Twelve companies are competing to put missile interceptors in orbit. Gen. Michael Guetlein, Direct Reporting Program Manager for Golden Dome for America, said on August 11 that all twelve were moving into Gate Two, the second of four. He had not yet seen the Gate One results. He put the money plainly. “If they don’t figure it out, there is no Golden Dome,” he said, “because there is no funding.” Roughly 97 percent of the program’s $17.5 billion fiscal 2027 request rides on a reconciliation bill Congress has not passed. In March, Kratos won an agreement worth up to $446.8 million for ground management and integration on the Space Force’s medium orbit missile warning and tracking architecture. The executive who runs that division takes the MilSat Symposium stage at Silicon Valley Space Week in October.
Phil Carrai is President of the Space, Training & Cyber Division at Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, which covers satellite ground segment systems, cybersecurity, and training and simulation. Its space line centers on OpenSpace, the virtualized ground platform Kratos released in 2020, and EPOCH, command and control software Kratos says has flown 300 missions over 30 years. Kratos reported second quarter revenue of $458.8 million and backlog of $2.084 billion. Carrai came to Kratos by acquisition. He started as a systems analyst at Alcoa after graduating in 1983. From 1989 to 1996 he held executive roles at the enterprise software company Legent, latterly as Vice President and General Manager of its $200 million Resource Management business unit. SYS Technologies bought Ai Metrix, the network management company he ran as Chief Executive Officer, in October 2006. SYS merged into Kratos in June 2008. He holds a master of business administration from Carnegie Mellon and a bachelor’s degree in management information systems and accounting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
The twenty Other Transaction Authority agreements behind that competition, awarded by Space Systems Command across late 2025 and early 2026, carry a combined potential value of up to $3.2 billion. Companies self-fund the prototype work, and Guetlein says he will not request production until the capability proves effective, scalable and affordable. The command expects an initial capability in 2028, though the blueprint does not require an actual intercept until June 2029. The Congressional Budget Office, working from a notional architecture because the real one has not been released, put a comparable system at $1.2 trillion over twenty years in May. Guetlein disputes the figure. An analysis in AIAA’s Aerospace America puts the requirement at a five to six times increase in supplier manufacturing capacity. It cites Aerospace Industries Association and McKinsey figures for a shortfall of more than 200,000 skilled technical workers. Northrop Grumman and Apex are targeting an on-orbit interceptor demonstration in 2027, a year ahead of the government’s date.
On Thursday, October 29, Carrai moderates “Golden Dome – Accelerating Industrial Capability on a 2028 Clock” from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. in the Hahn Auditorium at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The program’s blurb asks whether industry can actually deliver by 2028. His panelists are Dr. David Baughman, Vice President, BD and Strategy at Frontier Aerospace Corporation, a propulsion manufacturer, and Mike Conschafter, Director of Business Development, Spectral Solutions at L3Harris. Alongside them are Myland Pride, Director, MWTD Strategy and Advanced Capabilities at Lockheed Martin, and John Trionfo, Chief Executive Officer of Aeonyx, the mission virtualization business Antaris established in July. Baughman, a physicist, served at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. L3Harris took an agreement worth up to $955 million in July for eighteen HBTSS-like missile defense variant satellites, built at Fort Wayne. The panel follows the morning keynote and precedes “CASR After FOC: Who Owns the Risk?”, a market brief by Lt. Col. Brandon Galindo of Space Systems Command.
Silicon Valley Space Week runs Tuesday, October 27 through Thursday, October 29. Carrai’s is the first panel of the MilSat Symposium’s closing day, the morning after Col. Timothy Trimailo’s buy-versus-build session. Those L3Harris satellites are expected to be available for launch by the end of 2028.
