OPINION — “The Golden Dome for America Business Summit can be held on June 11, 2025 on the Von Braun Heart downtown Huntsville, Ala., on the UNCLASSIFIED stage…The objective of the Summit is to equip non-traditional and trade companions with the data and understanding of MDA’s [Missile Defense Agency] and House Drive’s function in Golden Dome for America, empowering them to take concrete actions that help and align with authorities necessities. There can be no deliberate One-on-One classes, or panels in the course of the occasion. Non-Conventional Contractors are extremely inspired to attend as MDA is extraordinarily thinking about ‘exterior the field’ pondering and we imagine that non-traditional contractors are very important to shaping the way forward for missile protection.”
That was a Could 13, MDA announcement to contractors of an trade day to listen to extra about Trump’s Golden Dome thought for an anti-missile protection for your entire United States.
On Could 20, President Trump introduced from the Oval Workplace that he had chosen an structure for the system that “can be totally operational by the tip of my time period,” which means January 20, 2029. He added, “We’re most likely speaking about $175 billion whole value.” That’s an quantity and a time-frame that most individuals with expertise in related businesses imagine are completely unrealistic.
Then on Could 22, MDA launched a pre-solicitation discover to publicize its intent to challenge — someday in June — the primary contract proposals associated to the Golden Dome structure. MDA has given the bureaucratic title Scalable Homeland Enterprise Layered Protection (SHIELD) to the general contracting car for use by it and different collaborating Protection Division (DoD) businesses.
MDA defined, “As a long-planned technique, SHIELD will enable MDA and different DoD entities to quickly challenge orders beneath one enterprise versatile [contracting] car.”
However maybe extra importantly, these proposed contracts, based on the MDA discover, anticipate “a interval of efficiency of 10 years, which is able to include a base ordering interval and a number of optionally available ordering intervals.” As well as, MDA’s pre-solicitation discover stated, “The anticipated acknowledged most worth [of the proposed contracts] is $151 billion. Particular person order awards will consist of varied contract sorts.”
Specialists are gathering at The Cipher Temporary’s NatSecEDGE convention June 5-6 in Austin, TX to speak about the way forward for warfare. Be part of the dialog.
MDA’s assertion of labor is breathtaking: “The MDA requires a complicated, multi-domain protection system able to detecting, monitoring, intercepting, and neutralizing threats to the US homeland, its deployed forces, allies, and associates throughout all phases of flight by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and different superior aerial assaults.”
It additionally requires “steady, layered safety towards air, missile, house, cyber, and hybrid threats originating from any vector – land, sea, air, house, or our on-line world. This effort helps providers and provides of each categorized and unclassified applications on a number of safety domains.”
Maybe SHIELD’s most bold objective is: “This contract will present speedy supply of progressive capabilities to the warfighter with elevated pace and agility, leveraging synthetic intelligence and machine learning-enabled functions the place pertinent, and maximizing use of digital engineering, open methods architectures, model-based methods engineering, and agile processes within the acquisition, improvement, fielding, and sustainment of those capabilities.”
It first must be understood that Golden Dome is mostly a plan to increase on varied present native and regional U.S. missile protection methods that are already deployed, plus new parts at the moment in improvement.
What these methods have in widespread are sensors and interceptors. The sensors should have the ability to monitor the goal from launch by way of trajectory to terminal dive. Interceptors should have the ability to get shut sufficient to destroy targets all through their enhance section, midcourse, and terminal descent.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, House Drive’s vice chief of operations, who’s Trump’s alternative to steer the Golden Dome effort, has informed Congress that Golden Dome would require unprecedented cooperation amongst present navy anti-missile methods, together with ground-based Military Patriot missiles and THAAD interceptors, the Navy AEGIS ship-fired missiles, and the Air Drive and House Drive satellites for sensors and space-based weapons.
Earlier, earlier than he was named, Guetlein seemed to the longer term telling a Senate subcommittee, “Investing in maneuverable satellites outfitted with state-of-the-art sensors will improve our skill to detect and monitor rising threats, making certain we are able to preserve fixed consciousness of the battle-space, present well timed warnings, and finally, deny our adversaries the aspect of shock. These capabilities [will] help to ship on the President’s Golden Dome for America initiative and spotlight the central function space-based capabilities will play in bringing that effort to fruition.”
Join The Cipher Temporary’s Nightcap e-newsletter: the easiest way to unwind on daily basis whereas nonetheless staying up to the mark on nationwide safety.Join right this moment.
Guetlein additionally raised an attention-grabbing, unpublicized challenge: One of many greatest wants is the approval to conduct on-orbit testing and coaching. “It’s a really constrained set of authorities that now we have…We’d ask that that [on-orbit testing, training] open up in order that we are able to improve our readiness of our forces on the entrance line to have the ability to do this defend and defend mission,” he stated.
Trump’s Golden Dome plan requires “improvement and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors (SBIs) able to boost-phase intercept,” a weapon that doesn’t but exist.
As many specialists have identified, SBIs must be positioned on satellites in low-earth orbit so they might spot the flame/warmth from launched missile in the course of the three-to-four minutes of the enhance section that begins a missile’s flight.
Right here is the tough half. Somebody or one thing has to present the order to shoot inside a minute or two and your SBI must be in place to hit the rising missile. Since SBIs are at all times in movement, you want a parade of SBI-armed satellites to defend towards one missile, and twice that many towards two, and so forth.
Since Golden Dome should take into account each Russia and China, plus North Korea as potential missile threats, which means the U.S. might be taking a look at 10,000 or extra SBI satellites for even minimal deterrence.
There was a logical cause why the Reagan administration dropped the thought of its Strategic Protection Initiative (Star Wars), and I imagine the SBI aspect of Trump’s Golden Dome plan might face the identical future.
Evidently simply proposing Golden Dome defenses has drawn threats from Moscow and Beijing that their reply might very nicely be extra offensive weapons – and maybe a few of them in house – resulting in a complete new arms race – in house.
Opinions expressed are these of the writer and don’t signify the views or opinions of The Cipher Temporary.
The Cipher Temporary is dedicated to publishing a spread of views on nationwide safety points submitted by deeply skilled nationwide safety professionals.
Have a perspective to share based mostly in your expertise within the nationwide safety discipline? Ship it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
Learn extra expert-driven nationwide safety insights, perspective and evaluation in The Cipher Temporary
