{"id":91402,"date":"2026-10-29T01:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/bofas-ron-epstein-everybodys-doing-national-security-work-today\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T01:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:37:13","slug":"bofas-ron-epstein-everybodys-doing-national-security-work-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/bofas-ron-epstein-everybodys-doing-national-security-work-today\/","title":{"rendered":"BofA\u2019s Ron Epstein: \u201cEverybody\u2019s Doing National Security Work Today\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ron
Ron Epstein of Bank of America Securities delivers the opening keynote at Silicon Valley Space Week 2026. (Photo: SatNews)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Five years ago, some space companies told Ron Epstein they didn\u2019t want national security work. Today, he says, they all do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuess what? Everybody\u2019s doing national security work today,\u201d Epstein, a managing director at Bank of America Securities who covers aerospace and defense, said Tuesday in the opening keynote of Silicon Valley Space Week\u2019s Satellite Innovation conference.<\/p>\n

He described one company, which he did not name, that once wanted to stay purely commercial. Today, he said, \u201calmost 80% of the revenue\u201d is government-related.<\/p>\n

Later in the talk, he put the shift more bluntly: \u201cSpace is a warfighting domain now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Planet and Rocket Lab<\/h2>\n

Epstein\u2019s slide put 82% of Planet\u2019s work since 2022 in national security, against the 32% it planned when it went public through a SPAC. The defense and intelligence slice is still widening. In the quarter ended July 31, Planet\u2019s defense and intelligence revenue grew more than 90% to about $81 million, roughly 70% of the total.<\/p>\n

Rocket Lab is the bigger surprise, Epstein said. By his numbers, only 8% of its work was national-security related in 2021. \u201cWho would have guessed that Rocket Lab would have won a nearly billion-dollar contract from the Space Development Agency for the Tracking Layer?\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award he meant is Rocket Lab\u2019s $816 million prime contract, announced last December, to build 18 satellites for SDA\u2019s Tranche 3 Tracking Layer. The company has said additional subsystem work could bring its total capture on the program to about $1 billion. Add its earlier $515 million award for 18 Tranche 2 Transport Layer satellites, and Rocket Lab holds more than $1.3 billion in SDA contracts.<\/p>\n

Flight heritage drives it, Epstein said: once something works in orbit, more doors open.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s paying<\/h2>\n

The money behind the shift is the federal budget. Epstein said the fiscal 2027 request is up 123% for the Space Force; the Department of the Air Force puts the increase at 124%, to $71.1 billion. He also pointed to Golden Dome spending on missile warning and command and control. Whether Congress passes all of it is \u201ca whole different story,\u201d he said, with midterms ahead and some of the money tied to reconciliation.<\/p>\n

He flagged the other side of the ledger, too. NASA\u2019s space funding has gone up, he said, but \u201cbasic science funding has gotten killed in the current administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bank of America was one of the lead underwriters on SpaceX\u2019s initial public offering, and Epstein covers SpaceX alongside other space stocks.<\/p>\n

SDA Director GP Sandhoo picks up the defense thread at 1:00 p.m. Wednesday, when he gives the opening keynote of the MilSat Symposium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews Ron Epstein of Bank of America Securities delivers the opening keynote at Silicon Valley Space Week 2026. (Photo: SatNews) Five years ago, some space companies told Ron Epstein they didn\u2019t want national security work. Today, he says, they all do it. \u201cGuess what? Everybody\u2019s doing national security work today,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}