Military Space Warfare Commercial Market Analysis 2026

Key Takeaways

• Commercial firms now supply space-based missile tracking, counterspace awareness, secure SATCOM and battle management software.
• More than 2,400 vendors qualified for the $151 billion SHIELD vehicle that feeds the Golden Dome missile defense program.
• The Space Development Agency awarded $3.5 billion for 72 Tranche 3 Tracking Layer satellites from four commercial primes in December 2025.
• Venture-backed entrants like Anduril, True Anomaly and ICEYE now contest ground that primes once owned.
• Commercial integration into wartime operations raises unresolved questions on denial of service, attribution and orbital debris.

The Golden Dome Pool Redefined What Counts as a Military Space Vendor

The Missile Defense Agency approved 2,440 of 2,463 applicants for the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense contract vehicle by mid-January 2026, opening a ten-year window worth up to $151 billion for task orders tied to Golden Dome and related homeland defense work. That pool is unlike any prior US space procurement. Primes such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon sit alongside venture-backed defense technology firms like Anduril Industries and Palantir, launch providers such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab, and universities running applied physics programs for missile defense research.

The underlying fiscal picture reinforces the shift. Congress passed the fiscal 2026 defense appropriations bill on February 3, 2026, with $13.4 billion earmarked for space and missile defense tied to Golden Dome, and reconciliation legislation in 2025 set aside an additional $25 billion. Program head Gen. Michael Guetlein told reporters in March 2026 that the official cost estimate had climbed to $185 billion because the office was “asked to procure some additional space capabilities.”

Space-based interceptors sit at the core of the program. The Space Force awarded prototype contracts under a classified Other Transaction Agreement to Anduril, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and True Anomaly in November 2025 for boost-phase interceptor development. Kinetic midcourse interceptor awards were expected in February 2026. The administration’s stated goal is demonstration of prototype next-generation missile defense technologies by 2028, a timeline many defense industry analysts view as aggressive given the technical novelty involved.

Tier One Primes Still Dominate Hardware, but the Mix Is Changing

Legacy primes continue to anchor the largest military space programs. The Space Development Agency’s December 19, 2025 award of $3.5 billion for 72 Tranche 3 Tracking Layer satellites went to Lockheed Martin ($1.1 billion), L3Harris Technologies ($843 million), Rocket Lab USA ($805 million) and Northrop Grumman ($764 million), with each company delivering 18 satellites. Tranche 3 extends the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture’s capacity for global detection, warning and tracking of conventional and hypersonic threats. Northrop Grumman’s manifest across Tranches 1 through 3 now totals 150 satellites.

Rocket Lab’s inclusion is notable. The company previously focused on small-lift launch from New Zealand and Virginia, but it won a Tranche 2 Transport Layer production contract in 2024 and has now graduated to missile tracking payloads. Its spacecraft platform, called Lightning, represents a cheaper, faster-build alternative to bespoke exquisite birds. L3Harris, whose president Ed Zoiss said in December 2025 that the company is in “full-rate production,” has supported every tracking tranche since the program began.

Below is a comparison of the four Tranche 3 Tracking Layer awardees and their roles in the broader architecture.

Tranche 1 operational birds were set to launch in early 2026, and Tranche 3 is scheduled for fiscal 2029. The pattern here matters: a once-rigid prime pipeline is now a four-firm competition that includes a company, Rocket Lab, that did not exist as a satellite manufacturer a decade ago.

SpaceX’s Dual-Track Model Raised the Bar on Scale

SpaceX’s Starshield unit has moved further and faster into military space than any competitor, in part because it inherits the industrial capacity that built Starlink. The NRO signed a classified $1.8 billion contract with the company in 2021 for a proliferated low Earth orbit spy satellite constellation. By 2025 at least 183 Starshield satellites had reached orbit, with a batch of 22 delivered on NROL-145 in April 2025. Gwynne Shotwell, the SpaceX president and chief operating officer, has publicly acknowledged limited information she can share on Starshield but described strong collaboration with the intelligence community.

A newer procurement stream, called MILNET, further entrenches SpaceX. The Space Force confirmed in December 2025 that approximately 480 MILNET satellites would form a dedicated military communications backbone, procured via task orders under the existing NRO Starshield contract framework rather than a new solicitation. Initial MILNET deployments were expected in mid-2026 with initial operating capability projected for late 2027. MILNET will carry Enterprise Space Terminals and use optical inter-satellite links to reduce reliance on ground stations, complementing the SDA Transport Layer rather than replacing it.

Concentration on a single provider has raised concern. The 2023 disclosure that Elon Musk had declined to activate Starlink service over Crimea during a planned Ukrainian operation led Defense Department lawyers to begin drafting denial-of-service language for future Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve contracts. The episode crystallized a broader problem. When a commercial firm holds a decisive advantage in space capacity, the government customer inherits the risk that corporate judgment will override contractual obligation at a critical moment.

True Anomaly and Anduril Set the Pace for Orbital Warfare Hardware

The most visible venture-backed entrants in counterspace work share a willingness to build satellites designed to maneuver against other satellites. Colorado-based True Anomaly, founded in 2022 by former US Air Force space operators Even Rogers and Kyle Zakrzewski, has raised more than $400 million across three rounds, including a $260 million Series C led by Accel in April 2025. Its Jackal spacecraft is a multi-mission platform engineered for rendezvous and proximity operations in low Earth orbit, geostationary orbit and cislunar space. The company won a $30 million Space Systems Command contract for the VICTUS HAZE tactically responsive space mission and plans geostationary and cislunar Jackal flights within its next four-mission block. It employs more than 250 staff across Denver, Colorado Springs, Long Beach and Washington.

Anduril Industries pushed into space from a different starting point. The Costa Mesa company, which Palmer Luckey founded in 2017, had built its reputation on autonomous drones and the Lattice command and control software platform. It received a late-2024 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $99.7 million to integrate Lattice into the Space Surveillance Network and a Pentagon space-based interceptor prototype award in late 2025. In March 2026 Anduril announced its acquisition of ExoAnalytic Solutions, which operates more than 400 ground-based telescopes for deep space observation. That deal more than doubles Anduril’s space defense headcount and gives it machine-vision algorithms that have obvious cross-application to interceptor seeker heads.

True Anomaly and Anduril are not the only counterspace players. In March 2026 the Defense Department selected fourteen companies, including Anduril and Irvine-based Turion Space, to compete for up to $1.8 billion in contracts under the Andromeda satellite monitoring program. Slingshot Aerospace, Kayhan Space and ExoAnalytic’s former parent company had also built analytic products that sit between raw sensor feeds and the operator decision loop.

Electronic Warfare and Signals Intelligence Are Commercial Now

Signals intelligence from orbit, once the province of the NRO and its national technical means, has a growing commercial tier. Virginia-based HawkEye 360 operates a constellation of satellites that geolocate and characterize radio-frequency emissions globally, packaging the output as threat detection, interference monitoring and defensive situational awareness products. A European ministry of defense selected HawkEye 360 in March 2026 for commercial space-based electronic warfare services, the company’s latest in a series of government deals. In May 2025 the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved a foreign military sale of HawkEye 360 technology to India valued at approximately $131 million, bundling space-based data services and software to enhance Indian maritime domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific.

Synthetic aperture radar is a second data stream that commercial firms now deliver at operational tempo. ICEYE, the Finnish operator founded in 2014 at Aalto University, reported €250 million in 2025 revenue, €100 million in profitability and a €1.5 billion backlog by March 2026. Its constellation of 20 to 30 active satellites delivers radar imagery at 16-centimeter resolution with revisit intervals as short as 30 to 60 minutes. ICEYE expanded its Ministry of Defence of Ukraine agreement in January 2026, building on a 2022 contract under the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation that designated a dedicated satellite for Ukrainian use. A 2024 tie-up with Rheinmetall gave the German arms maker exclusive marketing rights to ICEYE SAR satellites for military and government customers in Germany and Hungary, and the Swedish Armed Forces contracted ICEYE in 2025 for sovereign space-based intelligence.

California startup Capella Space and Santa Barbara-based Umbra Space round out the US commercial SAR tier. Capella, which became part of IonQ in early 2026, won an SDA HALO Europa Track 1 prototype agreement in April 2026 for next-generation tactical space communications demonstrations. Both operators have had NRO study contracts for commercial SAR imagery, along with Airbus’s US arm.

Tactical Responsive Space Reframed the Procurement Calendar

The Pentagon’s appetite for on-demand space capability has reshaped how commercial firms design, build and market their products. VICTUS NOX in 2023 demonstrated a launch-to-orbit timeline of 27 hours from call-up, with Firefly Aerospace providing the Alpha rocket and Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary, supplying the payload. VICTUS HAZE is the follow-on mission, with True Anomaly and Rocket Lab building two maneuverable spacecraft that conducts space domain awareness operations against each other in orbit. Rapid-response launch is a domain United Launch Alliance is contesting through its Vulcan Centaur vehicle, though the Falcon 9 remains the workhorse for most SDA tranches under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 framework.

Small launch and satellite bus manufacturers have multiplied in the wake of these programs. Apex builds standardized buses in inventory, then integrates payloads in weeks rather than years. York Space Systems acquired Atlas Space Operations in summer 2025 and Orbion Space Technology in early 2026 to vertically integrate propulsion and ground services for national security constellations. X-Bow Systems closed a $105 million Series B in spring 2025 that included a strategic investment from Lockheed Martin, then acquired Evolution Space in March 2026 to extend solid rocket motor production for hypersonic and tactical applications. Impulse Space booked a $34.5 million deal with the Space Force and Defense Innovation Unit to compress orbital transfer timelines. A late-2026 mission with Anduril will fly on a Falcon 9 to demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations with a long-wave infrared imager.

Commercial firms are no longer just suppliers of components to prime contractors. They are delivering end-to-end mission services, from launch through on-orbit operation to data product delivery.

The Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve Tests Wartime Integration

The Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, modeled on the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet, is the Space Force’s mechanism for tapping commercial capacity during a crisis. Col. Tim Trimailo, who leads the Commercial Space Office at Space Systems Command, told reporters in January 2026 that the first batch of space domain awareness contracts under CASR would be awarded no later than September 2026, with all Phase 2 awards completing by year-end. The service requested $7.5 million in fiscal 2026 to fund up to ten vendor agreements. Participating companies get access to threat intelligence, wargame participation and tailored training, in exchange for a contractual commitment to surge capacity if the Pentagon activates the reserve.

Two unresolved issues overhang CASR. The first is financial protection for commercial operators whose spacecraft are damaged or destroyed in a conflict. No commercial insurer will underwrite loss to hostile action, and Congressional appropriations have not been secured to indemnify participants. The second is denial of service, an aftermath of the Crimea episode. A potential “denial of service” order would compel CASR contractors to stop selling capacity to certain customers or over certain regions during conflict. Several participating firms have pushed back, arguing that such a directive could conflict with existing commercial agreements and expose the firms to litigation.

Col. Brandon Galindo, who worked the earlier pilot phase, said the office held a two-day wargame with prospective vendors to refine the integration process. CASR’s initial scope is space domain awareness. Subsequent mission areas under review include tactically responsive space and supply chain risk management. Satellite communications was considered and set aside, largely because the global SATCOM market at trillions of dollars in value makes sector-wide reservation impractical without broader industry buy-in.

European Sovereignty Is the Fastest-Growing Non-US Theme

European governments’ appetite for independent space intelligence accelerated after the United States briefly halted intel sharing with Ukraine in March 2025. Airbus Defence and Space, Leonardo and Thales announced in November 2025 the combination of their space programs into a new joint entity intended to compete at global scale. The logic is blunt. European defense budgets have risen toward Cold War levels as a share of GDP, and governments want sovereign space intelligence pipelines that do not depend on US export licenses.

ICEYE has positioned itself at the center of that shift. The company’s sovereign Missions line allows governments to buy and independently operate dedicated SAR satellites, with between five and ten already in orbit for various sovereign customers as of late 2025 and another ten to fifteen scheduled for launch within two years. Joost Elstak, ICEYE’s vice president for Missions, told Defense News in November 2025 that his company’s end-to-end offering, spanning satellites, ground stations, data analysis and training, positions it closer to a large integrator than to a pure data provider. European countries, he said, want minimum national sovereign capability plus commercial data to fill the gap.

The United Kingdom’s Space Command, Germany’s Bundeswehr space division and France’s Commandement de l’Espacehave all made signals intelligence, Earth observation and secure communications priorities for 2026 and beyond. Italian firm D-Orbit and Poland’s Creotech Instruments are competing to supply small satellite buses, propulsion systems and orbital transfer vehicles that fit sovereign European architectures.

The Industrial Base Is Consolidating Upward and Outward

Industry consolidation has been the defining M&A story of 2025 and early 2026. Anduril’s ExoAnalytic deal was its first space acquisition, and the company has stated plans to self-fund three spacecraft missions in 2026. Its June 2025 valuation sat at $30.5 billion, with reporting in early 2026 suggesting a new round could double that. York Space Systems’ Orbion and Atlas Space purchases build a vertically integrated spacecraft production capability. X-Bow’s acquisition of Evolution Space extends solid rocket motor output for the hypersonic supply chain. Kratos Defense & Security Solutions announced a pending acquisition that will fold microwave electronics maker Orbit into its division by March 2026.

Primes are not standing still. Northrop Grumman invested $50 million in Firefly Aerospace in May 2025 to co-develop the Eclipse medium-lift launch vehicle for national security missions, a move that hedges Northrop’s dependence on other launch providers. Lockheed Martin’s Next-Generation Space Defense modular satellite platform was marketed throughout 2025 as rapid, cost-efficient and scalable across all orbital regimes. Boeing’s Millennium Space Systems continues to deliver tactically responsive space buses and has become a preferred integrator for time-urgent missions where the cost of bespoke design is prohibitive.

The following table compares the commercial military space vendor landscape across four representative categories as of April 2026.

The picture that emerges is one of a fragmenting vendor base on the lower end and a consolidating one at the top. Dozens of small-bus and payload makers have entered the market since 2022, funded by venture capital and SBIR grants. At the same time, the large primes and several venture-backed unicorns are buying up adjacent capabilities to deliver vertically integrated solutions.

Risks That Commercial Momentum Cannot Solve

The commercial enthusiasm around military space has outpaced several hard questions. Kessler Syndrome remains the most often cited, and most serious. The 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test created more than 3,000 trackable fragments, many still in orbit nearly two decades later. A multi-engagement conflict in low Earth orbit involving kinetic engagements could trigger a cascade that renders entire orbital regimes unusable. True Anomaly has emphasized non-kinetic approaches, including electronic warfare and dazzling capabilities, but a maneuverable spacecraft closing on a target at high relative velocity is difficult to characterize as anything other than potentially kinetic.

Attribution is a related problem. A dedicated military communications or reconnaissance satellite on a common Starshield bus is indistinguishable on radar from a commercial Starlink spacecraft. Strategic theorists including Forrest Morgan at RAND and James Acton at the Carnegie Endowment have argued that such “orbital ambiguity” creates a reciprocal fear of surprise attack, increasing the incentive for an adversary to strike the entire constellation and its launch infrastructure at the first sign of crisis. Whether that concern is overstated or underappreciated depends heavily on assumptions about the credibility of adversary command and control, but the risk is not zero.

A third concern is supply chain and workforce fragility. The lapse in Small Business Innovation Research authorization heading into 2026 injected real uncertainty into the pipeline that has fed many of the now-successful venture-backed firms. Continuing resolutions and government shutdowns strain cash flow at smaller firms that lack the balance sheet to absorb payment delays. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink described the current push as a “generational opportunity” to improve acquisition, but the incentives to finish the job remain contested inside the Pentagon.

Finally, conflicts of interest attached to the Golden Dome program have drawn scrutiny. Former SPACECOM commander Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy reports to Musk at SpaceX. Michael D. Griffin, who founded the Space Development Agency, has advised Castelion, a hypersonic weapons startup founded by former SpaceX executives. The interlocks between former senior defense officials and the commercial firms now winning the contracts they once set requirements for is either a natural consequence of a small specialist community or a warning sign that procurement competition is becoming compromised, depending on perspective.

Summary

Commercial companies focused on military space warfare have moved from peripheral suppliers to central architects of orbital and terrestrial defense capability. Legacy primes retain the largest shares of tracking layer, missile warning and communications programs, but venture-backed entrants now build spacecraft explicitly designed for rendezvous operations, signals intelligence and electronic warfare, often at half the unit cost of incumbents. The $151 billion SHIELD vehicle, the $3.5 billion Tranche 3 award, the 480-satellite MILNET program and the maturing Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve together represent a reorganization of military space procurement around commercial development cycles and commercial production scale. The unresolved questions around attribution, denial of service, orbital debris, workforce pipeline and industrial conflicts of interest have not slowed the money flowing into the sector. They may yet shape how that money is spent.

Appendix: Top Questions Answered in This Article

What is the Golden Dome missile defense program?

Golden Dome is a US homeland missile defense initiative launched by executive order in early 2025 and formalized through a dedicated Defense Department office. It envisions a layered architecture of space-based infrared sensors, interceptors and AI battle management systems to counter ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile threats. The official cost estimate reached $185 billion by March 2026, with procurement flowing through the SHIELD indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract vehicle.

How many companies are eligible to compete for Golden Dome contracts?

The Missile Defense Agency approved 2,440 of 2,463 applicants for the SHIELD contract vehicle by January 2026, creating a qualified vendor pool worth up to $151 billion in potential task orders over ten years. Approved firms include legacy primes like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, venture-backed defense technology companies such as Anduril and Palantir, space launch firms including SpaceX and Rocket Lab, and more than 340 academic institutions and small businesses.

What is the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture?

The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture is the Space Development Agency’s planned mega-constellation of hundreds of low Earth orbit satellites split between a Transport Layer for data relay and a Tracking Layer for missile warning and defense. The PWSA is built in tranches every two years through other transaction authority agreements with commercial contractors. Tranche 3 Tracking Layer awards in December 2025 totaled $3.5 billion across four firms for 72 satellites.

What does SpaceX Starshield do?

Starshield is SpaceX’s dedicated military business unit, building customized versions of the Starlink satellite bus for US defense and intelligence agencies. Known contracts include a classified $1.8 billion NRO agreement from 2021 for a proliferated reconnaissance constellation, a Space Force communications pilot, and the 480-satellite MILNET communications backbone procured under existing NRO task order authority. At least 183 Starshield satellites had reached orbit by 2025.

What is the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve?

CASR is a Space Force program modeled on the Civil Reserve Air Fleet that enables the military to tap commercial space capacity during wartime crisis. Participating companies provide peacetime services and commit to surge capacity if activated. The Space Force planned to award the first batch of space domain awareness CASR contracts by September 2026, targeting up to 20 agreements by year-end at $7.5 million in initial annual funding.

What makes True Anomaly’s Jackal spacecraft different from traditional military satellites?

Jackal is a maneuverable autonomous orbital vehicle engineered for rendezvous and proximity operations, meaning it can approach, inspect and potentially interact with other satellites. Unlike exquisite legacy military satellites designed for decade-long single-mission lifetimes, Jackal is a modular platform intended for production at scale and operation at tactical tempo. The spacecraft carries multi-spectral sensors, a high-performance propulsion stack and radiation-hardened electronics for LEO, GEO and cislunar operations.

Why did Anduril acquire ExoAnalytic Solutions?

Anduril acquired ExoAnalytic in March 2026 to integrate the latter’s global network of more than 400 ground-based tracking telescopes and its machine vision software into Anduril’s autonomous command-and-control platform. The deal strengthens Anduril’s bid for Golden Dome sensing and tracking work, more than doubles its space defense workforce, and provides algorithms applicable both to space domain awareness and to interceptor seeker heads.

How does ICEYE support allied military operations?

ICEYE operates the world’s largest commercial synthetic aperture radar constellation and delivers imagery at 16-centimeter resolution with 30-to-60-minute revisit intervals. The company provides data to Ukraine under a 2022 agreement expanded in January 2026, supplies sovereign satellites to Poland, Portugal and Sweden, and partners with Rheinmetall for exclusive marketing in Germany and Hungary. Its 2025 revenue exceeded €250 million with a €1.5 billion backlog.

What are the main risks of commercial military space dependence?

Key risks include orbital debris cascades from kinetic engagements, ambiguity between commercial and military satellites on the same bus, denial-of-service decisions by commercial operators during crisis (as occurred with Starlink in Ukraine), loss of commercial spacecraft to hostile action without insurance coverage, and supply chain fragility at small venture-backed firms dependent on uncertain government contract flow. Conflicts of interest between former defense officials and firms now winning contracts have also drawn congressional scrutiny.

How large is the military space market forecast to become?

Research firm estimates for the global space militarization market range from approximately $59 billion in 2025 to between $83 billion and $116 billion by 2030 to 2034, depending on methodology, with compound annual growth rates typically forecast between 7% and 8%. North America accounts for roughly 40% of the market by most estimates. The commercial segment is growing faster than government hardware spending, driven by data services, responsive space and sovereign constellation demand.

Appendix: Glossary of Key Terms

SHIELD

An abbreviation for the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense contract vehicle, a ten-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity mechanism administered by the Missile Defense Agency. The instrument allows approved vendors to compete for task orders that contribute to Golden Dome and other homeland defense efforts, with a cumulative ceiling of $151 billion.

Tracking Layer

Part of the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, consisting of low Earth orbit satellites equipped with infrared sensors to detect, warn about and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles from launch through interception. Tranche 3 adds 72 satellites divided equally among four commercial contractors and is set to launch in fiscal year 2029.

Transport Layer

The other principal layer of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, providing assured, resilient, low-latency military communications connectivity through a mesh of LEO satellites. Transport Layer satellites link warfighter platforms to command and control nodes using optical inter-satellite links and Ka-band communications.

Starshield

SpaceX’s government-focused business unit, adapted from the Starlink commercial platform to deliver military-grade satellite buses, payloads and communications services. Starshield satellites carry additional encryption, reconnaissance payloads or missile warning sensors depending on mission configuration and are procured through classified and unclassified task orders.

Jackal

True Anomaly’s autonomous orbital vehicle designed for rendezvous and proximity operations. The spacecraft is modular, highly maneuverable, and equipped with multi-spectral sensors, radiation-hardened electronics and a high-performance propulsion stack. It is intended for use in low Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit and cislunar space.

Lattice

Anduril’s open artificial intelligence command-and-control software platform originally developed for counter-drone operations and now integrated into the US Space Surveillance Network under a five-year $99.7 million indefinite-delivery contract. The platform fuses sensor data, automates detection and provides a distributed mesh architecture for space domain awareness.

Synthetic Aperture Radar

A satellite imaging technique that uses radar pulses rather than reflected sunlight to generate high-resolution imagery, enabling collection through cloud cover, smoke and darkness. Commercial SAR operators including ICEYE, Capella Space and Umbra now provide tactical and strategic intelligence products previously limited to government reconnaissance assets.

Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve

A Space Force program modeled on the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, creating a pool of commercial space service providers contracted to surge capacity for the military during a crisis. Participating firms gain access to threat intelligence, wargame integration and tailored training in exchange for a commitment to priority military access during conflict.

Rendezvous and Proximity Operations

A category of on-orbit activity in which one spacecraft maneuvers close to another for inspection, servicing, or potential interference. RPO capabilities underpin both civilian on-orbit servicing and military counterspace missions, and they require advanced guidance, navigation, control, sensor and autonomy systems.

Other Transaction Authority

A flexible Defense Department contracting mechanism that allows the government to enter into agreements outside the traditional Federal Acquisition Regulation framework, typically for prototype, research or production follow-on work. OTA agreements are widely used by the Space Development Agency to accelerate the acquisition of satellites and related capabilities.

Hypersonic Glide Vehicle

An unpowered maneuverable weapon that is boosted to high altitude by a rocket and then glides to its target at speeds above Mach 5, typically on an unpredictable trajectory. Commercial tracking layer satellites with infrared sensors are the core of the Pentagon’s plan to detect and track HGVs from launch through terminal phase.