EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION – On January 27, 2025, President Trump signed an Govt Order geared toward defending the U.S. in opposition to an assault by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles in addition to different superior aerial assaults; the Golden Dome initiative. The Pentagon moved out neatly 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 method. All of the work that has occurred is required. However we’d like extra.
We have to construct the know-how to help defensive methods 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 sources.
The U.S. must be shifting out diligently to place in place the most effective 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 handle the answer.
On this case, the Govt Order asks for a examine of adversary menace however that’s all. There’s 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 essential 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 sources to its greatest potential in constructing the Golden Dome, the whole intelligence infrastructure of assortment, know-how to help the gathering, and skill to use the gathering – to incorporate analytical specialists – should 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 loads of dialogue in regards to 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 the usage of defensive methods 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 will not be.
Time is the essential variable for choice makers. The sooner the intelligence neighborhood can current them with evaluation and reporting of adversary intent, the higher and sure much less dangerous the results 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 in opposition to 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 must resolve on an choice and which choice will work greatest below the circumstances. On this state of affairs, U.S. choice makers have days as an alternative of hours, to plan. This permits 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 quite a bit about monitoring these aerial gadgets and requires a brand new have a look at radars, each area and floor based mostly. As I acknowledged, 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 subject head on.
LTG Gainey, commanding normal of the US Military House and Missile Protection Command (USASMDC) hinted on the subject 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 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-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 the US 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 subtle 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 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 will detect and monitor hypersonic or ballistic weapons after launch.
That is all essential work and wanted however word, 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 knowledge 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 based mostly 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 monitor satellite tv for pc imagery is vital. I’d additionally add that the Protection Intelligence Company must play a major position on this initiative which should embrace 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 workforce sport that requires robust intelligence to arrange choice makers and operators to make the most effective selections attainable, serving to to mitigate danger. 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 monitor missiles by offering warning of aberrations in patterns earlier than launch.
Through the use of Synthetic Intelligence (AI) to synthesize essential 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 massive win in altering how we course of intelligence and safeguard the US. NGA’s Maven program is an enormous step in the proper path of fusing intelligence to help DoD and the remainder of the nationwide safety institution. This observe must be extra widespread.
Now’s the time to make use of confirmed know-how with skilled 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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