Just over 100 days into his administration, President Trump’s landmark defense initiative is showing signs of moving beyond the conceptual stage. The Golden Dome directive, which directs the Pentagon to create a comprehensive integrated air and missile defense system for the United States, marks the greatest potential change in American defense strategy since the early Cold War.
The Trump administration would benefit by moving quickly to kick-start development and ensure that the U.S. delivers this capability within his time in office, given the scale of the threat the U.S. homeland faces.
Creating a national integrated air and missile defense network, however, is no simple task. The Pentagon must carefully combine new defense providers with the current defense-industrial system, leveraging proven technologies as the base of an innovative, potentially transformational capability.
China is in the midst of the most rapid nuclear modernization of any power since the Cold War. Per the Pentagon, it will field 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, and 1,500 warheads by 2035, placing it at near-parity with U.S. and Russian deployed warheads.
Russia, like China, now fields a series of nuclear-tipped hypersonic weapons, which can evade all but the most sophisticated modern air defenses. Iran has yet to cross the nuclear threshold, but it remains on the cusp of nuclear breakout. North Korea has undoubtedly gained valuable technology from Russia as compensation for its military support.
Unlike during the Cold War, when the U.S. confronted only one major nuclear threat, by the mid-2030s it is likely to confront several concurrent nuclear threats of varying sophistication.
Strategic stability through mutual vulnerability is extremely difficult to generate with a greater number of nuclear powers. Moreover, advances in hypersonic weapons have increased an attacker’s ability to hit hardened silos more reliably, while the promise of space-based submarine detection has also increased, potentially jeopardizing the Cold War era’s assurance of a naval second strike.
The Golden Dome program is strategically crucial considering the investments America’s rivals have made in their nuclear arsenals and advances in military technology. Delivering the capability requires the rapid integration of new technologies with proven capabilities to deliver hardware at scale.
A full-scale national air and missile defense system requires technological advances to rapidly and accurately integrate data from multiple ground and space-based early-warning sensors, track incoming targets, discriminate between incoming missiles, warheads, and decoys, and cue interceptors to the right targets. Modern defense-focused technology companies can help in this respect, particularly if they can leverage foreign experiences, namely Israel’s design of its multi-tier interceptor system and Ukraine’s remarkably successful attempts at wartime sensor integration.
Nevertheless, the Israeli and Ukrainian models both highlight the need for hardware. Neither Jerusalem nor Kyiv deal with an air and missile defense problem nearly as complex as securing the United States. Even if an integrated system is initially concentrated around specific major urban areas and critical national and military infrastructure this remains a tall task.
It will require a comprehensive ground-based radar network, including very long-range radars, a space-based detection system, and potentially a seabed sensor network to identify hostile nuclear-armed submarines. Thousands of high-performance interceptors are necessary for top-tier targets to make Golden Dome credible, while a variety of low-end interceptors are also necessary, particularly if the threat from Chinese dual-purpose merchant shipping is combined with cheap, plentiful loitering munitions.
The technical and physical complexity of even a limited defense system to protect the U.S. demands trusted industry partners that understand the difficulties of large-scale defense projects take the lead.
The U.S. already has examples that point in the right direction. It combines, for instance, a strategic-level ballistic missile defense system in Lockheed Martin’s C2BMC with a tactical-level air and missile defense system in Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Battle Command System. Naturally, the technology in question will differ in Golden Dome’s case. But there are elements of the current air and missile defense system that can also be directly leveraged, most obviously the Aegis ballistic missile defense system.
Only traditional defense actors have the capacity, technological familiarity and scale potential to create even a limited system.
New technologies obviously have a role. American defense tech firms have pioneered ad-hoc sensor integration platforms, crucial for a common missile and air threat picture. New defense firms have also begun to produce cheaper interceptors, relevant against lower-level munitions threats.
Cheap aerial drones can supplement a more sophisticated ground and space-based network. Unmanned naval ships can do the same for traditional submarine detection mechanisms. Yet integrating these assets and processes should rest on partners that already have that experience.
The strategic benefits of Golden Dome are potentially revolutionary for U.S. foreign and defense policy. By mitigating the odds of a successful nuclear or conventional attack on the U.S. homeland, Golden Dome enables radical changes to American force structure and strategy, facilitating a more effective, more sustainable American posture towards adversaries, China and otherwise. But delivering Golden Dome requires emphasizing traditional actors in the defense industrial base, not simply betting that new technology can fill hardware and software gaps.
Peace through strength is a commonsense maxim. It needs to be followed up with action.
Seth Cropsey is president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of “Mayday” and “Seablindness.” Harry Halem is a senior fellow at Yorktown Institute.
