EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION – On January 27, 2025, President Trump signed an Govt Order aimed toward defending the U.S. in opposition to an assault by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles in addition to different superior aerial assaults; the Golden Dome initiative. The Pentagon moved out neatly to meet this order. Trade lined up with concepts on how one can defend the U.S. and Division of Protection bureaucrats convened and developed a method. All of the work that has occurred is required. However we want extra.
We have to construct the know-how to help defensive techniques to safe the homeland from adversary superior aerial assaults. However we’re lacking a vital a part of the equation which might be occurring now with solely restricted extra assets.
The U.S. must be transferring out diligently to place in place the very best assortment functionality to offer early warning concerning U.S. adversaries. Too usually, the U.S. jumps to an answer and forgets that we should begin with intelligence to place the constructing blocks in place to deal with the answer.
On this case, the Govt Order asks for a examine of adversary risk however that’s all. There’s nothing about growing intelligence for early warning on adversary intent. This is a vital oversight. The U.S. should give attention to growing warning that lets decisionmakers know when our adversaries are planning a launch. The necessary satellite tv for pc monitoring mechanisms that can observe the launches ought to solely be used if the intelligence neighborhood misses the early warning.
To make sure the U.S. is utilizing its assets to its finest capability in constructing the Golden Dome, the complete intelligence infrastructure of assortment, know-how to help the gathering, and talent to use the gathering – to incorporate analytical consultants – should be synergized to offer early warning that an adversary is contemplating an aerial assault.
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The literature concerning golden dome focuses on interception and monitoring missiles as soon as they’re launched. There’s a variety of dialogue concerning the want for a defensive system. All of that is warranted, and it’s the space the place essentially the most cash must be spent. Nevertheless, the literature is way much less centered on what the U.S. must put in place previous to launch to purchase time for growing choices to counter an assault and restrict the chance concerning that call making course of.
With out the platforms that may acquire on adversary intent, functionality, motion, and different anomalies, decisionmakers might be left with rushed decisions on the usage of defensive techniques that might lead to catastrophic penalties if the know-how detects missiles too late or misreads that aerial assaults are coming our method once they will not be.
Time is the necessary variable for determination makers. The sooner the intelligence neighborhood can current them with evaluation and reporting of adversary intent, the higher and certain much less dangerous the implications are for the US.
For instance, if the Intelligence Group (IC) can present the President with data that an adversary has given an order to arrange an aerial assault in opposition to the U.S. – whereas the assault is being deliberate however previous to launch – then there are extra choices to cease that assault.
The IC is then alerted to trace adversary actions in order that decisionmakers know the way a lot time they should determine on an possibility and which possibility will work finest underneath the circumstances. On this situation, U.S. determination makers have days as a substitute of hours, to plan. This enables for a variety of choices to cease a launch – from diplomacy, to sanctions, to army motion.
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The present Golden Dome literature talks rather a lot about monitoring these aerial gadgets and requires a brand new have a look at radars, each house and floor based mostly. As I said, a reliance on this structure dangers being too late within the determination cycle. Kudos to the Military for recognizing the necessity for sensible warning by integrating synthetic intelligence into their Built-in Battle Command system, however even this initiative doesn’t hit the early warning assortment challenge head on.
LTG Gainey, commanding normal of america Military House and Missile Protection Command (USASMDC) hinted on the challenge throughout a Home Armed Providers subcommittee listening to in April when he mentioned the Golden Dome additionally contains left-of-launch operations, offering deny, delay, disrupt and degrade missile defeat results in coordination with world combatant instructions, the Intelligence Group, Joint Workers, interagency, and Workplace of the Secretary of Protection. This nonetheless doesn’t spotlight the necessity for early warning.
The U.S. can detect missile launches with its present House-Primarily based Infrared System satellites in geosynchronous orbit. These satellites can inform the place a ballistic missile goes and the place its warheads are more likely to fall, however america needs to develop higher warning and monitoring by making a Custody Layer — satellites that can watch the place all the opposite man’s stuff is — and a Monitoring Layer that might additionally decide the place extra refined weapons, like hypersonic missiles, are headed.
Fred Kennedy, the inaugural director of the U.S. House Improvement Company and a former director of DARPA’s Tactical Know-how Workplace, shares in Aerospace America, his imaginative and prescient of a Custody Layer, a constellation that might be outfitted with transferring goal indicator radar, imaging radar and different sensors, to maintain tabs on an adversary’s offensive “web of issues.” …..These satellites can be the equal of Joint Surveillance Goal Assault Radar System and U-2 plane, however in house. To strike a missile, you must know the place it might be launched from, in any case. Complementing the Custody Layer was the Monitoring Layer, the satellites that might detect and observe hypersonic or ballistic weapons after launch.
That is all necessary work and wanted however notice, it’s all centered on launch.
If decisionmakers are being advised by the space-based interceptors that assaults are on the way in which—there is just one possibility, to intercept. However what if these interceptors misinterpret the knowledge or what if they didn’t learn the monitoring in time? In both situation it might be the start of a catastrophic occasion that’s based mostly on a mistake.
For that purpose, we have to begin with the intelligence and put as a lot effort into that as we’re on the interceptors. Collaboration with the Pentagon and different companies that observe satellite tv for pc imagery is essential. I’d additionally add that the Protection Intelligence Company must play a main function on this initiative which should embody elevated human intelligence and all types of open supply to incorporate industrial knowledge.
With the intelligence neighborhood and division of protection getting smaller, we have to work collectively greater than ever. Defending our nation is a staff sport that requires sturdy intelligence to arrange determination makers and operators to make the very best selections potential, serving to to mitigate danger. This can’t occur with out the protection and intelligence communities working collectively to offer the primary warning—method earlier than launch. Now’s the time to push the intelligence neighborhood to improve applied sciences that observe missiles by offering warning of aberrations in patterns earlier than launch.
By utilizing Synthetic Intelligence (AI) to synthesize vital technical assortment with anomalies in open supply (OSINT), industrial (CAI), and private (PAI) knowledge, we might have the cultural breakthrough we have to change how the intelligence neighborhood makes use of technical assortment fused with OSINT, CAI, PAI and AI. Towards this nationwide safety backdrop, we might have our first huge win in altering how we course of intelligence and safeguard the US. NGA’s Maven program is an enormous step in the best course of fusing intelligence to help DoD and the remainder of the nationwide safety institution. This apply must be extra widespread.
Now’s the time to make use of confirmed know-how with professional evaluation to offer determination makers elevated time and house to counter aerial assaults on the homeland. The assets concerned, in comparison with the quantity wanted for satellites and lasers to shoot down the missiles, is minimal. This motion might be began now, the know-how exists. Putting in early warning buys time for the US to develop the remainder of the Golden Dome safety.
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