MDA awards 1,014 companies slots on $151B Golden Dome contract vehicle

The Missile Defense Agency has launched the first set of awards for its Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense contract and did not hold back, making over 1,000 awards.

In its Tuesday Sam.gov announcement, MDA made clear that the 1,014 winners of SHIELD are just the start. The agency is making staggard awards as it continues to work with other bidders.

MDA will not begin making task order awards until the agency finalizes all of the awardees.

The agency has also notified companies it has determined to be outside the competitive range. MDA received 2,463 proposals in total, so we’ll likely see some protests filed at the Government Accountability Office.

Click here to download the complete list of winners.

SHIELD is a 10-year contract with a $151 billion ceiling and is the primary vehicle for the development of Golden Dome, the Trump administration’s vision for a nationwide missile defense system. President Trump has said he wants Golden Dome to be operational before the end of his term in January 2029.

MDA has designed SHIELD in a way that allows it to rapidly make task order awards to a board range of companies.

Winners on this initial list include several Top 100 companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI International and the Leidos subsidiary Dynetics. But the vast majority of the winners are small and midsized companies such as Planned Systems international, QTEC Aerospace, and Sev1Tech.

SHIELD has four primary work areas:

• Research and development
• Engineering and production
• Operations and support
• Analysis and IT services

Each focus area also includes several subcategories, such as prototyping and demonstrations under the R&D area. Data mining, collection and analysis is part of the analysis and IT services area.

Once in place, the Defense Department will use Golden Dome to counter a wide range of threats including ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons. Golden Dome will also work to defend against cruise missiles, drones and other advanced aerial attacks.

MDA wants advanced, multi-domain defense systems capable of protecting the U.S. homeland, deployed forces, and allies against increasingly sophisticated threats.

“This contract encompasses a broad range of work areas 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,” DOD said in its announcement of the SHIELD awards.

The language lines up with other statements by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his deputies that acquisitions need to move faster.