As part of the country’s grandiose “Golden Dome” air defense project, the US Space Force has begun awarding prototype contracts for space-based interceptors, SpaceNews reports. These designs will focus on targeting threats like missiles during their boost and mid-course phases, with support from orbital and ground-based detection systems.
How to tackle future threats from hypersonic cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and an ever-expanding field of long-range drone technology is a tricky nut to crack. Although existing air defense missiles are effective, they’re expensive and far from foolproof. (We’ve seen evidence of this in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, where Russia’s missiles regularly breach the shielding offered by American Patriot systems.)
A major component of the Golden Dome concept is flooding space with hundreds or even thousands of space-based weapons (AKA interceptor missiles) that can target airborne threats and rapidly chase them down, regardless of where they come from. The US Space Force is now handing out contracts to develop these interceptors, with a particular focus on targeting enemy missiles while they’re still boosting within the atmosphere.
If realized, golden dome would be designed to stop a range of threats.
Credit: US Government DIA
Missiles at this stage are far slower and easier to detect and track. That’s because they boost themselves with a rocket motor, so their exhaust, light, sound, and heat can be used to narrow down a target. These interceptors need to get there fast, though, as it can take less than a minute for these missiles to finish boosting, exit the atmosphere, and reach their sub-orbital trajectory.
That’s why the interceptors need to be based in space. If they’re already in orbit, they can quickly be reoriented to boost down and destroy the rising missile. Detractors have highlighted that such a design would require a large number of interceptors to effectively cover risk sites around the world, making the project prohibitively expensive and easy to overwhelm.
The Space Force is also targeting the mid-phase, during which the enemy missile has completed boosting and is coasting toward its destructive impact. The challenge here is having the sensors and satellite-tracking capabilities in place to keep an eye on the missiles and retain the ability to target them as they go cold and dark.
Further developments from here will likely remain hushed up, but it appears as if the age of no weapons in space may be slowly coming to a close.