L3Harris Space & Mission Systems president Sam Mehta told reporters this week at the Space Symposium that the company is “building capacity and securing supply chains in anticipation of demand” for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense architecture, a break from the industry model of waiting for contracts before committing capital. Lockheed Martin announced alongside the symposium that it is self-funding two next-generation space dominance demonstrations, Vanguard and Sentinel, for rendezvous and proximity operations in 2028 and 2029. L3Harris completed a $100 million expansion of its Palm Bay satellite integration facility in August 2025 and has invested hundreds of millions across U.S. sites tied to Golden Dome production.
This is not corporate risk-taking. It is procurement capture. By the time the Pentagon competes the work, only one or two primes will have active production lines, and the solicitation language will be written around what is already being built.
The pattern is coordinated across at least three firms. L3Harris on infrared missile tracking, Lockheed Martin on orbital command-and-control and RPO, BAE Systems on refuelable maneuverable platforms via the Ascent bus. Each is committing capital against capabilities the Space Force wants but has not yet bought. Lockheed’s Tim Lynch told reporters the firm is “lining up a whole ecosystem, a framework, of being able to acquire at speed.” That phrasing describes building the supplier base the government will have to buy from.
White House OMB documents show Golden Dome funding has grown to $38.9 billion, with Congress directing roughly $24 billion through 2025 reconciliation and additional FY2026 appropriations. The architecture remains classified. Watch which firms win the first tranche of competitive awards. If the winners match the firms that self-funded ahead of the RFP, the capture is complete.