WASHINGTON — During a hearing on missile defense Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, a panel of senior Defense Department officials testified regarding their respective organizations’ progress in developing the country’s next-generation missile defense shield.
The development, future deployment and maintenance of the new system — referred to as the “Golden Dome” — comes as a result of a Jan. 27 Executive Order calling for a missile defense shield that will defend citizens and infrastructure from any foreign aerial attack on the homeland, as well as guarantee second-strike capability.
“Golden Dome is a top priority for the nation, and will include the development of cutting-edge domain awareness systems, kinetic and non-kinetic missile defeat capabilities and advanced command, control and battle management systems to integrate and augment existing U.S. missile defense capabilities,” said Andrea Yaffe, performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for space policy.
Additionally, Yaffe said the president’s Golden Dome executive order underscores that “the threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”
Regarding how her office has been contributing to the defense shield’s development, Yaffe said that once a decision on the program’s architecture has been made, the intent is to lead and conduct a missile defense review, as well as “broader considerations and strategic requirements.”
The additional members on the panel, all three and four-star generals from air and space-affiliated DOD services, also explained how their organizations are contributing to Golden Dome’s development.
Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said his commands have provided three separate layers of input to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff — all related to the detection and destruction of various incoming missile threats.
“Establishing a layered domain awareness network to detect and track threats approaching North America, from the seabed to space, remains our top priority because you can’t defeat what you can’t see,” Guillot said, adding that such a network is central to both NORAD and Northcom’s current and future requirements, including the future Golden Dome project.
Air Force Lt. Gen Heath A. Collins, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said MDA has been working on a national defense architecture for 42 years and plays a key role in supporting the assembly and integration of missile defense systems like the future Golden Dome.
“We’re at the core of helping support and inform in putting together an architecture that’s comprehensive, that covers all pieces and parts, and be executed,” Collins told the committee.
When asked if Golden Dome is intended to be a new approach to missile defense or if it’s just going to be a “rebranding” of missile defense capabilities already in place, Yaffe said that — until now — missile defense had primarily been focused on intercontinental ballistic missile threats posed by rogue states such as North Korea.
“The direction the Golden Dome executive order is to focus on the whole range of missile threats … from all nations, and that’s a significant shift in both policy and direction,” she said.
“I think the big difference is Golden Dome takes all of the existing requirements that we had — for the first time — integrates multiple layers into one system,” Guillot said before reiterating that this will be the first time all components and requirements will be “tied together in one system.”
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