{"id":95440,"title":"Wardstone: Satellites for Missile Defense","tagline":"Introducing New Space Defense Capabilities for America's Golden Dome","body":"# **Introduction**\n\nHi YC,\\\n\\\nWe are [Tobias ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobifischer/)and [Sebastian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebafischer/). Cofounders (and brothers!) of [Wardstone](https://www.wardstone.space/).\\\n\\\n**TL;DR:** Wardstone builds satellites for missile defense. We are pursuing an emerging \\~$40B/year space defense market as part of America’s Golden Dome initiative. Tobias studied Mechanical Engineering at Cornell and worked at Astranis. Sebastian studied Aerospace Engineering at MIT and worked at NASA, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, and Cruise. We built and demoed a live ground-based missile intercept during YC.\n\n# **Launch Video**\n\nCheckout the automated missile defense system we built during YC:\n\nhttps://youtu.be/jXABTM9GZ6s\n\n# **About Wardstone**\n\nWardstone builds space-based interceptors: satellites with interceptors designed to kinetically destroy missiles. New space threats, specifically hypersonic missiles, are emerging as existential threats to the United States. Our current missile defense systems were not designed for this new offensive technology. The United States’ Congress has allocated \\~$25B towards developing new on-orbit hypersonic missile defensive missile capabilities over the next 3 years. Follow on build out of this on-orbit defensive layer coined the _Golden Dome_ has been estimated by congress to cost up to $831B over the next 20 years.\\\n\\\nAt Wardstone, we believe that we can build defensive missile capabilities for a fraction of the cost of the offensive hypersonic weapons themselves, and orders of magnitude cheaper than the defensive concepts being proposed/explored by the major defense primes. We will do this with our first product, Hailstorm, that deploys high speed clouds of buckshot to kinetically destroy hypersonic missiles.\n\nOur integrated interceptor-satellite constellation provides global intercept capabilities from space for various missile types beyond hypersonics. \\\n\\\nThe success of Wardstone and the full deployment of the Golden Dome will place the United States in an incredibly strong geopolitical position.\n\nThe full Wardstone constellation with the space based intercept capability in action will look like this:\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95440\u0026key=user_uploads/2077453/f2a877a7-c23c-438d-8714-5a854930bba2)\n\n# **Our Progress During YC**\n\nDuring YC we had 2 main objectives: 1) build our first missile intercept demo and 2) establish relationships with our main customer: the US Space Force.\\\n\\\n**The Intercept Demo**\\\nWe built a fully automated missile tracking and intercept system that uses infrared computer vision for predicting the future missile position and a high pressure air cannon to deploy an interceptor to destroy a 150+ mph missile. Our system provided repeatable behavior, could adapt to different missile speeds, and destroyed a total of 3 missiles. Checkout he video above for the entire story and insights into our system. Highlights below:\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95440\u0026key=user_uploads/2077453/c1d9b5df-8297-4a8a-aec8-a8529cb805e8)\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95440\u0026key=user_uploads/2077453/4ea3e37d-2172-4627-bd54-67a1f2374fe3)\n\n**Space Force and Other Department of War Relationships**\\\nWe built relationships and engaged with multiple agencies inside the military including: Air Force Research Labs, AFWERX, Space Systems Command Commercialization Office, Space Safari, and the Navy’s Joint Special Operations Command. We are receiving letters of support for an Air Force $3MM Space Based Interceptor SBIR grant and are receiving inbound requests for additional use cases of our technology (Ground to Air, Space to Ground).\\\n\\\nWe have also engaged with five satellite bus and sounding rocket providers to integrate our Space Based Interceptors for our Series A demo milestone.\\\n\\\nIf Space Defense Technology resonates with you, please reach out: [founders@wardstone.space](mailto:founders@wardstone.space).\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95440\u0026key=user_uploads/2077453/129abf15-7925-4374-9279-d48e58da1fa2)\n\n---","slug":"OpM-wardstone-satellites-for-missile-defense","created_at":"2025-11-12T06:56:19.257Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T02:57:55.700Z","total_vote_count":25,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/OpM-wardstone-satellites-for-missile-defense","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=95440\u0026key=user_uploads/2077453/129abf15-7925-4374-9279-d48e58da1fa2","company":{"id":30881,"name":"Wardstone","slug":"wardstone","url":"https://www.wardstone.space","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/12a498451818daa71ba01c88400ac7f241e33a03.png","batch":"Fall 2025","industry":"Industrials","tags":[],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30881"}}