EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION – On January 27, 2025, President Trump signed an Govt Order aimed toward defending the U.S. towards an assault by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles in addition to different superior aerial assaults; the Golden Dome initiative. The Pentagon moved out well to satisfy this order. Business lined up with concepts on the right way to defend the U.S. and Division of Protection bureaucrats convened and developed a technique. 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 an important a part of the equation which may very well be taking place now with solely restricted extra assets.
The U.S. must be shifting out diligently to place in place the very best assortment functionality to supply early warning concerning U.S. adversaries. Too typically, 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 menace however that’s all. There may be 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 vital satellite tv for pc monitoring mechanisms that can comply with the launches ought to solely be used if the intelligence group misses the early warning.
To make sure the U.S. is utilizing its assets to its finest potential in constructing the Golden Dome, the whole intelligence infrastructure of assortment, know-how to help the gathering, and talent to take advantage of the gathering – to incorporate analytical consultants – have to be synergized to supply 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 may be a whole lot 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 far 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 accumulate on adversary intent, functionality, motion, and different anomalies, decisionmakers may very well be left with rushed selections on the usage of defensive techniques that would end in catastrophic penalties if the know-how detects missiles too late or misreads that aerial assaults are coming our approach after they is probably not.
Time is the vital variable for choice makers. The sooner the intelligence group 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 Neighborhood (IC) can present the President with info that an adversary has given an order to organize an aerial assault towards 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 must resolve on an choice and which choice will work finest below the circumstances. On this state of affairs, U.S. choice makers have days as an alternative 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 take a look at radars, each house and floor primarily based. As I said, a reliance on this structure dangers being too late within the choice cycle. Kudos to the Military for recognizing the necessity for good warning by integrating synthetic intelligence into their Built-in Battle Command system, however even this initiative doesn’t hit the early warning assortment concern head on.
LTG Gainey, commanding normal of the USA Military House and Missile Protection Command (USASMDC) hinted on the concern throughout a Home Armed Providers subcommittee listening to in April when he mentioned the Golden Dome additionally consists of left-of-launch operations, offering deny, delay, disrupt and degrade missile defeat results in coordination with international combatant instructions, the Intelligence Neighborhood, 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 current 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 the USA desires 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 would 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 Expertise Workplace, shares in Aerospace America, his imaginative and prescient of a Custody Layer, a constellation that will be geared up with shifting 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, it’s important to know the place it may very well be launched from, in spite of everything. Complementing the Custody Layer was the Monitoring Layer, the satellites that will detect and observe hypersonic or ballistic weapons after launch.
That is all vital work and wanted however be aware, it’s all centered on launch.
If decisionmakers are being advised by the space-based interceptors that assaults are on the best way—there is just one choice, to intercept. However what if these interceptors misinterpret the data or what if they didn’t learn the monitoring in time? In both state of affairs it may very well be the start of a catastrophic occasion that’s primarily based on a mistake.
For that cause, 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 businesses 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 embrace elevated human intelligence and all types of open supply to incorporate industrial information.
With the intelligence group and division of protection getting smaller, we have to work collectively greater than ever. Defending our nation is a group sport that requires sturdy intelligence to arrange choice makers and operators to make the very best selections potential, serving to to mitigate danger. This can not occur with out the protection and intelligence communities working collectively to supply the primary warning—approach earlier than launch. Now’s the time to push the intelligence group to improve applied sciences that observe missiles by offering warning of aberrations in patterns earlier than launch.
Through the use of Synthetic Intelligence (AI) to synthesize vital technical assortment with anomalies in open supply (OSINT), industrial (CAI), and private (PAI) information, we might have the cultural breakthrough we have to change how the intelligence group makes use of technical assortment fused with OSINT, CAI, PAI and AI. In opposition to this nationwide safety backdrop, we might have our first large win in altering how we course of intelligence and safeguard the US. NGA’s Maven program is a giant step in the suitable route 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 knowledgeable evaluation to supply choice 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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