Look at the front page of any given American website about the space sector, and you’d be forgiven for believing that the whole sector revolved around the “Golden Dome”. Week after week, you see stories about companies vying to contribute to it: sensor constellations, optical relays, spacecraft, and space-based interceptors.
But what is it, exactly? What does it do? What is it for? And how are Canadians involved?
Let’s take a closer look at what it is, how viable it is, and how Canadian businesses and institutions may be contributing to a project that might change how we approach space defence for the foreseeable future.
Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) and the Golden Dome
The “Golden Dome” is based on an Executive Order (14186) signed by US President Donald Trump on January 27m 2025, shortly after he regained the Presidency. It directs the US Government to focus its efforts towards “deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield,” with a particular focus on boost-phase intercept and “non-kinetic capabilities.”
This sounds new…but it actually isn’t. It is mostly a rebranding of the old concept of ballistic missile defence, the famed “Star Wars” program that the Reagan administration pursued back in the 1980s. Though the technology was banned by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of the 1970s, the Reagan administration pursued it anyway, though without success. While that fizzled out, it eventually contributed to the modern concept of IAMD.
IAMD is an old idea for theatre-level defence, but has become more relevant in the modern nuclear age. The issue is that while deterrence through Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is the foundation of modern nuclear strategy, it is possible that there may be regimes that are not deterred by the threat of retaliatory annihilation. Leaders of regimes or non-state actors with small or singular arsenals of nuclear weapons may not care if they receive a devastating response, as long as their initial strike is successful. Furthermore, others within those organizations may not be in a position to remove them even if retaliation is certain.
Modern missile defence is a response to that problem. Instead of being scaled to shoot down strikes of a modern nuclear power like the United States, France, China or Russia, it is generally intended to intercept small-scale attacks of a small number of ballistic or cruise missiles and/or aircraft, particularly theatre-range or medium-range missiles.
And, notably, modern IAMD is intended to be detector- and interceptor-agnostic. Any available detector can be used for tasking any available interceptor, rather than having them be specifically earmarked. That’s where the modern approach is “integrated”, and especially in the space domain where it can involve a “layered” approach of satellites in different orbits and constellations.
In the past, this sort of thing was derided as unworkable: “a bullet shooting a bullet.” By the time ground-based or aerial radar had identified a ballistic missile launch, the missile’s trajectory would be well into mid-phase or even terminal phase. Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle’s (MIRVs), in particular, would already have launched their decoys, so it would be extraordinarily difficult for interceptors to identify and take out the warheads as they coasted through space.
Even building more interceptors wouldn’t really help. Potential attackers could simply build more missiles and launch them from enough places that the defenses would be overwhelmed. That’s the principal reason why IAMD is generally focused on small attacks by rogue states, and intended to seriously challenge the second-strike capabilities of the United States’ peer-level nuclear powers. That was the perception of the situation when U.S. President George W. Bush pursued the idea in the early 2000s, and for many that’s the perception today.
The bet behind the modern “Golden Dome” is that the integration of the space domain into warfare has changed things. Large constellations of small sensor satellites will become ubiquitous now in ways that would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago. The sheer volume of sensors in orbit means that swift boost phase detection of missile launches, as directed by President Trump’s executive order, is an increasingly realistic idea.
At the same time, the availability of comparatively cheap space launch may make it more likely that countries can launch swarms of interceptor satellites. A constellation might shift satellites’ orbits to intercept cruising mid-phase warheads, or might employ nearby satellites with kinetic and/or directed-energy weapons to take out a missile as it’s in its boost phase, before a MIRV’s decoys can be deployed.
In a layered network of large constellations connected by on-orbit optical communications, this intercept could happen before anybody on the ground even realized that the launch took place, mere seconds after the initial launch was detected.
That is a big “could”, of course. There is no public information as to whether any kind of interception assets are either in orbit or are going into orbit anytime soon. But with SpaceX’s Starship and other heavy launchers poised to dramatically reduce the cost of taking payloads into orbit, it could be sooner than we expect.
Certainly it would reflect the growing importance of drone-focused combat in 21st century terrestrial conflicts, just brought into the space domain.
Vying for a piece of the Golden Dome
Any system like this would be monumentally expensive. President Trump said it would cost at least $175 billion, but it could be many times pricier than that. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” in 2025 already directed $24.4 billion towards the Golden Dome, with much more to come.
As so much of the system would be space-related, that has led to an absolute furor from American companies that are looking to tap into this funding. A quick scan of the Golden Dome page on SpaceNews reveals story after story about both startups and established space companies looking to get involved with the Golden Dome, pitching ways that they can contribute space-based capabilities to this ambitious new system.
This holds true for Canadian companies, providing the clearest example of how Canada is helping with the Golden Dome project. Three Canadian companies currently stand out as potential beneficiaries of the program: Kepler Communications, Telesat, and MDA Space.
Kepler Communications has been making a play for a number of international orbital broadband communications contracts, both for the European Space Agency and for the United States. The company has been focused on building a “space data layer” interconnecting satellites and spacecraft in orbit using optical relays—something that will be a key part of any space-based missile intercept system.
It’s understandable, then, that they’re working to get involved with the United States’ Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which is another name for the multi-layer, multi-constellation network of networks that would be needed for any “Golden Dome” initiative to be workable. In September, their US subsidiary demonstrated their satellites’ air-to-orbit optical capabilities, linking together their ÆTHER-1 and ÆTHER-2 satellites with an optical communications terminal on an aircraft. (They demonstrated their sat-to-sat capabilities in June of 2024.)
While these are still early days, this does help demonstrate Kepler’s interest in contributing to the project.
Meanwhile,Telesat is focused on providing a different kind of capability to the United States’ efforts. In late March, Telesat announced that they would be reallocating 25% of their spectrum capacity towards adding military Ka-Band to their upcoming Lightspeed LEO constellation. CEO Dan Goldberg said that it was a “mission-critical strategic imperative” for the United States and its allies, and that “Telesat Lightspeed was designed from day one to provide such critical connectivity.”
While the recent announcement didn’t mention the Golden Dome, Telesat made it clear last year that they saw Lightspeed as “the right solution at the right time” for making the Golden Dome work, as Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation ”supports distributed operations, ultra-high data transport, and rapid responsiveness”, and is “ideally positioned to support multinational exercises, integrated deterrence postures, and coalition warfighting frameworks.”
The initial satellites are being produced by MDA Space, and are scheduled to launch later this year. The shift in allocation is expected to cause no notable delays.
And, as for MDA Space, they may be playing the largest role of the lot. In January, they were added as a contractor for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, as part of the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program. The company has a Multiple Award Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract, meaning that it’s now eligible to compete for future orders.
The SHIELD program is designed to integrate land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains. Its scope is “massive”, including everything from using AI and Machine Learning to simulate potential threats, advanced R&D of “left-of-launch” capabilities that neutralize threats before launch actually happens, and system integration of weapon systems—presumably including on-orbit weapon systems. A month later, Telesat also received an IDIQ contract.
While it remains unclear exactly how MDA Space will contribute, CEO Mike Greenley said that the company is “committed to delivering mission-critical solutions and strategic operational capabilities.”
Official ambiguity, but hints of support
So if Canadian firms are vying to contribute, what about the Government of Canada – and particularly the Department of National Defence (DND) and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF)?
That’s a harder question to answer, so SpaceQ reached out to the CAF to ask about this topic, and received comments from a DND spokesperson.
In the past, the Canadian government famously stayed away from Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). Despite heavy pressure from the U.S. to join their BMD efforts in the early 2000s, neither Jean Chrétien nor Paul Martin signed on during their times as Prime Minister. That was the position held by the Canadian government for over a decade, and many in Canadian civil society are making it clear that they would prefer that Canada continue to hold that stance.
Nevertheless, this would put Canada into somewhat of a bind. NATO has already adopted IAMD at the theatre level, and monitors NATO borders with Russia closely for potential incursions by missiles, jets, and drones. If any potential threats stray into NATO territory, there are systems in place to detect them and eliminate them, just as there are on (say) the Korean peninsula.
And, in turn, the United States and Canada work together through NORAD, which has spent decades monitoring for potential threats to Canada and the United States from the air and from space. Even when Canada’s official policy was to stay away from BMD, the Americans made it clear that NORAD’s data was going to be used by the United States for missile defence decisions, and so Canada principally resolved to stay out of those decisions and stick to the detection side.
When President Trump announced Golden Dome, though, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada was “in talks” over whether to join the initiative. A spokesperson for the PMO said last year that Carney and his ministers “are having wide-ranging and constructive discussions with their American counterparts”, including on the Golden Dome.
And while Carney hasn’t said much on the subject since, the government noticeably changed its stance on BMD. In July of 2025, not long after the Golden Dome talks began, Defence Minister David McGuinty traveled to NORAD headquarters for an announcement that “the Government has removed all restrictions on air and missile defence of Canada”.
While Canada had not yet publicly decided to join up with Golden Dome, and while there are senior figures within the Liberal Party that are opposed, most notably former Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, there are no longer any regulatory or legal barriers to doing so.
But what about DND and the Canadian Forces?
DND has expressed its support of IAMD as a concept, with the spokesperson telling SpaceQ that “Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) is critical to deter and defend against the full spectrum of air and missile weapons”, and that “Canada is also taking a number of steps to reinforce its IAMD posture through a range of investments to enable a more integrated defence against air and missile threats.”
DND’s spokesperson also highlighted Canada’s other recent investments in defence, including continental defence: “new technology solutions for domain awareness in our Northern approaches, such as Arctic and Polar Over-the-Horizon Radar, as well as additional investment in space-based surveillance”. They also said that Canada has invested in “technology-enabled command and control systems, additional air-to-air weapons, new and upgraded infrastructure and support capabilities, especially in the North, and long-term funding for science and technology.”
All of these would be relevant to Golden Dome, particularly the “space-based surveillance”.
But on the Golden Dome project, and Canada’s involvement with it, DND was far more circumspect: only saying that “Canada defers to the United States to comment on considerations related to Golden Dome”, and that “it would be premature to comment on the details of potential IAMD collaboration.”
In terms of the space domain—the heart of the Golden Dome project—the DND spokesperson also gave some comments on the RCAF’s 3 Canadian Space Division (3 CSD), the closest Canadian equivalent to the United States’ Space Force.
They said that 3 CSD’s responsibilities, which include “satellite communications and navigation, space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, space domain awareness, and space control”, inevitably put it “at the centre of Canada’s approach to continental defence.” This stated importance “reinforces the reality that space is now a core operational domain”.
But, again, they gave no comments on whether or how 3 CSD would contribute to space domain elements of IAMD, such as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), again saying that “Canada defers to the United States to comment on considerations related to Golden Dome for America”. That was also DND’s response to questions about any Canadian involvement in PWSA at all.
So while they acknowledged that Canada was committed to continental IAMD and to developing the space domain, they demurred from discussing any specifics on how they might interact. The closest they came was in acknowledging the government’s investment in Maritime Launch Services and other sovereign launch development activities.
There are some indicators of where the RCAF stands on this, though. Major-General J.D. Smyth, Chief Air and Space Force Development, is one of the people supervising NORAD’s modernization, and he told the Globe and Mail in October that Canada had been working for years to be ready for something like the Golden Dome.
Smyth was quoted in the Globe and Mail saying “everything is related to Golden Dome”. He said that “it’s the aircraft, it’s the radars, it’s the command-and-control systems. And then the effectors – so, ground-based air defence or whether it’s the interceptors that the U.S. has based in Alaska”, adding that “we can’t separate the ability to defend from the geography. So, we have to work together with them.”
And Smyth maintained that this will actually help with deterrence, saying that “the more that we can protect and the more difficult we can make it for an adversary to have a successful strike, the less likely they will conduct a strike”.
So while the federal government and DND remain mostly quiet on the subject, Canadian officers and companies are already making their initial moves. They are positioning Canada to support the Golden Dome—or, given the shifting winds of U.S. politics and defense funding, whatever the concept inevitably evolves into.