The Department of War is moving back the deadline to submit proposals for the Golden Dome due to a surge of interest from the defense sector, according to reports.
According to Defense One, the Missile Defense Agency issued a memo on October 2 that moves the proposal deadline to October 16. “The solicitation posted on [Sept. 10] generated considerable interest, resulting in over 1,500 questions from industry,” the memo read.
“The questions received were primarily focused on requests for clarification based on individual company interests/situations and resulted in very few updates to the solicitation,” said Missile Defense Agency spokesman Mark Wright, as per Defense One. “The extension is predominantly due to the sheer volume of answers for industry to review and not the updates to the solicitation.”
The Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense effort, called SHIELD, is estimated to be a $151 billion project over the next ten years.
According to a scope of the project, the proposals seek to develop a “versatile vehicle that allows for the rapid delivery of innovative capabilities to the warfighter with increased speed and agility, leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled applications where pertinent, and maximizing use of digital engineering, open systems architectures, model-based systems engineering, and agile processes in the acquisition, development, and sustainment of these capabilities.”
Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin created a prototyping hub for the development of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome. The Golden Dome for America Command and Control (C2) capability is considered critical for integrating data from sensors and vital to “interceptor launches,” the defense contractor explained.
