Sirotin Intelligence Briefing: May 4–8, 2026: Pentagon Unseals 162 UAP Files Under Trump's PURSUE Program, Golden Dome Hits Multi-Billion Inflection Point, and US Strikes Iran in Strait of Hormuz

This week's Sirotin Intelligence analysis covers the Space Force's continued buildout of Golden Dome's space-based interceptor architecture as Booz Allen Hamilton formally received its Brilliant Swarms prototype agreement and the Andromeda space domain awareness contract ceiling jumped from $1.8 billion to $6.2 billion, the May 7 US Navy strikes on Iranian targets followed by Friday's fragile ceasefire reassessment as oil prices rallied and Secretary Rubio awaited Tehran's response on a Pakistan-brokered fourteen-point peace proposal, and Anduril's $100.3 million Space Surveillance Network modification announced May 7 alongside L3Harris winning the ABMS digital infrastructure award. Secondary stories include Raytheon's $441.6 million Patriot GEM-T modification for Operation Epic Fury, Marvin Engineering's $138.2 million guided missile launcher requirements contract, ThinKom's win in the Space Force's 2026 Fight Tonight competition with its concealed Containerized Digital Array, the Space Development Agency's announcement that Tranche 1 launches are slipping to late summer, Friday's Pentagon release of 162 declassified UAP files (including roughly 30 videos) under President Trump's PURSUE program — the first major UFO declassification in US history — the NRO's three new Commercial Solutions Opening contracts to EarthDaily, Pixxel, and Iceye, Russia's and Ukraine's competing unilateral Victory Day ceasefire declarations, Rocket Lab's May 7 earnings disclosure that Q1 2026 launch bookings already exceeded all of 2025, Katalyst's "Link" rescue spacecraft passing prelaunch testing on May 8 ahead of a June Pegasus XL launch to save the Swift Observatory, Overview Energy's first Air Force contract on May 8 to study using the sun to power remote military installations, and India's confirmation it is pursuing both hypersonic glide and hypersonic cruise variants simultaneously. Rounding out the week: Starship Flight 12 has now slipped to late June following Elon Musk's April 29 one-month delay announcement and the May 6 water deluge system explosion at Starbase Pad 2, Planet Labs added three Pelican satellites, the Artemis Accords crossed 66 signatories with Ireland and Malta, the Senate Armed Services Committee held its FY27 posture hearing on Space Command and Strategic Command, and our interview this week is with returning attorney Trevor Hehn, the military JAG-turned-founder of Hehn Law PLLC, on space nuclear's legal architecture, the 2028 launch trio that will test it, and the indemnity gap standing between commercial reactors and orbit.

🛡️ Defense Highlights

• Booz Allen Hamilton wins Brilliant Swarms slot in Golden Dome's Space-Based Interceptor program — autonomous AI-driven satellite constellation will track, target, and intercept ballistic missiles in boost, ascent, and midcourse phases: Booz Allen Hamilton announced this week that it received an Other Transaction Authority agreement from US Space Force Space Systems Command to develop a prototype system under the Golden Dome for America Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) program, formalizing the Brilliant Swarms concept the firm first unveiled last year. Brilliant Swarms is a proliferated low Earth orbit constellation of small-class interceptor satellites running an autonomous battle management and command-and-control algorithm, designed to monitor, lock, and intercept ballistic missiles across three engagement phases without requiring ground-loop targeting. Booz Allen joins eleven other primes — including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, SpaceX, Anduril, and K2 Space — selected last month under the Space Force's twenty OTA awards worth a combined $3.2 billion. The Space Force has set an initial operational capability demonstration date of 2028, an aggressive timeline given that no operational space-based interceptor has ever been deployed. Booz Allen's win is significant because it pairs the firm's six decades of defense AI work with a rapidly scaling space-defense market, and it positions a non-traditional space prime against the constellation incumbents.
• Space Force boosts Andromeda contract ceiling from $1.8 billion to $6.2 billion — $4.4 billion expansion signals a generational scale-up in space domain awareness procurement: The US Space Force this week increased the ceiling of its recently awarded Andromeda IDIQ contracting vehicle by $4.4 billion, taking the total cumulative cap from $1.84 billion to $6.2 billion to accommodate "additional quantities within the scope" of the next-generation reconnaissance (RG-XX) and surveillance (SG-XX) satellite programs. The fourteen vendors on contract — Anduril Industries, Astranis Space Technologies, BAE Systems Space Mission Systems, General Atomics-Electromagnetic Systems, Intuitive Machines, L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Boeing's Millennium Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, Quantum Space, Redwire Space Missions, Sierra Space, True Anomaly, and Turion Space — will compete for individual task orders to build proliferated space domain awareness capability. The ceiling boost is one of the strongest signals yet that Pentagon planners expect the threat picture in cislunar and GEO to require sustained, multi-vendor, rapid-tempo procurement through the end of the decade. Aviation Week separately reported the Space Force is also adding $4 billion to a related RG-XX/SG-XX vehicle for surveillance and reconnaissance birds.
• Anduril Industries receives $100.3 million Space Surveillance Network modification — total contract ceiling now exceeds $200 million as Pentagon doubles down on commercial space-tracking primes: Anduril Industries on May 5 received a $100.3 million modification (announced May 7) that expanded an existing Space Force contract for deployment, upgrades, and continuous development of resilient mesh networking capabilities across the Space Surveillance Network and Space Domain Awareness sensor backbone. The modification more than doubles the prior ceiling of $99.7 million to a new maximum of $200 million, with completion targeted for September 2027. The award is the latest in an Anduril winning streak that includes a March 2026 ten-year, $20 billion enterprise consolidation contract from the US Army, a leading position on the Golden Dome software consortium with Palantir, and a confirmed 2026 revenue projection of $4.3 billion — nearly double its $2.2 billion 2025 figure. The Space Surveillance Network contract is operationally critical: it tracks satellites, debris, and adversary maneuvers in orbit, and Anduril's Lattice operating environment is increasingly the integration backbone for tactical space data.
• ThinKom Solutions wins Space Force's 2026 Fight Tonight competition on May 6 — Containerized Digital Array fields a concealed phased-array satellite ground station inside a shipping container for rapid relocation and resilient ground architecture: ThinKom Solutions announced May 6 that its Containerized Digital Array won the Space Force's 2026 Fight Tonight competition, beating a field of competitors with a transportable satellite ground station that hides phased-array antennas inside a standard shipping container while supporting multi-orbit, multi-band communications across LEO, MEO, GEO, and HEO networks. The selection reflects a doctrinal pivot inside Space Operations Command toward distributed, mobile, and survivable ground segment, addressing the long-standing vulnerability of large fixed teleports to kinetic and cyber attack. The system can be repositioned rapidly if compromised, hides its aperture from passive ELINT, and supports multiple constellations from a single transport-able node. Fight Tonight is the Space Force's annual rapid-fielding competition, and the ThinKom selection signals the service intends to begin scaled procurement of distributed ground architecture in FY27.
• Raytheon RTX wins $441.6 million PATRIOT GEM-T modification for Operation Epic Fury — restocking interceptor inventories drawn down by Iran missile war: Raytheon RTX received a $441,600,000 modification this week for procurement of PATRIOT GEM-T missiles in support of Operation Epic Fury, the operational designation tied to the Department of War's response posture in the wake of the 2026 Iran war. The award follows a forty-day exchange in which Iran fired 650 ballistic missiles at Israel, with around 16 conventional and 50 cluster-warhead rounds defeating Israel's multi-layered defenses, and senior US officials publicly worrying about interceptor depth across CENTCOM. Raytheon is simultaneously executing five multi-year landmark agreements signed in early 2026 to expand critical munitions production lines, and the GEM-T modification slots into that broader industrial-base mobilization. The story matters because magazine depth — not interceptor performance — is now the binding constraint on US and allied air and missile defense, and the budget signal is unambiguous that Pentagon leadership intends to buy through the shortage rather than ration it.
• L3Harris Technologies selected May 7 to develop ABMS digital infrastructure backbone — Air Force command-and-control network gets sensor-to-shooter data fabric: L3Harris Technologies was selected by the US Air Force on May 7 to develop key features of the secure and resilient digital infrastructure that will serve as the data fabric of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) network. The award strengthens ABMS data integration and networking capabilities, which are foundational to combining sensor data across operational domains and pushing real-time targeting feeds to shooters in land, sea, air, space, and cyber. ABMS is the Air Force's piece of the broader Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) construct, and L3Harris's selection consolidates the firm's position in the digital backbone of US warfighting alongside its existing role on Booz Allen's $315 million TOC-L prototype. The contract continues a clear pattern of FY26 awards converging on a small set of integrators capable of operating at the data-and-network layer rather than the platform layer.
• NRO awards three new commercial satellite data contracts to EarthDaily, Pixxel, and Iceye — Commercial Solutions Opening expansion adds hyperspectral, electro-optical/IR, and RF data to the agency's intelligence pipeline: The National Reconnaissance Office in early May awarded three new contracts under its Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) vehicle, onboarding EarthDaily for daily global electro-optical and infrared collection, Pixxel for hyperspectral imagery, and Iceye for radio frequency (RF) data — adding to the synthetic aperture radar contract Iceye already held with the agency. Each vendor received a $300,000 base contract for stage-1 modeling and simulation, with each eligible for a stage-2 option worth $900,000 for products and ad hoc tasking; EarthDaily's combined initial value reached approximately $1.2 million. The strategic story is the diversification: NRO's commercial pipeline now spans daily revisit (EarthDaily), hyperspectral analytics (Pixxel), and RF geolocation (Iceye), explicitly extending agency access from static Earth observation toward dynamic moving-target tracking. The CSO awards complement the existing 10-year NRO contracts with Maxar, Planet, and BlackSky and signal sustained, multi-vendor commercial procurement as the agency builds out a layered intelligence collection architecture.
• Anduril and Palantir advance Golden Dome software consortium — summer 2026 platform test confirmed as integrated software stack moves toward fielding: Anduril Industries and Palantir Technologies confirmed this week they are leading software development for the Golden Dome missile defense shield as part of an industry consortium aiming to demonstrate the integrated platform this summer. The Anduril-Palantir partnership formalized in late 2024 has matured into a working "edge-to-cloud" data fabric in which Anduril's Lattice handles real-time tactical sensor data while Palantir's Maven Smart System and AI Platform manage theater-level command, modeling, and decision support. With Booz Allen's Brilliant Swarms award and the Andromeda ceiling boost both landing this week, the software, satellite, and ground architecture pieces of the $185 billion-plus Golden Dome enterprise are moving in parallel rather than sequentially — a meaningful acceleration relative to the typical missile defense program timeline.

Major Contract Awards This Week:

• Raytheon RTX – PATRIOT GEM-T missiles for Operation Epic Fury: A $441,600,000 modification for procurement of PATRIOT GEM-T missiles supporting US air and missile defense operations, with the cumulative face value of the contract reaching $441,600,000.
• Marvin Engineering Co. – Guided missile launchers and power supplies: A $138,217,405 firm-fixed-price requirements contract for guided missile launchers and associated power supply units for US tactical air and ground forces, awarded the week of May 4.
• Anduril Industries Inc., Costa Mesa, California – Space Surveillance Network mesh networking: A $100,300,000 modification for deployment, upgrades, and continuous development of secure, resilient mesh networking across Space Domain Awareness and Space Surveillance Network sensors, bringing total ceiling to $200,000,000, with completion targeted for September 2027.
• Lockheed Martin Rotary Mission Systems, Moorestown, New Jersey – Space Fence System (AN/FSY-3): A $27,456,111 modification (P00006) to contract FA8820-25-C-B002 for sustainment and continued development of the Space Fence radar system that anchors space surveillance, bringing total cumulative face value to $66,142,810.
• Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas – F-35 canopy tooling: An $18,638,744 modification (P00018) to cost-plus-fixed-fee contract N0001924C0011, increasing the not-to-exceed value to procure additional special tooling and test equipment supporting F-35 canopy production for the Joint Strike Fighter program.
• Lockheed Martin Corp. – C-130J logistics sustainment: A $48,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for sustainment, engineering support, program management, and repair work supporting the C-130J Super Hercules airlift fleet.
• Amentum Services Inc., Chantilly, Virginia – T-6 contractor logistics support: An $11,519,840 contract for T-6 sustainment and contractor logistics support services for US Air Force trainer aircraft.

🌐 Policy, Geopolitical & Legal Developments

• US Navy strikes Iranian targets May 7, ceasefire reassessed Friday as oil rallies and Rubio awaits Tehran response on fourteen-point peace proposal — Strait remains effectively closed despite Trump calling strikes "just a love tap": US forces struck Iranian targets late Thursday May 7 in what CENTCOM described as self-defense after Iran's "unprovoked attacks" on three US Navy guided-missile destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the latest pulse in a confrontation that began with the February 28 US and Israeli strikes on Iran and continued through 650 Iranian ballistic missile launches at Israel before the April 8 ceasefire. The strikes were conducted under Operation Project Freedom, which CENTCOM initiated Sunday at presidential direction to facilitate safe passage of international commercial shipping through the Strait, but each side claimed the other shot first and the situation was set for formal reassessment Friday May 8. President Trump insisted the ceasefire remains in effect and characterized the strikes as "just a love tap"; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US is expecting a response from Tehran today on a Pakistan-brokered fourteen-point peace proposal. Despite the diplomatic activity, almost no shipping has used the Strait and it remains effectively closed; oil prices resumed their rally Friday on the renewed exchange of fire, and Defense Secretary Hegseth said the broader US-Iran ceasefire "certainly holds" even as Tehran calls the convoy operation a ceasefire violation. The space-defense angle is direct — Iran's high-altitude cluster munition release tactics during the war, which evaded Israeli ballistic interceptors at concerning rates, is precisely the threat that Golden Dome's space-based midcourse layer is being built to address.
• Space Development Agency confirms Tranche 1 launches slipping to late summer 2026 — Tranche 2 ILC remains September 2026 as supply chain and system readiness issues bite: The Space Development Agency announced May 6 that the launch of its Tranche 1 Transport and Tracking Layer satellites is slipping to late summer 2026, citing system readiness and supply chain issues that have plagued the agency's aggressive launch cadence. SDA officials said the agency will then target a one-launch-per-month rhythm until the 158-bird T1 constellation is fully deployed in early 2027. The Tranche 2 Transport Layer remains on track to begin initial launch capability in September 2026 with the first plane of T2TL-Beta vehicles, followed by an approximately year-long monthly campaign. The slip is significant because the proliferated warfighter space architecture (PWSA) is the foundational layer underneath Golden Dome's tracking layer and the Joint Force's data transport — every month of T1 delay compounds dependencies for the rest of the constellation. SDA had already weathered Tranche 0 criticism and a Tranche 1 delay earlier in the program; the agency's credibility on launch tempo is now itself a programmatic risk.
• Senate Armed Services Committee holds FY27 posture hearing on US Space Command and US Strategic Command — Trump's $1.5 trillion defense budget and Golden Dome line items face initial committee scrutiny: The Senate Armed Services Committee held its hearing this week on the posture of US Space Command and US Strategic Command in review of the FY27 Defense Authorization Request and the Future Years Defense Program. The hearing is the first major committee touch-point for President Trump's $1.5 trillion FY27 defense topline, which represents a 44 percent increase over current funding (28 percent in discretionary, with $350 billion in mandatory) and includes approximately $5 billion for the F-47 sixth-generation fighter, $65.8 billion for shipbuilding (eighteen battle force ships and sixteen non-battle force ships), initial Trump-class battleship funding, and the largest single-year Golden Dome request to date. The committee is also revisiting the Administration's proposal to terminate the polar leg of the Next-Gen OPIR program — a $3.4 billion zero-out beginning in 2027 — which Congress moved to block in the 2026 appropriations bill and which is unlikely to survive markup again this year given polar coverage's importance for missile warning over the Arctic and the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap.
• Artemis Accords cross 66 signatories as Ireland and Malta accede on May 4 — diplomatic envelope around US-led lunar architecture continues widening despite Lunar Gateway cancellation: Ireland and Malta acceded to the Artemis Accords on May 4, bringing total signatories to sixty-six and continuing the steady international expansion of the US-led framework for civil space cooperation, lunar resource utilization, and orbital debris mitigation. The accession came against a more turbulent program backdrop: the Lunar Gateway program was cancelled in March 2026, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed in February that Artemis III will perform tests with one or both landers in low Earth orbit (a 460 km orbit) rather than going to the lunar surface, and Artemis IV is now tentatively designated as the first crewed lunar landing of the program in 2028. The Artemis II crew of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen completed their lunar flyby April 1–11, splashing down southwest of San Diego, and SLS core stage hardware for Artemis III moved into the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy on April 28 ahead of stacking. The Accords' steady growth — even as the program restructures — is its own strategic asset.
• Russia and Ukraine declare competing Victory Day ceasefires — Moscow announces May 8–10 truce, Kyiv responds with separate May 5 cessation as Russia threatens "massive missile strike" on Kyiv if Victory Day parade is disrupted: Russia announced a unilateral ceasefire running May 8–10 to bracket the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow, the centerpiece of the Kremlin's annual WWII commemoration. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had received no official notice through diplomatic channels and instead declared its own ceasefire beginning at midnight Tuesday May 5, while accusing Moscow of staging a propaganda exercise rather than negotiating in good faith. Russia warned that any Ukrainian disruption of the Victory Day celebration would trigger a "retaliatory massive missile strike on the center of Kyiv" and urged civilians to leave the city. Zelenskyy publicly attributed Russia's decision not to display military equipment at this year's parade to "fear of Ukraine's drones and evidence of Moscow's growing weakness." Combat operations continued through the briefing window — Ukraine reported 208 engagements over the past 24 hours, 99 airstrikes, 292 guided aerial bombs, 9,113 kamikaze drones, 3,126 shelling actions, and 1,130 Russian KIA. The dueling-ceasefire dynamic is itself the story: it confirms that the Kremlin has lost the diplomatic cover to dictate terms to Kyiv and has shifted to trying to use Western symbolism (Victory Day, parades, mass commemoration) as a substitute for kinetic leverage.
• Pentagon releases 162 declassified UAP files Friday under Trump's PURSUE program — first major UFO declassification in US history, with Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 photos among initial tranche and rolling releases every few weeks: The Department of War on Friday May 8 released its first batch of 162 declassified files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, the federal government's preferred term for UFOs) under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), the multi-agency declassification initiative President Trump ordered via a February 19, 2026 Truth Social directive. The release — posted to a new dedicated portal at war.gov/UFO/ and run with support from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — pulls documents, videos, and reports from the Department of War, FBI, NASA, and State Department, with the Pentagon characterizing the contents as "unresolved cases" where the government has been unable to make a definitive determination on the nature of the observed phenomena. The initial tranche includes incidents from the Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 lunar missions, FBI documents, State Department cables, NASA crewed-flight transcripts, and roughly 30 declassified videos totaling 41 minutes of footage showing reported UAP encounters worldwide between 2020 and 2026 (mostly infrared imagery tracking white objects in motion). The Pentagon committed to posting additional materials on a rolling basis every few weeks as files are identified and declassified. Representative Anna Paulina Luna confirmed Friday that 46 whistleblower-identified UAP videos she had demanded in a March letter are expected in a later release. The PURSUE program is the most significant federal UAP transparency move since the 2023 AARO standup, and its operational implications for sensor fusion, airspace deconfliction, and counterintelligence tasking are significant — even if the initial batch is, as Neil deGrasse Tyson and other analysts predicted, more bureaucratic than extraterrestrial.
• India confirms parallel hypersonic glide and hypersonic cruise development tracks — DRDO's quiet Mach 10 test signals next-generation strike capability beyond LRAShM: DRDO chief Samir V Kamat publicly confirmed this week that India is simultaneously pursuing both a hypersonic glide vehicle and a hypersonic cruise missile, with The Week reporting on a previously undisclosed Mach 10 hypersonic test signaling a major leap in Indian strike power. The confirmation follows India's May 1 Phase-II trial of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Hypersonic Missile (LR-AShM) off the Odisha coast in the Bay of Bengal, in which the missile struck a simulated sea-borne target at 1,500 kilometers and validated terminal guidance, mid-course maneuver, and sustained high-velocity flight against a NOTAM-restricted 1,680-kilometer corridor. India's fourth S-400 Triumf air defense system is also en route by sea and is expected to be deployed along the Pakistan border by mid-May. The dual-track hypersonic posture, combined with continued Pakistani Fatah-5 development, signals South Asia's missile balance is shifting faster than most Western analysts have priced in.

🛰️ Technology & Commercial Developments

• SpaceX nears largest IPO filing in history — public S-1 window opens May 18–22 ahead of June 8 roadshow at $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion target valuation: SpaceX's confidential S-1 was filed with the SEC on April 1, and the public version is now expected between May 18 and May 22 — a window dictated by the SEC's fifteen-calendar-day pre-roadshow rule and a planned June 8 marketing kickoff. Bloomberg reports the valuation target has now climbed above $2 trillion from the initial $1.75 trillion benchmark, with up to $75 billion potentially raised and as much as 30 percent of the offering allocated to retail investors. If priced at the high end, the offering would be the largest IPO in US history by a wide margin and would create the first multi-trillion-dollar company born from a private-to-public transition. Starlink already accounts for roughly two-thirds of SpaceX revenue and crossed $10 billion in 2025 (60 percent year-over-year), and the IPO is increasingly being characterized by analysts as "an ISP IPO with a launch business attached." The implications for Pentagon procurement, allied government contracts, and the broader space-defense industrial base will be substantial: a public SpaceX brings new disclosure requirements, a deeper public-market capital base, and very different incentive structures around Starshield, government Starlink, and the Golden Dome SBI work.
• Starship Flight 12 slips to late June after Musk's one-month delay and May 6 water deluge system explosion at Starbase Pad 2 — V3 upper stage debut and Pad 2's first integrated launch both pushed: SpaceX's twelfth Starship flight has now slipped to late June following Elon Musk's April 29 announcement of a one-month delay (from late May to late June) and a May 6 explosion that rocked the water deluge system during a final test ahead of the flight. Flight 12 will be the first launch of the stretched Version 3 upper stage and the first integrated launch from Starbase Pad 2, featuring Booster 19, Ship 39, the new Raptor 3 engine variant, and a payload capacity target above 100 metric tons to LEO. A wet dress rehearsal had been scheduled for May 7 at Pad 2, placing pre-launch activities right against the briefing window. Booster 19 successfully ignited all 33 of its Raptor 3 engines for the first time on April 15, clearing the largest technical gate before flight, but the deluge system damage now raises fresh questions about the integrity of the Pad 2 acoustic suppression infrastructure. A successful V3 debut would represent the largest single capability jump in the program since the first stacked test, and it remains a critical input for both the Artemis HLS schedule and SpaceX's ambitions for Mars and the Starshield architecture — but every month of slip compounds the schedule pressure on both.
• SpaceX launches Starlink 17-29 from Vandenberg on May 5 and Starlink 10-38 from Cape Canaveral on May 1 — constellation now exceeds 10,000 spacecraft: SpaceX bookended the start of the briefing window with two Starlink launches: the May 1 Starlink 10-38 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying 29 V2 Mini broadband internet satellites, and the May 5 Starlink 17-29 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base carrying 24 satellites. The Vandenberg flight used Falcon 9 first stage B1081 on its 24th flight, with the booster recovered on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" — its 195th landing on that vessel and SpaceX's 609th booster recovery. The constellation now exceeds 10,000 spacecraft on orbit, an order of magnitude beyond every other operator, and the launch cadence is feeding directly into Starlink's revenue trajectory toward the IPO window.
• Planet Labs adds three Pelican satellites on Falcon 9 from Vandenberg — Pelican fleet now nine spacecraft as $900 million backlog drives first profitable year: A SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg this month carried three Planet Labs Pelican Earth observation satellites, bringing the Pelican fleet to nine spacecraft. Each Pelican captures imagery at 50-centimeter resolution across six multispectral bands and carries an Nvidia Jetson AI platform for onboard processing — a meaningful capability shift toward edge-resident analytics rather than ground-loop tipping. Planet reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 revenue of $81.3 million, up 33 percent year-over-year, with FY27 guidance of $415 million to $440 million (39 percent growth) and total contract backlog at $900 million as of March. The company's defense and intelligence pipeline, anchored by its 10-year NRO imagery contract alongside Maxar and BlackSky, is the engine, and it puts Planet on track for its first profitable year. The competitive picture: Maxar leads at 15-centimeter resolution and 3D mapping under Advent International ownership, BlackSky leads on minutes-to-customer tactical latency, and Planet leads on daily global revisit.
• Anduril revenue projected to hit $4.3 billion in 2026, nearly double 2025 — Fortune profile of CEO Brian Schimpf published May 6 highlights $31 billion-valued defense-tech anchor of Pentagon's commercial pivot: Fortune published a May 6 profile of Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf describing the company as a $31 billion defense-tech anchor whose 2026 revenue projections of $4.3 billion are nearly double its $2.2 billion 2025 figure. The profile lands at a moment when Anduril has consolidated more than 120 separate Army procurement actions into a single ten-year, up-to-$20 billion enterprise contract; secured a leading position on Golden Dome software with Palantir; received this week's $100.3 million Space Surveillance Network modification; and joined the Brilliant Swarms / Booz Allen interceptor consortium. The Schimpf profile is notable because it describes a company that has functionally become non-substitutable in the US tactical autonomy stack — a strategic position the Department of War has tolerated only because the alternative is even worse latency and cost from incumbent primes.
• Vulcan Centaur preparing for medium Earth orbit missile-warning launch as ULA navigates February 2026 SRB issue — Amazon Leo cluster also on near-term manifest: ULA's Vulcan Centaur is preparing for a NET-May 2026 launch carrying the first satellite of a new medium Earth orbit missile-warning and missile-tracking constellation, alongside a manifest that includes 45 Amazon Leo communications satellites on a single Centaur V upper stage. The schedule remains contingent on resolution of the February 2026 solid rocket booster anomaly that triggered a launch pause; ULA has not yet publicly fixed all of the post-investigation timing. The MEO missile-warning architecture is one of the most consequential layers in the next-generation US warning constellation, sitting between Next-Gen OPIR (whose polar leg is in budget jeopardy) and the SDA Tracking Layer in LEO.
• Rocket Lab books more launches in Q1 2026 than in all of 2025 — Peter Beck reveals 31 new launch contracts on May 7 earnings call, including five dedicated Neutron flights as Neutron debut approaches mid-2026: Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck disclosed on the company's May 7 earnings call that the firm has already booked more launches in the first three months of 2026 than across all of 2025, with 31 new launch contracts confirmed year-to-date — including five dedicated launches for the Neutron medium-lift vehicle scheduled for its mid-2026 debut. The booking pace is one of the strongest signals yet that the post-Falcon-9 medium-lift market is not, in fact, a one-vehicle market: customers are paying for ride redundancy and willingness to fly as alternatives mature. Rocket Lab's 2025 was already a record year, and the 2026 acceleration positions the company as the most credible near-term challenger to SpaceX in the medium-lift segment. The company's Mars-bound ESCAPADE mission — built and integrated by Rocket Lab — flew last year on Blue Origin's New Glenn, and Beck has been clear that the Neutron-Electron-spacecraft stack is the operating model. With SpaceX's IPO filing imminent and Starship slipping to late June, Rocket Lab's commercial momentum is well-timed.
• Katalyst Space Technologies' "Link" rescue spacecraft passes key prelaunch milestone May 8 — first-ever orbital rescue of an unprepared NASA telescope targets Pegasus XL air-launch in June 2026 to save the $500 million Swift Observatory: Katalyst Space Technologies' robotic servicer "Link" — the spacecraft built to dock with and reboost NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory before atmospheric reentry — passed a critical prelaunch testing milestone on May 8, firing all three of its ion thrusters, deploying one of three robotic arms, and surviving simulated space hot/cold cycles in the Space Environment Simulator. Swift, launched in 2004 with no onboard propulsion, has been pulled from roughly 600 km down to 400 km by elevated solar activity and faces uncontrolled reentry in late 2026 without intervention. NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract in September 2025 to develop the rescue mission, which is now targeting a June 2026 Pegasus XL air-launch — the first-ever orbital rescue of an unprepared (non-rendezvous-equipped) NASA spacecraft. The mission is also a proof-of-concept for the broader satellite-servicing market that the Department of War, NRO, and commercial constellation operators are watching closely.
• Overview Energy wins first Air Force contract on May 8 to study solar power for remote military installations — small but signal-rich award marks early commercial space-power crossover into base-energy resilience: Overview Energy on May 8 won its first Air Force contract, allowing the startup to study using the sun to power remote military installations. The award is small in dollar terms but strategically interesting: it is one of the first explicit Air Force investments at the seam between commercial space-derived power technology and the broader Pentagon push toward energy resilience at forward and remote bases — a problem set that has historically been served by diesel generation, with all the logistics-tail vulnerability that implies. The award lands in the same week that the executive order on space superiority is driving lunar surface power planning toward 2030 and OSTP's NSTM-3 directive is operationalizing space nuclear timelines, which together signal a Pentagon and White House willing to underwrite early-stage commercial space-power players if the technology can be transitioned terrestrially.

💭 A Word From Christophe Bosquillon

On 16 April 2026, the Albanese Government released Australia's 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS, including a budget factsheet) and Integrated Investment Program (IIP). These documents outline Australia's response to the most challenging and deteriorating strategic environment since World War II. They emphasize greater self-reliance, a strategy of denial, and regional deterrence.

The 2026 NDS prioritises enhanced self-reliance and a capability acquisition informed by lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East wars. Australia must build a resilient and sovereign defence industrial base, and improve national civil preparedness and resilience. All actions require stronger coordination with regional partners.

The IIP commits $425 billion over the decade, including an additional $53 billion with $14 billion over the next four years. This NATO-like move will raise Defence spending to approximately 3% of GDP by 2033. Weaponisation priorities include undersea warfare enhanced with nuclear-powered submarines, lethal maritime capabilities, expanded long-range strike, integrated air and missile defence, autonomous/uncrewed systems, counter-drone measures, and increasing space assets. The investments further support accelerated capability delivery for industry and personnel.

Increasing space assets and strengthening Australia's sovereign defence industrial base start with resilient multi-orbit satellite communications. Next, an initial $126.9 million investment by the Albanese government will establish solid rocket motor manufacturing led by Northrop Grumman Australia. Efforts will begin by producing rocket motors for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missile at Mulwala by 2030.

Regionally, Australia counts Japan as major defence and security cooperation partner. PM Albanese and PM Takaichi Sanae met in Canberra on May The Fourth and issued the Joint Statement on Enhanced Defence and Security Cooperation. This follows the 2022 Australia-Japan Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation, 2023 Australia-Japan Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), 2025 Framework for Strategic Defence Cooperation (FSDC), and the decision to procure the upgraded Mogami class frigates for Australia's general purpose frigate program.

Key priorities are better information sharing and joint-building of defence capabilities. Advanced weapons testing, training, and exercises loom large, while jointly securing supply chains and critical maritime routes. Defence integration and interoperability will better equip Australia and Japan to deter and defend the Indo-Pacific against an increasingly dangerous neighborhood.

Have a great Space Week ahead!

🎤 Our Next Guest: Trevor Hehn

"If You Want To See This Technology, You Have To Own The Mission Itself": Military JAG-Turned-Attorney Trevor Hehn Returns On Space Nuclear's Legal Architecture, The 2028 Launch Trio That Will Test It, And The Indemnity Gap Standing Between Commercial Reactors And Orbit.

Returning for his second appearance, Trevor Hehn — founder of Hehn Law PLLC, former US Army infantry officer and Judge Advocate, OrbitsEdge co-founder, and recent attendee of the 41st Space Symposium where OSTP Director Michael Kratsios rolled out NSTM-3 — explains why the federal authority to launch nuclear systems into space has existed under NSPM-20 since 2019, why commercial space nuclear hinges on the single unsolved problem of indemnity, and what the next eighteen months will reveal as NASA prepares for three nuclear-related launches in 2028.

• Why the December 2025 "Ensuring American Space Superiority" executive order and OSTP's April NSTM-3 directive are operational cadence shifts — not a new authorization regime — and why that distinction matters.
• The 2028 launch trio — Dragonfly to Titan with a Multi-Mission RTG, Rosalind Franklin to Mars with radioisotope heater units, and SR-1 Freedom to Mars as the first interplanetary spacecraft powered by fission — and what each will prove or break.
• Why the Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Board has no dedicated appropriations, and why that procedural bottleneck — not the technology — is the most likely reason the executive order's timeline slips.
• The indemnity gap that keeps commercial space nuclear stuck on the runway: why selling a reactor to the government for a government-owned mission has a viable path, and why flying your own still does not.
• Why DRACO failed where SR-1 Freedom may succeed — and the one piece of advice Hehn gives every investor evaluating a space nuclear deal.

Watch Trevor Hehn's YouTube preview Tuesday on the Sirotin Intelligence YouTube channel. Full interview drops Thursday.