The Golden Dome as a Service

Executive Summary

On May 20, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that the Golden Dome, an initiative to provide a missile defense shield for the U.S. homeland, would cost $175 billion and take three years to build. Since it was first described in an executive order on January 27, 2025, a number of U.S. companies have expressed interest in contributing to the project, including a consortium reportedly proposing a space-based solution, which would, at least in part, be sold as a service using a subscription model. Regardless of whether this rumor proves true, given President Trump’s emphasis on federal use of commercial options and the Pentagon’s pilot anything-as-a-service program, it provides a timely pretext for examining the legal, regulatory, and policy foundations for military use of commercial services and assessing the compatibility of space-based missile defense elements of the Golden Dome within this framework.

The military has long used contractors and commercial services to accomplish military functions, including space missions for which the U.S. Space Force has articulated a “buy before build” commercial preference. This predisposition for commercial options supporting military space functions aligns with overall U.S. government policies that have attempted to remove barriers for using commercial services to support the government’s mission and space missions specifically.

Some of the benefits of the anything-as-a-service model include continuous innovation, technology refresh, and possible economies of scale. Companies developing commercial solutions are not constrained by the rigid strictures of government contracting and can typically develop and offer a service, oftentimes using a fail-fast methodology (i.e., a willingness to accept failures and more risk to quickly make improvements), quicker than the government could have developed its own capability using its typical mechanisms.

Though it may sound far-fetched, use of commercial services for the space-based elements of the Golden Dome deserves serious, thoughtful consideration. Space-based interceptors could be provided as a service such that a government employee retains the decision on firing a missile interceptor—but everything up to that point is provided as the service, including hostile missile detection and tracking. Under this arrangement, there are no clear legal or regulatory barriers to buying any part of space-based missile defense as a commercial service—but there are challenges to such an approach. These challenges relate to culture and mindset, among other things, and include (1) perceptions about material deficiencies of commercial services, (2) concerns about contractors performing inherently governmental roles, (3) the lack of commercial options or a mature commercial market for certain services aligned primarily to the military as a customer, and (4) challenges in matching how the government buys things with commercial practices.

Though this paper focuses on space-based missile defense, the broader issue—how the military and government buys things—is much larger. Space-based missile defense is just one example of a military space function that seem unlikely for acquisition as a commercial service. Another example is space control. Space-based missile interceptors, a key part of Golden Dome, are essentially space control weapons; they would intercept and destroy hostile missiles while transiting space. But these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more use cases across all domains where the military could derive benefits by turning to commercial services. Identifying why space-based missile defense and space control as a service might make sense should open doors for using services to support more military, particularly space, missions.

Scoping Space-Based Missile Defense

The Golden Dome initiative would include, among other elements, a space-based component that would provide detection, tracking, and boost-phase missile intercept capabilities. In late May 2025, the president announced that Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, currently the vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, would lead the initiative, serving in a role that will likely report directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg.

While a number of current military systems aim to defeat ballistic missiles in their midcourse and terminal phases of flight—the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense and Aegis systems target missiles in their midcourse phase and the Patriot, Aegis, and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems target missiles in their terminal phases—the Golden Dome would include space-based interceptors aimed at hostile missiles in their boost phase, which is a short three-to-five-minute period after missile launch. The Golden Dome, like the current U.S. ballistic missile warning architecture, would also lean heavily on space-based components for missile launch detection and missile flight tracking data, which would be used to help steer interceptors to their targets. Essentially, the Golden Dome as a service could include either satellites performing missile launch detection and tracking (e.g., satellites with cameras and thermal sensors), satellites performing the missile intercept function, or both.

Like midcourse interceptors, boost-phase interceptors would target hostile missiles while they transit space on their ballistic trajectories. In the case of boost-phase missile defense, the interception altitude could be somewhere around 200 kilometers. This means that boost-phase missile intercept is essentially an evolutionary offshoot of space control. Historically, space control has focused on protecting and defending U.S. satellites and preventing an adversary from using its own satellites. But broadly speaking, space control centers on space access and use: denying an adversary access to and use of space, including the transit of missiles through space, while preserving space access and use for allied purposes. Like missile defense, space control also relies on sensors for targeting and tracking. But unlike missile defense, the sensor data supporting space control, called space domain awareness, is obtained from both commercial and government-operated sources.

The space control mission, which arguably includes space-based missile interceptors, is the only current military mission in space that uses weapons. Neither use case involves using weapons against human beings, with boost-phase intercept targeting missiles and the rest of space control focusing on satellites and other uncrewed spacecraft. Theoretically, a military action resulting in a debris-generating event in space could increase risks to astronauts on the two space stations currently in orbit, but such an outcome would be an indirect effect. Considering the escalatory risk of the use of a weapon in space, there should be a government employee deciding when to launch a missile interceptor—this could be stipulated in any contract terms for a space-based missile defense service.

Legal, Regulatory, and Policy Guardrails on Using Commercial Services

The Army issued the first U.S. military contracts, which sought to acquire supplies and services for the “subsistence, covering, clothing, and moving of an army,” in 1781. Though the military has continued to buy goods and services from companies ever since, the U.S. government did not codify in law what only the government, and not contractors, could do until 1998, when a definition for inherently governmental functions was added to U.S. code. The definition’s inclusion in law was part of bipartisan policymaking efforts beginning in the 1980s to create a leaner government by reducing the size of the federal workforce and outsourcing functions that could be done most cost-effectively using commercial services or contractors.

When codifying the “inherently governmental” definition, policymakers were aiming to encourage greater use of commercial services by narrowly defining what jobs had to be performed by government workers, limiting them to functions “so intimately related to the public interest as to require performance by Federal Government employees.” Included alongside this definition is a non-exhaustive list of inherently governmental functions—in summary, directing military, diplomatic, and judicial actions, managing government resources and personnel, and acting on behalf of and representing the government. The Federal Acquisition Regulation provides additional clarity around inherently governmental functions, including another non-exhaustive list of specific activities that must be performed by government employees and not contractors.

On top of these government-wide rules, the Department of Defense (DOD) has its own regulations and policies that specify what contractors can do when supporting military operations. There is no bright-line prohibition on contractors participating in frontline or offensive operations, though the DOD does not intentionally place nongovernment personnel in such situations. Some have argued that the Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1892 bans the use of contractors in combat roles (i.e., as mercenaries). However, a 1978 court ruling, a subsequent interpretation and decision by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and a federal regulation leave more questions than answers as to how this law would apply to the military use of commercial services and contractors in operations. Notably, military rules allow contractors to use deadly force for self-defense or, in the case of contractors providing security services, when deadly force “reasonably appears necessary” to execute their mission.

Military Use of As-a-Service Models and Contractors

Today, the military uses commercial services and contractors for critical but sometimes under-the-radar functions supporting joint operations, using what is often referred to as a contractor owned, contractor operated (COCO) model. Though all DOD functions are aligned to support the lethality of the force, some are more directly linked than others. For example, the Army’s Aerial Reconnaissance and Targeting Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System (ARTEMIS) and Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES) programs use a COCO model in which a contractor provides intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities as a service. The Air Force leased whole aircraft and paid for the associated aircraft maintenance as a service for what was then called the regional commander in chief (CINC) support mission. The Navy uses commercial services for conducting airborne supply missions using helicopters to ships at sea.

Moreover, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military acquired a variety of as-a-service functions, including security services, from thousands of contractors. These contractors were not expected to be in combat but were permitted to use deadly force in certain circumstances. But most military contractors perform their duties far from active operational areas, serving in logistics and support roles behind the front lines. For work in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military also contracted civilian aircraft and crews to provide ISR and hired contractors to build and operate base logistics support services.

With respect to space, commercial services have also played an important role providing capabilities for joint operations. Since the 1960s, the DOD has obtained satellite communications services from commercial operators for military use. Starting more recently, the DOD has acquired both geospatial intelligence as a service and analytical insights used to support operations from companies operating satellites that collect electro-optical, radar, and RF sensing data. The Space Force also contracts with companies to obtain space domain awareness data and surveillance, reconnaissance, and tracking products using an as-a-service model—providing functions that directly support the space control mission and space superiority objective. Additionally, all military space launches are purchased as a commercial service.

The military has also signaled its continued and growing interest in using commercial space solutions through the publications of official integration strategies. In April 2024, the DOD released its Commercial Space Integration Strategy and the Space Force published its Commercial Space Strategy. U.S. Space Command published its first Commercial Integration Strategy in 2022.
 

Advantages from Using Commercial Services

U.S. policymakers from both sides of the aisle have repeatedly made clear their preference that the government should buy and use commercial services when they meet government needs rather than contract for a government-specific solution. Successive administrations have published and updated guidance on how the federal government should use commercial products and services. In December 2016, Congress amended Title 10 as part of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 to require a DOD preference for commercial solutions. In April 2025, President Trump issued an executive order directing the increased use of commercial solutions in federal contracting.

This long-standing commercial preference exists for several reasons. For one, the government can take advantage of the economies of scale to derive cost efficiencies, as they would be one of many buyers for a commercial product or service. Secondly, there is broad recognition that there is no reason the government should compete with the private sector to build its own custom capability that could have been bought on the commercial market. Buying commercially allows a company to sell the same product or service to other customers, creating a beneficial economic and innovation flywheel effect through which a company not only grows and creates jobs, but also has a strong incentive to keep making its products and services better so that they can sell more.

Neither of these reasons is a good fit in cases when the government would be the only buyer (i.e., for commercial services oriented entirely around national security). However, there are cases, possibly including Golden Dome missile defense and space control, where—though there might not be other commercial buyers—there are possible buyers from other allied governments. A company selling missile defense as a service could potentially sell that service to countries other than the United States, or to allied organizations such as NATO. Thus, even for military-centric commercial services, there are still opportunities to derive cost efficiencies from scale by selling services to more than one customer. Though the U.S. government will probably want to play a role in deciding to which other countries and how missile defense services would be sold.

Coincidentally, NASA plans to replace the International Space Station using commercial crewed space stations and expects to be one of many customers of the commercial stations, including space agencies from other nations. Moreover, with an appropriate regulatory and policy foundation, it is not inconceivable to imagine a space control–as-a-service model for which commercial space operators could subscribe, similarly to how companies today purchase security services for physical buildings and cybersecurity services for protection in cyberspace. In the case of space control as a service for commercial satellites, it is possible to imagine the U.S. government requiring that a government employee be responsible for deciding when to activate a defensive counterspace measure, equivalent potentially to taking a “hack back” action in cyberspace.

But even without the chance to save money by being one of many buyers, there remains a reason to prefer a commercial service: Buying a service allows the government to benefit from innovative, out-of-the-box thinking that it mostly does not get when it builds a custom capability according to traditional requirements and acquisition processes. This innovation advantage—perhaps the most frequently given reason today for more government use of commercial solutions—stems from how a product or service is conceived and developed and not whether it already exists or actually has commercial customers. This advantage did not necessarily arise because companies that traditionally build things for the government, like defense contractors, are less clever or inventive than companies who usually do not do business with the government. Rather, this commercial advantage is the government’s fault, stemming from the fundamental difference between how the government buys things and how they are bought in the commercial market, including by nongovernment consumers.

Innovation does not happen because companies ask their customers what they want in five years and then build precisely to those specifications, as the DOD process works. Instead, innovation happens when companies take risks to anticipate what will delight their customers next. Henry Ford is often quoted as having said if he “asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” There is nothing inherently wrong with the government specifying precisely what it wants built and delivered in a certain number of years, other than the fact this approach constrains innovation. But if the goal is to maximize innovation, the government should give a sense of what it needs, then let companies who want to use private investment to develop a new commercial product or service to sell to the government.

In addition to leaning on private capital to fund product development, this approach could deliver solutions faster than typical government acquisition processes, including ones optimized for speed. Consider the following two developments, the first entirely commercial and the second following streamlined government acquisition processes, as examples of the differences in timelines.

SpaceX’s Starlink

In January 2015, SpaceX announced the opening of a Seattle office to begin work on Starlink and predicted that it could begin offering global service after about five years. The prototype Starlink satellites were launched in 2018 and first operational satellites were launched in 2019. Starlink began offering beta service in July 2020—essentially matching SpaceX’s timeline announced five years earlier—and today has nearly 8,000 satellites in orbit.

SDA’s Transport and Tracking Layers:

Established in March 2019, the Space Development Agency (SDA) was set up to operate much faster than traditional DOD space acquisition organizations. In April 2023, SDA launched its first transport layer satellites. Though SDA expected to have around 170 satellites in orbit by October 2025, including an initial warfighting capability, it is well short of that goal. As of May 2025, SDA had only 19 transport layer and 8 tracking layer satellites in orbit—all part of an initial testing and evaluation group of satellites.

Rather than a critique of SDA, which has demonstrated it can operate much more quickly than other Pentagon space acquisition elements, this is a critique of the acquisition process writ large, showing that even the most streamlined processes cannot match the speed of commercial development. A report published by GAO in June 2024 made a similar point, after assessing a wider range of military developments: The DOD struggles to field systems with speed. Though this paper does not attempt to diagnose the root cause of this issue, it does argue that the government should consider that it could acquire new capabilities faster if it allowed companies operate free from government procurement rules and processes.

To get the best outcomes, the government should consider not only how companies develop new products, but also how they sell them. Though the government accrues an innovation advantage when it buys a commercial product and then operates it using a government-owned, government-operated (GOGO) model, it derives additional benefits when it buys a service. While most commonly manifested as the COCO model, services could also be bought using a contractor-owned, government-operated (COGO) model, which was the model used by the Air Force for leasing whole aircraft, as noted earlier in this paper. These contractor-owned as-a-service models track with a broader trend in how consumers and businesses buy and use things like cloud computing, software, streaming and online media, and connectivity, as well as physical things like scooters, bicycles, grocery and meal delivery, and haute couture, which are all increasingly accessible through as-a-service models. For space in particular, companies have demonstrated a preference to sell things as a service. Companies gravitate towards subscription models because they provide a predictable revenue stream, smoothing out the peaks and valleys of revenue variation. Giving corporate leaders and investors more confidence in the long-term financial health of their businesses translates directly into their willingness to make bold investments in upgrades, enhancements, and entirely new products.

This attitude from companies aligns with one of the main benefits to the customer (i.e., the government) of buying something as a service versus a product: continuous improvements in outcomes over time. When the government buys a service, it is buying an outcome, and the government can require or incentivize a contractor to deliver improvements and enhancements to outcomes over time. Government ownership and operation of a product or capability limits opportunities for agile development and enhancements, somewhat locking the government into hardware and, possibly, software acquired at the time of purchase. While old hardware and software can be upgraded, the burden is on the government to maintain and, hopefully, improve any capability that it owns and operates. Shifting that responsibility to a company and building in contractual incentives for continuous innovation and improvements helps ensure the military has the best outcome (e.g., the most cutting-edge solution) for a particular use case, such as missile defense.

Barriers to Greater Military Use of Commercial Services

Beyond the patchwork of laws, regulations, and policies influencing how the DOD uses contractors and commercial services, decisions are also shaped by other factors, such as culture, mindset, and worries that a commercial service would not meet the same standards, (e.g., reliability and cybersecurity) as a GOGO capability. Though these barriers are not often clearly articulated by military officials, their fingerprints can be seen in the two aforementioned commercial space strategies published in 2024—one by the DOD and the other by Space Force—which categorize military space functions by the military’s interest level in acquiring them as a commercial service. While the strategies note DOD interest in incorporating commercial solutions in all functions, the categories create an impression that there is no demand from the military for certain types of commercial products and services.

Though acknowledging that the categorizations could evolve over time, these strategies reinforce and protect the status quo, indicating interest in commercial services where they are already used but ruling out commercial services where functions are entirely performed now by GOGO systems. Specifically, functions already acquired by the military as a commercial service and used alongside GOGO capabilities, are deemed appropriate for acquisition as a commercial service. So too are functions that are entirely acquired today as a service, like space launch, and functions that the DOD does not currently use, like in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing. Functions that are currently entirely provided by GOGO capabilities, perhaps not surprisingly, are categorized as less appropriate for acquisition as a service and commercial support.

These categorizations, for which no clear legal, regulatory, or policy reasons are given in the strategies, point to the impacts of officially unacknowledged and yet consequential barriers to the consideration and use of as-a-service solutions, as well as use of commercial products in GOGO scenarios, for military space functions beyond those that are already supported by commercial services. These barriers can be grouped into several categories.

Material Deficiencies

Justifications for ruling out the use of as-a-service solutions are often based on apparent beliefs that commercial services are inherently deficient or inferior to GOGO alternatives in one way or another. These perceived deficiencies relate to levels of quality or cybersecurity; that companies might shut off or withhold access to a vital commercial service, possibly because the company goes out of business; or that buying a commercial service risks the specter of vendor lock. The implication is that a commercial service is not good enough—that only a GOGO capability can meet the need. However, these pseudo-axioms are typically built on weak or contradictory foundations.

While one could point to cyberattacks and jamming against Viasat and Starlink during the conflict in Ukraine as examples of the vulnerability of commercial services, these examples also demonstrate the flexibility and agility of companies in responding to and mitigating new threats. Additionally, concerns about levels of assurance and quality, along with fears that a company could cut off U.S. government access to a service, seem excessive and are not borne out by the facts: There are no conspicuous examples of a company cutting off service to the DOD. In any case, the Space Force’s Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) initiative, which aims to create a contractual framework for military use of commercial space services during contingencies, has emphasized the importance of contract terms and conditions for addressing concerns that the military could lose access to services when they are most needed. Clear and precise contractual language defines the government’s expected outcomes, including level and quality of service and cybersecurity, ensuring that companies know precisely to what they are agreeing. And the government’s obsession with avoiding vendor lock, which usually translates into a government desire to own a company’s intellectual property, is actually hurting innovation and limiting the military’s access to commercial solutions.

The simple fact that the DOD already uses commercial services to enable joint operations—the military is reliant on commercial space launch and extensively uses commercial cloud—points to the inherent weakness in arguments that rule out use of as-a-service solutions based on a perceived material deficiency of commercial options. In the case of CASR, the DOD is placing companies on contract to provide commercial space services in contingencies and emergencies, showing that military decisionmakers have determined these commercial services are good enough for use in the most demanding scenarios, such as a full-blown war or natural disaster response.

Contractors as Combatants

Using commercial space services for military operations, particularly combat-like and offensive operations, may place contractors and commercial space systems in an adversary’s crosshairs. Historically, the United States has tried to distinguish between private military contractors and mercenaries to avoid this issue, but the distinction is ambiguous according to international law. This line is likely even further blurred for space operations because, as noted earlier, virtually no military operation in space could lead directly to a human fatality. And no matter how finely Pentagon lawyers differentiate the use of certain space services from others, trying to draw a distinction between combat and combat-support space services may not really matter where the rubber meets the road in a future conflict.

China and Russia have already made clear they view U.S. commercial space systems supporting defense missions as legitimate military targets. As a result, commercial U.S. space operators are exposed to a difficult-to-quantify level of risk, which dramatically rises during wartime and includes cyber threats during peacetime. In a future conflict, elements of a space-based missile defense system would certainly be high priority targets, alongside communications and remote sensing satellites, which help enable and support allied joint operations. For several years, the DOD and space companies have debated whether the government has a role in indemnifying or insuring commercial operators exposed to these risks. Given the scale of commercial investment likely needed to build a space-based missile defense system, companies involved in its construction and operation would presumably seek some certainty on what type and how much financial liability the government would assume should a commercial system be damaged or destroyed by an intentional hostile action.

In addition to concerns about commercial space systems being targets, it would be reasonable to anticipate some level of ethical concern over the use of commercial services for functions like missile defense and space control, akin to moral qualms about the use of mercenaries. This concern is somewhat related to worries about contractors making combat decisions and the issue of inherently governmental functions, described in detail earlier in this paper. But it should be noted that all the 13 military space functions listed in Table 2 could be acquired as commercial services without running up against inherently government issues, so long as there is a government employee “in the loop” on the use of a weapon. For space-based missile interceptors, a government employee could be kept “in the loop”—meaning that a government worker, not a contractor, has the final say on when to use a missile interceptor or space control weapon.

In fact, keeping a government employee involved in decisions is how the military is approaching AI-enabled lethal weapons systems—keeping a human either in the loop (i.e., a human has to approve decisions with lethal effects) or on the loop (i.e., a human can intervene to disapprove a decision but the system defaults to approval). But the military is already buying at least one fully-autonomous AI-enabled weapon system, so that Rubicon is already being crossed with thinking machines, instead of humans, making decisions with destructive consequences.

Lack of Existing Commercial Service

Other reasons for a lack of DOD interest in using commercial services for certain military space functions today include that there is no commercial option or mature commercial market, presumably meaning actual paying commercial customers, for a given service. These concerns hint at DOD hesitation to consider something “commercial” if the government is the only customer. However, the definition of commercial used in both the DOD and Space Force commercial space strategies allows for the government to be the main or only customer. In fact, the Space Force strategy specifically references the 2020 National Space Policy of the United States document, which states that:

The term “commercial,” for the purposes of this policy, refers to goods, services, or activities provided by private sector enterprises that bear a reasonable portion of the investment risk and responsibility for the activity, operate in accordance with typical market-based incentives for controlling cost and optimizing return on investment, and have the legal capacity to offer those goods or services to existing or potential non-governmental customers.

According to this definition, a company must have the “legal capacity” to offer a product or service to nongovernment customers; it does not actually have to sell it to them. There is also no requirement in this definition that nongovernment customers actually buy a product or service for it to be considered commercial. Meanwhile, the definition of commercial service in Title 41 of the U.S. Code merely states that a commercial service must be sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace—it does not specify that it must be sold to or bought by nongovernment customers, as commercial marketplace is not defined as such. The Pentagon should consider that a company may want to develop a product and business case around selling a commercial space service solely to the military, and that it might make sense for the military to buy such a service.

But when the military signals disinterest in buying a service that is not also bought by consumers or enterprise business customers, the Pentagon is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the military would rightly note, there are no commercial services available today to perform functions like space control, missile warning, and nuclear detonation detection, among other functions. But there is often no commercial service (e.g., no supply) to meet government-centric requirements, like missile defense and warning, because there is no clear government demand to buy it should such a service be available. A company could use its own capital or seek outside investors to fund the development of a new commercial service aimed at the DOD customer—many companies do this regularly, with perhaps Palantir and Anduril being the most well-known. But without demand from the government, it is often a risky investment that many companies hesitate to make.

This same disinterest also discourages commercial investment in developing products with the military customer in mind. But, at least in the case of commercial products, the Space Force is demonstrating a willingness to think differently, recently expressing interest in commercial products for space domain awareness satellites.

Inability to Mirror Commercial Buying

A fundamental barrier to the military being able to acquire commercial services is that it buys things differently than a commercial customer. Unlike a commercial customer, the military cannot contract for a commercial service that does not yet exist, as definitionally, a commercial service has to already be “offered and sold competitively,” and not something under development. This barrier means that the government will struggle to encourage the routine development of commercial services tailored to specific government wants and needs, particularly services that require a lot of investment, such as the space-based elements of the Golden Dome, because it cannot guarantee it would buy a commercial service once it’s brought to market.

Addressing this barrier would require the government to make clear its intention to buy a commercial service if it were available—the commercial market provides a model that the government could emulate to do this. Companies use long-term purchase orders to commit in a contract to buy a certain quantity of a product or service, sometimes before that item is available on the market. Creating a government acquisition option along the lines of a long-term purchase order, simply a contract to buy a commercial product or service that does not exist yet at a given price for a given time in the future, would require reforms to the government’s acquisition framework. That is because a long-term purchase order for something not yet available for sale conflicts with the statutory definition of commercial products: The government cannot use its commercial contracting tools to buy a commercial product or service that does not already exist. Fixing this problem may require a statutory change.

But even with a statutory fix to these definitions, using something like a long-term purchase order for a not-yet-existent commercial product or service would require rethinking how funding for such a contract would need to be appropriated to avoid violating the Antideficiency Act, which stipulates the government cannot spend money it does not have. This arrangement should also ensure the durability of long-term funding commitments, so they can survive political cycles and turnovers in Congress and the White House. Right now, both (1) a lack government ability to enter into a contract on commercial terms for a service that perhaps will not be available for several years and (2) the possibility of decisions made in one administration being overturned by the next generate significant business risk for companies seeking to invest in and build a capital-intensive infrastructure supporting a service intended solely for the government as a customer, such as the Golden Dome.
 

Conclusion

The military should closely examine its rationale for decisions on using, or not using, certain commercial space services to ensure it can maximally incorporate the innovation advantages afforded by U.S. companies to further U.S. national security. As part of that effort, the Pentagon should consider the merits of an as-a-service model for the space-based elements of the Golden Dome. Such an approach would be merely an evolution of how the DOD uses commercial space services today, and consistent with laws, regulations, and policies applicable to the government’s use of commercial solutions. To maintain military control over the use of a weapon in space, such as a missile interceptor, this approach should include a government employee in the decisionmaking loop, for example, deciding when to fire a missile interceptor. As described earlier, a primary reason to consider a commercial service over a product is that it affords the government tremendous innovation and speed advantages. The ability of the United States to unlock innovation and speed will decide the future of the Golden Dome and U.S. military space power—and more broadly, shape the future of U.S. national security.

Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

This report is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct sponsorship contributed to this report.