Last week during President Trump’s State of the Union, he declared: “As commander in chief, my focus is on building the most powerful military of the future. As a first step, I’m asking Congress to fund a state-of-the-art Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland, all made in the USA.”
Also referred to as an “Iron Dome,” a Golden Dome is a pretty awesome rebranding of the current Israeli missile defense system and a new initiative to protect the US from missile and hypersonic attack. President Trump is right – we absolutely want one, and it is finally possible.
Ballistic missiles are the weapons of choice for our adversaries to strike the US homeland from far away. Our most sophisticated adversaries are also developing the dreaded maneuvering hypersonic weapon which is capable of defeating today’s missile defenses.
A ballistic missile would arrive in minutes, be hard to see, and come in blisteringly fast. That’s because they are launched with rockets, the fastest delivery systems on earth, making this threat really tough to counter. Enter the missile defense interceptor.
If you want to stop a rocket, you use another rocket. An interceptor flies out at high velocity into the path of the incoming warhead, destroying it in midair. Its radar detects an incoming warhead and alerts your Battle Management System that aims and fires. All this only takes a few minutes. It’s like shooting clay pigeons. The interceptor is wicked fast, but so is the warhead, so we aim at a point in front of the target, so they arrive at that spot together.
The marquis example is THAAD, which I developed a few years ago. It utilizes a powerful radar and an interceptor that flies at twice the speed of a rifle bullet. The radar can also be tipped off by a SBIRS satellite, allowing it to focus and pick up the warhead earlier. THAAD is ideal for short range to medium range threats, but it can also handle ICBMs within a smaller area. It can operate above the atmosphere or closer in, where decoys will be stripped away. It’s a great underlay for systems designed to defend large swaths of the country from ICBMs and works well with its own underlay of systems like Patriot that defend against cruise missiles. Layering is vital.
Israel’s Iron Dome system is quite good, but there’s one big challenge when we look at the United States: geography. Israel is only 85 miles wide vs. America’s 2,600 miles. But don’t worry, it turns out that we already have the most capable missile defense technology in the world. We just need more of them… Plus one extra for the dreaded hypersonic.
The U.S. requires a three-layered defense: An ICBM killer that takes a first shot and efficiently covers the entire country, a sea-based system off our coasts, and a regional defender providing an underlay for population centers.
Today, we have Ground-Based Midcourse Defense in Alaska. It’s there for North Korean ICBMs. It also does an okay job with Iran. But it would do better if it were also deployed on that side of the country. This technology is being updated right now with Lockheed Martin’s Next Generation Interceptor (NGI). So for our U.S. Iron Dome ICBM element, we just need to finish NGI and base them in Alaska, the Northeast, and perhaps the South.
We already have a highly capable sea-based missile defense system on Aegis Cruisers using the Standard Missile family. Ships would be posted off both coasts and in the Gulf of America.
And, finally, a THAAD battery or two would provide the underlay for each U.S. region. Some would be located near major metropolitan areas providing a “point” defense against an ICBM “leaker”.
Boom! Done. A practical American Golden Dome could begin deployment right now.
What about maneuvering hypersonics? This is a unique physics challenge. That’s why China and Russia have been investing in it. Remember my earlier trap shooting analogy? This threat seeks to defeat an interceptor by waiting until after you “shoot” and then swerving out of your path.
We could kill it in terminal flight, just over its target. If it maneuvers then, it misses…. But we’d have to put a THAAD battery in every city, which would be impractical. There’s only one way to do this. We need an interceptor that travels at the speed of light, aka: Directed Energy (lasers).
The saying inside the community is that “directed energy is ALWAYS ten years away”. That was true for so long, that no one noticed when it wasn’t. I developed a practical system that killed rockets and drones over ten years ago using a commercial laser source. We can develop a system to be based on a constellation of satellites that would monitor large regions of the country and destroy hypersonic gliders in any part of their flight path from space. Having also developed hypersonics myself, I can tell you that they are fast, but not very sturdy.
We have all the tools for America’s Golden Dome. We can start deploying the first elements tomorrow. Congress just needs to act.
Let’s get on it!
Tory Bruno is the CEO of United Launch Alliance. Over the past 40 years, Bruno has developed and yielded dozens of critical defense and space launch systems that form the backbone of America’s national security and her efforts in space exploration.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our email newsletter to have all our smart stories delivered to your inbox.
