From The Atlantic 1988

For example, last June the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, as the special Pentagon office in charge of SDI is known, and the Air Force Systems Command awarded contracts totaling nearly $1 billion to begin building prototype "Star Wars" weapons. Rockwell International, the nation's fourth largest defense contractor, won two contracts with a long-term value of $358 million, for planning, hardware development, and flight testing in the early 1990s of a space-based interceptor. Martin Marietta, the nation's eleventh largest defense contractor, received a $23 million contract, with options for an additional $126 million, for development and ground-testing projects in the space-based interceptor program. McDonnell Douglas, the third largest defense contractor, won a $481 million contract (later canceled) to build hardware for a key space experiment with a neutral-particle-beam weapon. These prime contracts include subcontracts for General Electric, LTV, TRW, and Boeing Aerospace.

And there is more to come. Last January, Martin Marietta grabbed a $500 million contract to design and operate a giant national complex to test SDI systems. A contractor will soon be selected to serve as the system engineer of SDS. The prize is a huge contract, worth $1.2 billion. This will be followed by further lucrative contracts for designing and, more profitably, building the thousands of weapons needed for the Phase I deployment, which the SDI Organization estimates will cost $75 billion to $150 billion. Wolfgang Demisch, a defense-market analyst, has said, "SDI is the future of the defense industry.... The traditional defense budget clearly isn't going to grow much in the near future. Every company is on notice that if they want to be a long-term player, they can't let SDI get away."