The SHIELD Roster Arrives: A Massive R&D Bench, But Not the Golden Dome Starting Lineup
- Kimberly Siversen Burke
- 21 hours ago
- 4 min read
Dec. 11, 2025 by Kimberly Siversen Burke
If you scanned the 1,014 companies the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) released on Dec. 2 in its first wave of SHIELD IDIQ awardees, expecting to see SpaceX, Anduril, or Palantir, and instead tripped over Ho-Chunk Shared Services, you’re not alone.
Many assumed the $151-billion ceiling Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) contract vehicle would include the first cut of primes assembling the foundational layer of the Golden Dome.
Instead, MDA published 24 pages of what looks like a roster of federally focused R&D contractors, systems engineering firms, sensor and payload specialists, software and cyber integrators, digital-engineering and modeling outfits, test-and-evaluation providers, and mid-tier defense companies that typically handle the enabling technologies before a prime contractor cobbles them all together.
Now, these 1,014 awardees are cleared to receive task orders under a contract anchored by two product service codes:
NAICS 541715 — R&D in physical and engineering sciences
PSC AC13 — Experimental development for national defense
Those codes are important. They help define the procurement. This won't be the Pentagon’s storefront for space-based interceptors or other marquee hardware. Instead, SHIELD will be the marketplace for everything upstream — modeling, simulation, subsystem prototyping, early-stage sensors, data fabrics, AI/ML pipelines, analysis tooling, and digital-engineering environments that Golden Dome (and other programs) will draw from.
There are another 40 (more specific) NAICS codes that can be applied for services at the task-order level, but the takeaway is still the same: SHIELD is where ideas are mapped out and pressure-tested, not where full weapon systems are delivered.
The list makes a lot more sense when viewed through that lens.
If You’re Looking for the Primes, You’re in the Wrong Room
The absence of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and the rest of the defense OGs (and new guard) isn’t really a mystery once you zoom out. These companies aren’t MIA — they’re just entering Golden Dome through entirely different procurement lanes. And those lanes don’t seem to be running through SHIELD.
For example, just last month, the Space Force issued 18 Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) contracts for space-based interceptors. Award values were kept below public-disclosure thresholds ($9 million), and names were withheld officially, but reportedly include Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Anduril, and True Anomaly. Then, on Dec. 7, Space Force issued another RPP for midcourse kinetic interceptor prototypes with awards planned for this February.
So it looks like the SBIs, missile-warning satellites, transport networks, fire-control upgrades, etc., will be procured through Space Force, service-level channels, and MDA’s other acquisition mechanisms, rather than through SHIELD’s R&D framework.
Simply put: the primes and many major component suppliers are already in the game. They’re just gathering on another field.
That said, the IDIQ doesn’t completely sideline the majors. Heavy hitters like Viasat, Rocket Lab, Redwire, and L3Harris all show up, possibly because their capabilities can still map to the experimental/prototyping layer:
Viasat: Well-positioned for SHIELD tasking for protected waveforms, resilient satcom transport layers, network-of-networks modeling, and C2 interface simulation and verification.
Rocket Lab: Could be tapped for hosted-payload buses, on-orbit sensor-prototype platforms, early GNC development, hypersonic-threat replication testbeds, and rapid rideshare deployment of experimental hardware.
Redwire: Possibly participating through materials R&D, deployable structures, optical bench development, and prototype payload platforms in the SabreSat class.
L3Harris: Fits SHIELD’s needs in digital-engineering environments, next-gen OPIR-adjacent sensor trials, tracking-algorithm development, and early C2 fusion experimentation.
These companies may have the horsepower to prime, but SHIELD doesn’t appear aimed at system-level design. Under this IDIQ, they’re more likely to deliver focused experiments and niche prototypes than steer the broader system design. That’s not to say many aren’t also participating across multiple Golden-Dome-adjacent contracts outside this vehicle.
Behind the SHIELD: a Strategic Read
Golden Dome is a Trump Administration mandate that – depending on the architecture the Pentagon ultimately chooses – could speed-run into multi-trillion-dollar territory over its lifecycle. And even through the fog of low disclosure, it’s becoming clear that it will also be more of a stitched-together, multi-agency, missile-defense, mega-consortium than a single monolithic program of record.
Flexible umbrella mechanisms – including the MAA that MDA stood up in early 2025 – will no doubt accelerate experimentation and give the agency more on-ramps to tap non-traditional vendors. But they will also turn award tracking into a full-body contortion exercise for anyone trying to map the architecture end-to-end (I’m already warming up). And that’s why the first real peek under the Golden Dome procurement hood matters – even if the list doesn’t look anything like the one we white-boarded.
SHIELD’s opening tranche clarifies that this IDIQ fuels early tech maturation rather than steering the main procurement effort, despite a $151-billion ceiling that once suggested otherwise. It also signals just how intentionally the USG is stockpiling depth before making system-level calls.
It might not be the starting lineup.
But it’s the lineup that makes starting possible.
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