WASHINGTON — Sierra Nevada Corporation and AeroVironment today announced plans to team up on a joint pitch for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome project, aiming at the lower tier of small drones and cruise missiles.
The teamup will focus on “providing comprehensive, layered defenses within [Golden Dome], that shield specific, limited-area, high-value locations, such as bases, ships, airfields or critical infrastructure, but then can extend its range as new sensors and interceptors are brought online, particularly from space.”
Among the technologies the two firms propose to use are “passive and active sensing, radio frequency, directed energy, kinetic energy, electronic warfare and cyber solutions.”
Golden Dome, a pet project of President Donald Trump, notionally aims at creating an integrated air-and-missile defense network across the continental United States. Initial funding for the effort in the government’s reconciliation package amounts to $25 billion, just a starting point for an effort Trump has said will take $175 billion but experts believe will likely cost much more.
Wahid Nawabi, the chairman, president and CEO of AV, said in a statement that “Together, AV and SNC can rapidly provide novel and affordable defensive solutions, ensuring unmatched limited area ‘under-dome’ protection for critical U.S. infrastructure.”
Added SNC CEO Fatih Ozmen, “An ambitious, next-generation shield that protects the American homeland from more complex threats requires industry ingenuity and collaboration on par with the Manhattan Project.”
The announcement comes during the annual Space and Missile Defense symposium in Huntsville, Ala., where Golden Dome has been something of a sensitive subject. Government and industry sources told Breaking Defense that the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s public relations team barred Defense Department officials and military personnel from discussing the planned effort, forcing officials to dance around the subject.