Long Beach Startup Lands $75 Million to Flight-Test Missile Interceptor

Long Wall, formerly ABL Space Systems, says it can build more than 100 Cyclops interceptors a year but hasn't said what one costs.

A Long Beach startup says its factories can turn out more than 100 missile interceptors a year. Now the federal government is paying $75 million to see whether one of them flies.

The company is Long Wall, and the Missile Defense Agency's award covers the rest of the flight tests on its Cyclops interceptor, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported Monday. Long Wall is matching it: the company's Oct. 22 release says it'll spend $75 million more of its private money on Cyclops design and development while the contract runs.

The award is one piece of Golden Dome, the Defense Department's missile shield, which carries a far bigger bill. Golden Dome will take more than $185 billion to build, by the Congressional Budget Office's estimate, the Business Journal reported. The CBO puts the cost of keeping it stocked and running for two decades at another $1.2 trillion.

What neither side has published is the price of a single Cyclops. Long Wall and the agency haven't put a unit cost on the "low-cost interceptor," SOFREP reported. The release left out how long the contract lasts, and neither Long Wall nor the agency has said when a first intercept test under the award will happen.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Dan Piemont named the problem he's selling against in the release: "low production capacity and high unit costs." It's an old complaint in missile defense, where the shield usually costs more than the missiles it's built to stop, the Business Journal noted.

When Long Wall unveiled Cyclops last December, it said attacks now come in raids of hundreds of missiles, enough to burn through a year's output of some interceptor types in a single day. It promised Cyclops could be built "in the hundreds or thousands – not dozens."

This is the company's second act. Long Wall used to be ABL Space Systems, a company that launched satellites, and it's now in a field where shots have long been counted in dozens. The country's homeland midcourse defense rests on 44 Ground-Based Interceptors, based largely at Fort Greely, Alaska, and the agency plans an initial buy of 20 next-generation replacements, SOFREP reported.

One year of Long Wall's promised output would top both of those combined, SOFREP calculated. It added that a Cyclops isn't a like-for-like swap for either missile, and that the 100-a-year figure is Long Wall's own forecast, untried on a production line and unchecked by government tests.

The factories, at least, have grown on paper. In December, Long Wall said more than 160,000 square feet of space could build over 100 rounds a year. The October release describes more than 180,000 square feet and 100 acres across three major facilities, with operations in California, Alaska and Alabama.

Closer to home, Long Wall's careers page lists more than 30 openings, most of them in Long Beach, from flight software engineer to cost accounting manager. In El Segundo, it's hiring CNC machinists and assembly technicians, the people who'd build those 100 a year if the flight tests the agency is paying for go well.

Source: labusinessjournal.com, retrieved November 11, 2026. Other sources: lwall.com, sofrep.com, lwall.com (2), jobs.lever.co.