Missile defense spending, slide by slide: what the FY27 request really buys

Threat Status has partnered with Arlington-based Shield Capital portfolio company Obviant to take a deep dive into the critical line items in the 2027 NDAA during OPERATION Huntsville and the 2026 Space and Missile Defense Symposium. 

Interceptor Quantity

• The quantity total for the FY27 request includes quantities requested through a reconciliation bill outside the annual appropriations process. Of the 7,031 interceptors in the FY27 request, 6,059 (86%) are in reconciliation, including 2,936 (92%) for PAC-3. 
• It remains unclear if Congress will pass another reconciliation bill that includes defense spending.
• PAC-3 and AMRAAM quantities sum the requested amounts from the Army and Navy for their totals.
• Quantities in the request are best understood as “orders the Pentagon plans to place” in the corresponding Fiscal Year, not missiles delivered or paid for.

Kill Chain

• Each row in this chart represents programs, organized roughly into their relevance to each stage in a simplified missile defense killchain.
• % increases represent changes from each program’s FY26 enacted value.
• These values also include the reconciliation request for each program.

Huntsville DoW-wide

• This chart represents the summed transactions under DoW contracts with place-of-performance in Madison County, Alabama, for FY2015-FY2025.
• Place-of-performance can occasionally be a noisy or under-reported metric, meaning not all defense work performed in Huntsville is represented in the totals. It also does not include subcontracting activity.
• Obligations to subsidiaries are rolled up to their parents (with the exception of Dynetics, which is shown instead of its parent Leidos).

Huntsville, PEO Missiles & Space

• This chart is a subset of the chart above, restricted only to work where PEO Missiles & Space (now PAE Fires) is the funding agency on the contract.
• The same caveats regarding place-of-performance apply to this chart.
• This does not represent all missiles and space work performed in Huntsville, just the work funded through this specific PEO.

Space Force Sankey

• Each line here represents a Space Force budget line item, program element, or O&M activity in the FY27 request.
• The values include the reconciliation request.