FULL TRANSCRIPT
1. LAUNCH DETECTION Wide-field-of-view infrared satellites sweep huge swaths of sky and catch the rocket plume the moment a missile launches.
2. FIRE-CONTROL TRACKING Detection hands off via the optical mesh to medium-field-of-view fire-control satellites with higher resolution that can see dim hypersonic glide vehicles.
3. ONBOARD PROCESSING The fire-control satellites convert raw infrared into a track with position, trajectory, and thermal brightness.
4. OPTICAL MESH TRANSPORT The track pushes through the transport layer. Tranche 1, 126 satellites from Northrop Grumman, York, and Lockheed, carries it across oceans and continents to ground stations over 2.5 gigabit-per-second laser links.
5. FUSION & COMMAND Telemetry from multiple orbital angles fuses into a 3D track. Command and control picks the best interceptor: THAAD, Aegis, PAC-3, or a future space-based interceptor.
6. INTERCEPT The interceptor flies most of the way on the space-based track, then uses its own seeker for the final leg. Seeker lock. Intercept.
7. THE BIG PICTURE Golden Dome is homeland-focused but the constellation is global, and the same sensors serve both. 28 tracking satellites from L3Harris and Northrop Grumman, 36 more from L3Harris and Sierra Space at about 1.75 billion dollars, initial capability in 2028, and a space-based interceptor competition: 12 companies, 3.2 billion dollars, flight tests next year.
8. THE PROBLEM Each prime, Northrop, L3Harris, Lockheed, and York, built its own data models, message formats, and encryption. A Northrop transport satellite can't natively speak to a York one.
9. THE TRANSLATION TAX Every translation hop adds latency, and every hop is a failure point.
10. THE PHYSICAL-LAYER FIX The open OCT standard uses the same 1550 nanometer wavelength, the same modulation, and the same connector, so any prime's terminal can physically link to any other's.
11. THE SEMICONDUCTOR CONTRIBUTION Reconfigurable FPGAs and ASICs with software-defined radio front ends switch between waveforms and protocols on the fly. One terminal, many formats, no dedicated hardware per prime.
12. THE DEEPER FIX Common data models, open APIs, and government-owned reference implementations that all primes must conform to.
13. THE HONEST SPLIT Semiconductors solve the physical layer, but interoperability lives at the protocol and software layer.
14. MEET VORAGO VORAGO Technologies is a semiconductor company specializing in radiation-hardened microcontrollers for extreme environments: space, defense, and high-reliability.
15. THE TWIN CHIPS VORAGO's microcontroller line is twin chips: a rad-hard MCU and a rad-tolerant MCU. Both build on proprietary SEL-immune technology that prevents single-event latchup, a key failure mode in space.
16. GOLDEN DOME ROLE Edge processing on satellites: running onboard track processing, protocol translation, and command handling locally instead of sending raw data through the mesh. Lower latency, less bandwidth, more resilience.
17. THE NON-FPGA ANGLE MCUs are simpler, cheaper, lower power, and easier to qualify than FPGAs. Ideal for the many small nodes of a proliferated constellation that needs thousands of reliable edge processors, not just a few reconfigurable ones.
18. THE FULL STACK Optical terminals for the physical layer, FPGAs for flexible protocol translation, radiation-hardened MCUs for reliable edge compute. VORAGO fills the last piece.