MDA Space has signed a contract with the United States’ Missile Defense Agency, which operates through the US Department of War, to potentially help with President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” initiative.
The Brampton, Ont.-based spacetech manufacturer announced on Thursday that it received an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract from the Missile Defense Agency for the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program.
“As tasks and services that relate to our capabilities are published within SHIELD, we will respond with competitive bids.”
The contract “covers a broad range of work to strengthen defence against threats from land, sea, air, cyberspace, and space,” the company said in a statement. A spokesperson told BetaKit in an email on Thursday that MDA Space is now positioned to bid on future tasks and services that support the program, which has a $151 billion envelope. This could “create significant revenue opportunities” for MDA Space in the future.
“As tasks and services that relate to our capabilities are published within SHIELD, we will respond with competitive bids,” the spokesperson said.
MDA Space’s stock price on the Toronto Stock Exchange jumped five percent on the news, from $27.79 CAD per share to $28.54 per share, as of noon EST on Thursday.
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The Missile Defense Agency says it is a research, development, and acquisition agency that works on ballistic missile defense systems for the US and its allies.
The SHIELD program is part of the three-year, $175-billion Golden Dome project, which would detect and shoot down any potential missiles targeting the US. The multi-purpose missile shield is meant to forever end “the missile threat to the American homeland,” Trump has pledged, but critics have panned the project as both improbable and likely to grow more expensive than advertised. The Canadian government has been talking to the US about participating in a missile defence project, but has not explicitly said it will join.
While an IDIQ contract gets MDA Space on the agency’s radar, the process will be competitive. The agency awarded the SHIELD program’s initial IDIQ contracts to more than 1,000 companies last month.
MDA Space was recently selected as one of the first procurements out of Canada’s new Defence Investment Agency to develop satellite communications capabilities in the Arctic. The company reported revenue growth in its Q3 earnings in November despite losing out on a $1.8-billion CAD contract with American telecom EchoStar earlier in the year.
Feature image courtesy MDA Space.