By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has begun the process of doling out contracts for President Donald Trump’s marquee Golden Dome missile defense shield, according to a solicitation notice posted on Wednesday.

Golden Dome’s ambitions mirror those of Israel’s Iron Dome – a homeland missile defense shield – but a larger, more complex layered defense system requires a vast network of orbiting satellites covering more territory.

The Multiple Award Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) contract represents a 10-year, $151 billion indefinite delivery vehicle designed to rapidly deploy new defense capabilities to protect “United States homeland, its deployed forces, allies, and friends” against ballistic, hypersonic and cruise mi

See Full Page