Born as a space company, Rocket Lab (RKLB +0.42%) is becoming more of a defense contractor as it matures.
Rocket Lab conducted its first-ever commercial satellite launch a little over eight years ago and has been ramping up its launches of small Electron rockets for both commercial and government customers ever since. In 2025, the company set a personal best, launching 21 times. Three of those launches were Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron (HASTE) test flights for the U.S. military.
Expect many more such military rocket launches in the future.
Image source: Getty Images.
Rocket Lab and Kratos Defense
In March, Rocket Lab inked its biggest launch contract ever, promising to conduct 20 HASTE launches in cooperation with defense company Kratos Defense & Security Solutions over the next four years. The Department of Defense, in turn, agreed to pay Rocket Lab $190 million for its work -- $9.5 million per launch, or roughly a 13% premium to the company's usual Electron launch cost.
Given their suborbital trajectories, the HASTE tests appeared to be designed to demonstrate Rocket Lab's ability to use its Electron rockets as hypersonic weapons for the military.
But appearances can also be deceiving.
NASDAQ: RKLB
Key Data Points
Is Rocket Lab a space stock or a missile defense company?
Prior to winning the HASTE contract (also known as MACH-TB 2.0 Task Area 1), Rocket Lab's other "biggest ever" contract win was an $816 million contract to build 18 missile warning satellites for the Space Force. (And before that, it won a $515 million contract -- also for missile defense satellites.)
Apparently, the U.S. military believes Rocket Lab is getting pretty good at missile defense -- so good, in fact, that it's giving Rocket Lab yet another chance to demonstrate its proficiency. And this time, Rocket Lab won't just detect hostile missiles.
It may try to shoot them down, too.
As announced last week, the Space Force has awarded Rocket Lab $266 million to conduct at least 12, and perhaps as many as 18, suborbital rocket launches under its Rocket Systems Launch Program (RSLP). The new test launches will be conducted from a new Rocket Lab launch base in the Pacific Spaceport Complex–Alaska (PSCA) in Kodiak, Alaska, but it's not 100% clear what they are supposed to accomplish. But Sir Peter Beck, Rocket Lab's CEO, dropped a heavy hint when he observed that "cadence, iteration, and relentless execution are essential to maturing America's missile defense capabilities."
To me, this suggests that the Space Force wants Rocket Lab to develop a family of hypersonic missiles to be used for missile defense -- and probably specifically for defense against Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles currently in development. Rocket Lab may have a new area of hypergrowth for its business, with future military orders nearly doubling.
If I'm right, Rocket Lab is now a defense contractor.
