Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to win the contract to build a multi-billion-dollar satellite constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), called MILNET, to support President Trump’s Golden Dome missile-defense shield.
According to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the new space program, funding for the so-called “air moving target indicator” system was included in the tax-and-spending bill that Trump signed in July, though it wasn’t publicly linked to SpaceX or any other contractor.
The Musk-led company could build as many as 600 satellites designed to track hypersonic missiles, aircraft, and drones that threaten the U.S. and parts of the Western Hemisphere, as the Trump administration pushes ahead with “Monroe Doctrine 2.0,” better known to readers as “hemispheric defense“, an investing theme we’ve outlined countless times this year.
“The traction that SpaceX has gained with the coming satellite fleets is another sign of the company’s growing influence in U.S. national security,” the WSJ reported, something Democrats, their billionaire funders, and unhinged politicians have been furious about and even waged a color-revolution-style operation against Musk’s companies earlier this year, which only resulted in Tesla vehicles being firebombed.
Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield is estimated to cost $175 billion, but some Wall Street analysts suggest the price tag could cost many billions more. Operational timing of the new defense shield is slated for the end of Trump’s second term.
Other defense firms, including Anduril, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris, have also proposed technologies for Golden Dome. Goldman analysts have been very bullish on L3Harris (read report). Lawmakers such as Sen. Rick Scott warned that Trump’s missile shield project risks “vendor lock” and called for more competition to prevent overreliance on a single contractor.
In mid-June, Breaking Defense first reported that the Space Force contracted SpaceX to build MILNET “hybrid mesh network”…
“The network will use terminals created by SpaceX for its Starshield satellites being configured for military use, which also can link into SpaceX’s commercial Starlink constellation. The Starshield terminals have more encryption than those sold to consumers for Starlink access,” Breaking Defense wrote in a report, citing comments from Col. Jeff Weisler, Delta 8 commander, over the summer.
As the Trump administration rushes to secure the Western Hemisphere amid a world fracturing into a bipolar state and undergoing one of the biggest military reposturings in a generation, we recently noted: What good is the Golden Dome when China’s “assassin’s mace” hybrid warfare strategy, designed to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities from within, has been underway for years?
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