RKLB Lands Golden Dome SBI Role and $30M Anduril HASTE Block

The Defense Wires

On May 7, alongside the Q1 print, Rocket Lab dropped two defense wires that reframed the story away from "small launch with a Neutron option." The first: selection by Raytheon for the U.S. Space Force's Space Based Interceptor (SBI) program, the kinetic-interceptor layer of the Golden Dome missile defense initiative. Raytheon is one of 12 primes named — alongside Anduril, Lockheed, Northrop, SpaceX, General Dynamics and others — sharing other transaction authority agreements worth up to a combined $3.2 billion, with an initial capability demonstration targeted for 2028. Rocket Lab's role is to support Raytheon's prototype work on a proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellation carrying boost-, midcourse- and glide-phase kill vehicles.

The second wire: a $30 million block buy from Anduril for three HASTE hypersonic test launches out of Launch Complex 2 in Virginia, fully funded by Anduril's internal capital, with first flight planned inside 12 months. It stacks on top of the existing 20-launch TRMC MACH-TB 2.0 award and lets Rocket Lab keep selling the same airframe to multiple Department of War customers without diluting the unit economics.

How The Perp Got Ahead Of Spot

The xyz:RKLB perp printed +30.64% over the last 24 hours to $102.40. Cash RKLB closed $78.58 on May 7 and is bid intraday on May 8, but the perp is sitting at a visible premium to the spot tape. Two clean reasons for traders to flag: the HIP-3 perp ran 24/7 through a window where the cash session was closed for part of the post-print continuation, and continuation buyers stacked on top of an already-extended tape that had options pricing only a 13.88% post-earnings move. Funding is the price of being long over the gap; the leveraged book carrying RKLB on the perp is paying for the privilege of holding through the spot reset.

What This Reprices

The RKLB story used to be "small launch with a Neutron call option." After May 7, the frame is broader. Defense revenue is now the loudest engine: between SBI for Golden Dome, the Anduril HASTE block, and the existing TRMC buy, Rocket Lab is one of the few non-primes with both space hardware credentials and hypersonic launch cadence in the same P&L. The $2.2B backlog the company carries into the rest of 2026 was already a multiple expander; layering a Golden Dome demo seat on top changes the multiple traders are willing to underwrite. The catch is timing — SBI's initial capability demo is a 2028 event and Neutron's first flight is still scheduled for late 2026, so execution remains the swing factor between this re-rate sticking and the perp giving back the premium it just built.