EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION – On January 27, 2025, President Trump signed an Govt Order geared 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 how you 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’d like extra.
We have to construct the know-how to assist defensive programs to safe the homeland from adversary superior aerial assaults. However we’re lacking an important a part of the equation which could possibly be taking place now with solely restricted extra sources.
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 deal with growing warning that lets decisionmakers know when our adversaries are planning a launch. The necessary 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 sources to its finest potential in constructing the Golden Dome, your complete intelligence infrastructure of assortment, know-how to assist the gathering, and talent to use the gathering – to incorporate analytical consultants – have to 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 numerous dialogue in regards to 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. Nonetheless, the literature is far much less targeted 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 danger concerning that call making course of.
With out the platforms that may acquire on adversary intent, functionality, motion, and different anomalies, decisionmakers could possibly be left with rushed decisions on the usage of defensive programs that might lead to catastrophic penalties if the know-how detects missiles too late or misreads that aerial assaults are coming our means once they is probably not.
Time is the necessary 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 Group (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 understand how a lot time they should determine on an choice and which choice will work finest below the circumstances. On this situation, 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 navy motion.
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The present Golden Dome literature talks lots about monitoring these aerial units and requires a brand new have a look at radars, each area and floor based mostly. 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 sensible warning by integrating synthetic intelligence into their Built-in Battle Command system, however even this initiative doesn’t hit the early warning assortment situation head on.
LTG Gainey, commanding basic of america Military House and Missile Protection Command (USASMDC) hinted on the situation throughout a Home Armed Providers subcommittee listening to in April when he stated the Golden Dome additionally consists of left-of-launch operations, offering deny, delay, disrupt and degrade missile defeat results in coordination with world combatant instructions, the Intelligence Group, Joint Employees, 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-Based mostly Infrared System satellites in geosynchronous orbit. These satellites can inform the place a ballistic missile goes and the place its warheads are prone 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 Expertise 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 area. To strike a missile, it’s a must to know the place it could possibly 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 observe, it’s all targeted on launch.
If decisionmakers are being informed by the space-based interceptors that assaults are on the way in which—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 situation it could possibly be the start of a catastrophic occasion that’s based mostly on a mistake.
For that motive, 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 vital. I’d additionally add that the Protection Intelligence Company must play a main position on this initiative which should embody elevated human intelligence and all types of open supply to incorporate business 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 robust intelligence to arrange choice makers and operators to make the very best selections attainable, serving to to mitigate threat. This can not occur with out the protection and intelligence communities working collectively to offer the primary warning—means earlier than launch. Now could be the time to push the intelligence group to improve applied sciences that observe missiles by offering warning of aberrations in patterns earlier than launch.
By utilizing Synthetic Intelligence (AI) to synthesize important technical assortment with anomalies in open supply (OSINT), business (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. Towards this nationwide safety backdrop, we might have our first massive win in altering how we course of intelligence and safeguard the US. NGA’s Maven program is an enormous step in the precise course of fusing intelligence to assist DoD and the remainder of the nationwide safety institution. This apply must be extra widespread.
Now could be the time to make use of confirmed know-how with professional evaluation to offer choice makers elevated time and area to counter aerial assaults on the homeland. The sources concerned, in comparison with the quantity wanted for satellites and lasers to shoot down the missiles, is minimal. This motion could be began now, the know-how exists. Setting up early warning buys time for the US to develop the remainder of the Golden Dome safety.
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