According to six sources with knowledge of the situation, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as the front-runners to win a key component of US President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield.
The sources claimed that Mr. Musk’s rocket and satellite company is collaborating with Palantir, a software company, and Anduril, a drone constructor, in an attempt to construct important portions of the Golden Dome. This bid has attracted a lot of interest from the growing number of defense-related technological startups in the industry.
Mr. Trump described a missile assault as “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States” in his executive order dated January 27. The founders of each of the three businesses have been strong political allies of Mr. Trump.
Mr Musk has donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Mr Trump, and now serves as a special adviser to the president working to cut government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency.
Some sources emphasized that the decision-making process for Mr. Trump’s Golden Dome is still in its early phases, even if the Pentagon has sent the SpaceX group encouraging signals.
Its final form and the people chosen to work on it may undergo significant changes in the months ahead.
According to reports, the three businesses recently met with senior officials from the Pentagon and the Trump administration to present their plan, which calls for the construction and launch of 400–1,000 satellites in orbit around the world to detect missiles and monitor their movements.
In a surprising turn of events, SpaceX has suggested establishing its involvement in Golden Dome as a “subscription service” whereby the government would cover the cost of access to the technology rather than fully owning it.
According to the two sources, the subscription approach, which hasn’t been publicized before, might get around some Pentagon procurement procedures and speed up the system’s rollout. The government might subsequently be tied into a subscription and lose control over its continued development and pricing, they argued, even though the strategy would not break any laws.
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