Latest news with #defenseContractors
CTV News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Trump's Golden Dome plan could launch new era of weapons in space
Posters for the proposed Golden Dome for America missile defense shield are displayed before an event with President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, Monday, May 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump's Golden Dome missile defence concept revives a controversial, decades-old initiative whose ambitious construction could upend norms in outer space and reshape relations between the world's top space powers. The announcement of Golden Dome, a vast network of satellites and weapons in Earth's orbit set to cost US$175 billion, could sharply escalate the militarization of space, a trend that has intensified over the last decade, space analysts say. While the world's biggest space powers - the U.S., Russia and China - have put military and intelligence assets in orbit since the 1960s, they have done so mostly in secrecy. Under former president Joe Biden, U.S. Space Force officials had grown vocal about a need for greater offensive space capabilities due to space-based threats from Russia and China. When Trump announced his Golden Dome plan in January, it was a clear shift in strategy, one that emphasizes a bold move into space with expensive, untested technology that could be a financial boon to U.S. defence contractors. The concept includes space-based missiles that would launch from satellites in orbit to intercept conventional and nuclear missiles launched from Earth. 'I think it's opening a Pandora's box,' said Victoria Samson, director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation think tank in Washington, referring to deploying missiles in space. 'We haven't truly thought about the long-term consequences for doing so,' she added. Samson and other experts said Golden Dome could provoke other states to place similar systems in space or to develop more advanced weapons to evade the missile shield, escalating an arms race in space. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russia and China reacted differently to the latest news from Trump. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said it was 'seriously concerned' about the project and urged Washington to abandon its development, adding that it carried 'strong offensive implications' and heightened the risks of the militarization of outer space and an arms race. A Kremlin spokesperson said Golden Dome could force talks between Moscow and Washington about nuclear arms control in the foreseeable future. Primarily seeking to defend against a growing arsenal of conventional and nuclear missiles from U.S. adversaries Russia, China and smaller states such as North Korea and Iran, the Golden Dome plan is a revival of a Cold War-era effort by former U.S. president Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as the 'Star Wars' program. SDI envisioned stationing a constellation of missiles and powerful laser weapons in low-Earth orbit that could intercept a ballistic nuclear missile launched anywhere on Earth below, either in its boost phase moments after launch or in its blazing-fast cruise phase in space. But the idea never came to fruition mainly because of technological hurdles, as well as the high cost and concerns it would violate an anti-ballistic missile treaty that has since been abandoned. 'We're ready' Golden Dome has strong and powerful allies in the defence contracting community and the growing defence technology arena, many of whom have been preparing for Trump's big move into space weaponry. 'We knew that this day was likely going to come. You know, we're ready for it,' L3Harris Chief Financial Officer Ken Bedingfield said in an interview with Reuters last month. 'L3 Harris has an early start of building the sensor network that will become the foundational sensor network for the Golden Dome architecture.' Trump ally Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company SpaceX has emerged as a frontrunner alongside software firm Palantir and drone maker Anduril to build key components of the system, Reuters reported last month. Many of the early systems are expected to come from existing production lines. Attendees at the White House press conference with Trump on Tuesday named L3Harris, Lockheed Martin and RTX Corp as potential contractors for the massive project. But Golden Dome's funding remains uncertain. Republican lawmakers have proposed a $25 billion initial investment for it as part of a broader $150 billion defence package, but this funding is tied to a contentious reconciliation bill that faces significant hurdles in Congress. Reporting by Joey Roulette; Additional reporting by Mike Stone; Editing by Jamie Freed, Reuters
Reuters
21-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
What is the Golden Dome missile defense shield?
May 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump picked a design for his Golden Dome missile defense system and named a leader of the ambitious $175 billion defense program. Here are details on Golden Dome, where the idea comes from and how it will work. The aim is for Golden Dome to leverage a network of hundreds of satellites circling the globe with sophisticated sensors and interceptors to knock out incoming enemy missiles after they lift off from countries like China, Iran, North Korea or Russia. "I promised the American people that I would build a cutting edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack," Trump said when he made the announcement on Tuesday. In April the Pentagon asked defense contractors how they would design and build a network to knock out intercontinental ballistic missiles during the "boost phase" just after lift-off - the slow and predictable climb of an enemy missile through the Earth's atmosphere. Existing defenses target enemy missiles while they travel through space. Once the missile has been detected, Golden Dome will either shoot it down before it enters space with an interceptor or a laser, or further along its path of travel in space with an existing missile defense system that uses land-based interceptors stationed in California and Alaska. Beneath the space intercept layer, the system will have another defensive layer based in or around the U.S. This is something the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency looked into during the first Trump administration. "We helped Israel with theirs, and [it] was very successful, and now we have technology that's even far advanced from that," Trump said referring to Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. The short-range Iron Dome air defense system was built to intercept the kinds of rockets fired by the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza. Developed by Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with U.S. backing, it became operational in 2011. Each truck-towed unit fires radar-guided missiles to blow up short-range threats like rockets, mortars and drones in mid-air. The system determines whether a rocket is on course to hit a populated area; if not, the rocket is ignored and allowed to land harmlessly. Iron Dome was originally billed as providing city-sized coverage against rockets with ranges of between 4 and 70 km (2.5 to 43 miles), but experts say this has since been expanded. "We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland," Trump said on Tuesday. The idea of strapping rocket launchers, or lasers, to satellites so they can shoot down enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles is not new. It was part of the Star Wars initiative devised during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. But it represents a huge and expensive technological leap from current capabilities. Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative," as it was called, was announced in 1983 as groundbreaking research into a national defense system that could make nuclear weapons obsolete. The heart of the SDI program was a plan to develop a space-based missile defense program that could protect the U.S. from a large-scale nuclear attack. The proposal involved many layers of technology that would enable the United States to identify and destroy automatically a large number of incoming ballistic missiles as they were launched, as they flew, and as they approached their targets. SDI failed because it was too expensive, too ambitious from a technology perspective, could not be easily tested and appeared to violate an existing anti-ballistic missile treaty. Trump ally Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company SpaceX has emerged as a frontrunner alongside software firm Palantir (PLTR.O), opens new tab and drone maker Anduril to build key components of the system. Many of the early systems are expected to come from existing production lines. Attendees at the White House press conference with Trump named L3Harris Technologies (LHX.N), opens new tab, Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), opens new tab and RTX Corp (RTX.N), opens new tab as potential contractors for the massive project. L3 has invested $150 million in building out its new facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where it makes the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Satellites that are part of a Pentagon effort to better detect and track hypersonic weapons with space-based sensors and could be adapted for Golden Dome. But Golden Dome's funding remains uncertain. Republican lawmakers have proposed a $25-billion initial investment for it as part of a broader $150-billion defense package, but this funding is tied to a contentious reconciliation bill that faces significant hurdles in Congress.
The Verge
16-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
The US Army is getting in on right-to-repair
The US Army is done relying on contractors to repair its equipment. Earlier this month, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll committed to including right-to-repair provisions in all existing and future contracts with manufacturers, a change Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told The Verge will 'put an end to our dependence on giant defense contractors who charge billions of dollars and take months to repair critical equipment.' For now, only the Army has committed to securing right-to-repair provisions in contracts. But Warren is pushing for other military branches to adopt the requirement, addressing long-standing repairability problems across the armed forces. She's also hopeful that it could have a broader impact across industries and serve as a model for how other companies and organizations can advocate for similar repair-friendly provisions. For years, reports have highlighted the US military's struggle to fix its own equipment, forcing it to wait on defense contractors to service them — even when stationed in foreign countries. A 2019 report from The New York Times described how a maintenance Marine in South Korea couldn't repair a generator needed for training 'because of the warranty,' despite having tools to fix them. The same report said that engines at a US military base in Okinawa, Japan, 'were packed up and shipped back to contractors in the United States for repairs,' while ProPublica found that the Navy's contract with General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin forced the US military to fly contractors to the ship to make repairs on 'proprietary' equipment, 'adding millions in travel costs and often delaying missions.' Warren pushed the Army to take a tougher stance on right-to-repair through 2024, calling out the 'costly restrictions' that prevent the military from fixing its own equipment in a letter to the Department of Defense. Warren and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) later introduced the Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act, which would require contractors to provide the military with 'fair and reasonable access' to parts, tools, and information needed to repair equipment. The bill was introduced in December 2024 but has not reached the House floor yet. The US military is a major force for manufacturers to contend with — and Warren hopes that adopting repairability rules will have a ripple effect far outside it. 'The Army's commitment to right to repair shows other industries that they can do the same,' Warren says. 'If it can happen here, it can happen in farm equipment, farmers, washing machines, consumer electronics… and every place else that big manufacturers have tried to take two bites at the apple: the initial price and another bite at the consumer to cover subsequent repairs.'
