: for the 2027 game, allies will jointly develop the scenarios and objectives. Col. Shannon DaSilva, commander of Space Delta 10, said the intent is to make the series "intentionally less U.S. centric" and ensure the results reflect coalition realities. The Schriever series began in 2001 as a U.S.-only tabletop drill under Air Force Space Command. Over time it's become the premier venue for testing multinational space policy, operations, and technology integration. Participants stressed the need to align not just on hardware but on policy as well. "Once you start to understand each other's national policies, you start to understand what it is that each of us are good at, and what it is that we're willing to do … and what we're not willing to do," said UK Royal Air Force Col. Shaun Lamb. As Royal Australian Air force Wing Commander Adam Carroll put it: "It has never been more important for like minded nations to work together to outpace potential threats and provide our senior leaders a clear picture of how space conflict could unfold and what is necessary to deter it." | | |
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