Can the U.S. keep its edge in space as China and Russia close the gap?
Lockheed Martin Space President Robert Lightfoot joins Guy Taylor of The Washington Times’ Threat Status at the 2026 Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. Together they break down why, from Golden Dome to the Artemis moon missions, Huntsville is at the center of America’s next-generation defense and space push.
[TAYLOR] What is it about Huntsville? This event happens every year. It seems to get bigger and bigger in this kind of golden age of space that we’re in. What is it about Huntsville that’s important for Lockheed Martin?
[LIGHTFOOT] Having been here on and off since 1986 myself, what I’ve seen is that as an engineer, if you want to work on hard problems, that’s where you come. Whether it’s NASA, whether it’s Department of War activities here, the Army Missile Defense Agency, the challenges are here. The things that we need to work on as a nation all come through this town. And it’s been, as an engineer, it’s kind of a dream place to come and work on those things that we need to work on going forward.
And on top of that, you’ve got a community that’s incredibly supportive. I mean, the community support in this town is unbelievable. I have worked in many towns, and I see time and time again: we want you to come to Huntsville. It’s not like a marketing campaign. It’s, hey, what can we do to bring you here? Mayor Battle and the team here in Huntsville has just done a tremendous job building the city up and the community up to support the young engineers, the early family career kind of folks that are coming in. It’s just a very welcoming community and a very challenging set of problems that you get to face when you come here.
[TAYLOR] Advanced technology problems. Unbelievable. And Lockheed Martin is a major prime player in this 21st-century landscape of space technology, a multi-billion-dollar player. Is Lockheed Martin investing in new projects in North Alabama, around the country, and how does that play into this Huntsville picture of space missile defense?
[LIGHTFOOT] I mean, specifically, if you think about what we’re doing, if you look at the North Alabama region, not just Huntsville, look all the way to Courtland, we’ve made investments to support the Next Generation Interceptor program, new facilities, new integration labs on our campus here in Huntsville, but also at Courtland, where we’re going to be building the Next Generation Interceptor. Critical piece of the nation’s infrastructure.
[TAYLOR] And this is space-based or a combination of ground?
[LIGHTFOOT] It’s a system that sits in Fort Greely, Alaska. It’s there to take out threats in space. When something gets launched at us, that’s what we’re putting in place.
[TAYLOR] So this will be integrated into Golden Dome as signature initiatives of the Trump administration.
[LIGHTFOOT] It’s a part of Golden Dome for sure, yeah. But it was there before. You’ve got to realize, Next Generation Interceptor was before Golden Dome as well. It’s a system that we have to put in place to replace the system that’s there now, which is an older system.
So that’s one thing. The other thing that we’re doing is we made a tremendous amount of investment in hypersonics here. So we do what’s called conventional prompt strike for the Navy. It’s also the long-range hypersonic weapon for the Army. It’s the same weapon. They just use it in different ways. And so we built the facilities and the capability out at Courtlandt. And all the engineering is being done in Huntsville here at Bradford, off of Bradford Drive. So it’s a really… Those are just a couple of examples. We’ve got the big investment we’ve done as a corporation down in Troy, Alabama. The state of Alabama has been very welcoming, but North Alabama is kind of the place where we can do the work we need to do with the current mission threats that are out there.
[TAYLOR] And these advanced technology assets are actually manufactured here.
[LIGHTFOOT] A lot of them are here. You know, we still bring parts together from all over. But production is going to be in Courtlandt, where we build the actual missiles. We’re building the hypersonic weapons today. We’ll be building the next-generation interceptor as well there.
[TAYLOR] Let me try to pull it out to 50,000 feet.
[LIGHTFOOT] That’d be a low Earth orbit. You’ve got to use the space term.
[TAYLOR] I was trying. So let’s go to outer space and look down, okay?
You’ve been in government, you’re an acting NASA administrator, you’ve been in private industry, you’re a leader in the space, you’ve got a unique perspective I think on the bigger question of, the second quarter of the 21st century has started. We’re in this kind of era of increased government spending on space-based things, everybody’s connected by cell phones that work through satellites, all of this. I’ve actually heard you speak publicly about the stuff a few times. And yet we’re in this moment of great power competition. And you’ve seen it. You’ve seen it evolve over a generation now. Do you think that the United States can sustain a kind of dominance in the direction that the human species is going in space? And what is Lockheed Martin’s relevance to all of that?
[LIGHTFOOT] Yeah, I absolutely think we can sustain that. I’m not worried about that at all. I believe we have a technological advantage and capability that will keep us in that mode. I think the way I think about it, Guy, when you think about that larger view, I use this all the time, is when you look at history, go back in time, whether it’s Columbus discovering America, whether it’s Lewis and Clark going to the West Coast, right? The first step in that process is exploration.
So think about space. Exploration. We took people to the moon in the 60s. We’re doing scientific missions all the time. They’re telling us more about our environment. Exploration typically leads to business. It typically leads to some commercial entity. So think about communications now.
[TAYLOR] The space economy.
[LIGHTFOOT] Exactly. So the hugest space economy. So what does that do? That creates conflict. And so that’s why you need a Space Force. If you think about Navy, ships just going all over the place. All of a sudden we had maritime rules and then we have a Navy that supports and allows us to have that capability. So when you think about that, that’s where space is. And I think we’re going to see that in spades in the next quarter of this century.
[TAYLOR] Are you concerned about big picture weaponization in space by U.S. adversaries, China, Russia specifically, but also the United States and its own role?
[LIGHTFOOT] I think for me it’s more deterrence. How do we protect the space, the space we’re using, no plan intended, to allow us to be able to use that for commercial reasons and for terrestrial reasons, right? There’s no doubt that space has become a contested environment now. That’s a totally different thing than we dealt with 25 years ago using your quarter analogy.
So because it’s a contested environment, we have to be ready. Lockheed Martin brings all the capabilities we need to take care of the environment, but also to do the exploration. I mean, we just took humans to the moon and back with the Artemis program and our Orion space capsule, right? We want to still be able to do that and not worry about those kind of missions being messed with by some adversary. So that’s the reason that we’re doing what we’re doing, and I’m excited about Lockheed Martin’s role in that going to the future.
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