The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has completed another round of awards under its Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) multiple-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract, a flexible acquisition vehicle with a total ceiling of $151 billion designed to support layered homeland defense capabilities. This latest expansion brings the total number of qualified vendors to more than 2,400 entities.
The SHIELD contract is a 10-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) agreement designed to serve as the primary acquisition framework for the “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative SHIELD, which allows the Department of Defense and other federal entities to compete orders across a broad range of mission areas. The program has been awarded in staggered tranches: an initial 1,014 companies were selected on Dec. 2, 2025, followed by 1,086 vendors on Dec. 18, 2025.
The $151 billion ceiling is shared among all awardees. The vehicle allows the MDA and other Department of Defense components to rapidly compete task orders across broad technical areas, including artificial intelligence, digital engineering, and directed energy.
To date, the agency has added thousands of companies to the contract vehicle, enabling them to compete for task and delivery orders through the contract’s ordering period, which could extend through December 2035 if all options are exercised.
Contractor Awardees (Representative List)
The SHIELD program includes over 2,400 vendors. The following list identifies some of the major industry participants confirmed across the first three tranches of awards:
| Aerospace & Defense Primes | Space & Emerging Tech | Intelligence & IT Services |
| Lockheed Martin | Anduril | Booz Allen Hamilton |
| Northrop Grumman | Maxar Intelligence | Leidos |
| Raytheon (RTX) | Sierra Nevada Corp. | CACI International |
| Boeing | Sidus Space | Oracle America |
| HII Mission Technologies | Virtualitics | SAIC |
| General Dynamics IT | Firefly Aerospace | LMI Consulting |
| BAE Systems | Axiom Space | Guidehouse |
The expansion of the SHIELD IDIQ contract reflects the Department of Defense’s strategy to cultivate a broad and competitive industrial base for advanced homeland defense technologies. By qualifying thousands of vendors, the MDA is attempting to hedge against supply chain vulnerabilities and the rapid obsolescence of defense hardware. The $151 billion ceiling reflects the massive scale of the Golden Dome initiative, which aims to integrate sensors and interceptors across all domains—land, sea, air, space, and cyber—to counter emerging hypersonic and cruise missile threats. This “broad-front” acquisition strategy is designed to accelerate technical iteration through frequent, smaller competitions rather than a single decade-long development cycle.
A military history enthusiast, Richard began at Forecast International as editor of the World Weapons Weekly newsletter. As the Internet grew in importance as a research tool, he helped design the company's Forecast Intelligence Center and currently coordinates the EMarket Alert newsletters for clients. Richard also manages social media efforts, including two new blogs: Defense & Security Monitor, covering defense systems and international issues, and Flight Plan, which focuses on commercial aviation and space systems. For over 30 years, Richard has authored the Defense & Aerospace Companies, Volume I (North America) and Volume II (International) services. The two books provide detailed data on major aerospace and defense contractors. He also edits the International Contractors service, a database that tracks all the contractors involved in the programs covered in the FI library. More recently he was appointed Manager, Information Services Group (ISG), a new unit that encompasses developing outbound content for both Forecast International and Military Periscope.
