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 meet this order. Trade lined up with concepts on how you can 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 assist defensive techniques to safe the homeland from adversary superior aerial assaults. However we’re lacking a vital a part of the equation which could possibly be taking place now with solely restricted further assets.
The U.S. must be shifting out diligently to place in place one of the best assortment functionality to offer 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 risk however that’s all. There may be nothing about creating intelligence for early warning on adversary intent. This is a crucial oversight. The U.S. should deal with creating warning that lets decisionmakers know when our adversaries are planning a launch. The vital satellite tv for pc monitoring mechanisms that may observe the launches ought to solely be used if the intelligence neighborhood misses the early warning.
To make sure the U.S. is utilizing its assets to its greatest capacity in constructing the Golden Dome, the complete intelligence infrastructure of assortment, know-how to assist the gathering, and skill 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 may be loads of dialogue concerning the want for a defensive system. All of that is warranted, and it’s the space the place probably the most cash must be spent. Nonetheless, the literature is far much less centered on what the U.S. must put in place previous to launch to purchase time for creating 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 could possibly be left with rushed decisions on using defensive techniques that might lead to catastrophic penalties if the know-how detects missiles too late or misreads that aerial assaults are coming our manner once they might not be.
Time is the vital variable for determination makers. The sooner the intelligence neighborhood can current them with evaluation and reporting of adversary intent, the higher and sure 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 arrange 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 need to resolve on an possibility and which possibility will work greatest beneath the circumstances. On this state of affairs, U.S. determination makers have days as a substitute 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 loads about monitoring these aerial gadgets and requires a brand new have a look at radars, each area and floor primarily based. As I acknowledged, a reliance on this structure dangers being too late within the determination 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 basic of america Military House and Missile Protection Command (USASMDC) hinted on the concern 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 international 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 present 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 america desires to develop higher warning and monitoring by making a Custody Layer — satellites that may 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 Growth 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 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 could be the equal of Joint Surveillance Goal Assault Radar System and U-2 plane, however in area. To strike a missile, you must know the place it could possibly be launched from, in spite of everything. Complementing the Custody Layer was the Monitoring Layer, the satellites that might 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 instructed by the space-based interceptors that assaults are on the best way—there is just one possibility, 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 could possibly 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 vital. I might additionally add that the Protection Intelligence Company must play a main function on this initiative which should embody elevated human intelligence and all types of open supply to incorporate business knowledge.
With the intelligence neighborhood 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 determination makers and operators to make one of the 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—manner earlier than launch. Now’s the time to push the intelligence neighborhood 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 crucial technical assortment with anomalies in open supply (OSINT), business (CAI), and private (PAI) knowledge, we might have the cultural breakthrough we have to change how the intelligence neighborhood 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 an enormous step in the appropriate path of fusing intelligence to assist DoD and the remainder of the nationwide safety institution. This follow must be extra widespread.
Now’s the time to make use of confirmed know-how with skilled evaluation to offer determination makers elevated time and area 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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