Golden Dome’s live-fire drills have started running equipment that never passed through the Pentagon’s normal acquisition pipeline. Army Lt. Gen. Brian Gibson, deputy director of the homeland missile-defense effort, said two exercises over the past eight months included industry hardware and software outside any formal military program. He disclosed the detail Aug. 26 at the AFCEA/INSA Intelligence and National Security Summit without naming the companies or systems.
Gibson said the drills existed to prove out software and fresh connections between sensors that detect incoming threats and the weapons assigned to take them down. He called the tests deliberately complex, pushing systems toward their limits rather than demonstrate capabilities already known to work, so the program learns where failure lives and builds to success from there.
Industry’s role extends past the test range. Gibson said the Golden Dome Ecosystem Hub, the digital doorway the Pentagon opened this month, has drawn thousands of submissions from startups and universities. He argued the program should skip the request-for-information and proposal cycle, telling firms to bring forward what they can do instead of waiting to be asked. The faster path shifts financial risk onto contractors, with technologies judged at intermediate knowledge points under flexible Other Transaction Authority deals. Space Force’s space-based interceptor contest already runs on this model, with companies funding their own bids.
Gibson stopped short of committing to an orbital interceptor fleet, saying the Space Force is working with companies under contract to test the promise of space-based intercept. Gen. Michael Guetlein, the official leading Golden Dome, said one classified exercise shot down everything put in the air within 34 minutes. The shield links sensors, command networks and interceptors across land, sea, air and space to stop ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles and drones before they reach US territory.
