OPINION — “The Golden Dome for America Business Summit can be held on June 11, 2025 on the Von Braun Middle downtown Huntsville, Ala., on the UNCLASSIFIED stage…The objective of the Summit is to equip non-traditional and trade companions with the information and understanding of MDA’s [Missile Defense Agency] and House Pressure’s function in Golden Dome for America, empowering them to take concrete actions that help and align with authorities necessities. There can be no deliberate One-on-One classes, or panels in the course of the occasion. Non-Conventional Contractors are extremely inspired to attend as MDA is extraordinarily desirous about ‘exterior the field’ pondering and we consider that non-traditional contractors are important to shaping the way forward for missile protection.”
That was a Could 13, MDA announcement to contractors of an trade day to listen to extra about Trump’s Golden Dome thought for an anti-missile protection for the complete United States.
On Could 20, President Trump introduced from the Oval Workplace that he had chosen an structure for the system that “can be absolutely operational by the top of my time period,” which means January 20, 2029. He added, “We’re in all probability speaking about $175 billion complete value.” That’s an quantity and a time-frame that most individuals with expertise in related companies consider are completely unrealistic.
Then on Could 22, MDA launched a pre-solicitation discover to publicize its intent to difficulty — someday in June — the primary contract proposals associated to the Golden Dome structure. MDA has given the bureaucratic title Scalable Homeland Enterprise Layered Protection (SHIELD) to the general contracting automobile for use by it and different collaborating Protection Division (DoD) companies.
MDA defined, “As a long-planned technique, SHIELD will permit MDA and different DoD entities to quickly difficulty orders underneath one enterprise versatile [contracting] automobile.”
However maybe extra importantly, these proposed contracts, in keeping with the MDA discover, anticipate “a interval of efficiency of 10 years, which can encompass a base ordering interval and a number of non-compulsory ordering intervals.” As well as, MDA’s pre-solicitation discover mentioned, “The anticipated acknowledged most worth [of the proposed contracts] is $151 billion. Particular person order awards will consist of varied contract sorts.”
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MDA’s assertion of labor is breathtaking: “The MDA requires a sophisticated, multi-domain protection system able to detecting, monitoring, intercepting, and neutralizing threats to america homeland, its deployed forces, allies, and associates throughout all phases of flight by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and different superior aerial assaults.”
It additionally requires “steady, layered safety in opposition to air, missile, area, cyber, and hybrid threats originating from any vector – land, sea, air, area, or our on-line world. This effort helps companies and provides of each categorized and unclassified packages on a number of safety domains.”
Maybe SHIELD’s most bold objective is: “This contract will present fast supply of modern capabilities to the warfighter with elevated pace and agility, leveraging synthetic intelligence and machine learning-enabled purposes the place pertinent, and maximizing use of digital engineering, open methods architectures, model-based methods engineering, and agile processes within the acquisition, growth, fielding, and sustainment of those capabilities.”
It first needs to be understood that Golden Dome is known as a plan to broaden on numerous present native and regional U.S. missile protection methods that are already deployed, plus new components presently in growth.
What these methods have in widespread are sensors and interceptors. The sensors should be capable to monitor the goal from launch by means of trajectory to terminal dive. Interceptors should be capable to get shut sufficient to destroy targets all through their increase section, midcourse, and terminal descent.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, House Pressure’s vice chief of operations, who’s Trump’s selection to guide the Golden Dome effort, has instructed Congress that Golden Dome would require unprecedented cooperation amongst present army anti-missile methods, together with ground-based Military Patriot missiles and THAAD interceptors, the Navy AEGIS ship-fired missiles, and the Air Pressure and House Pressure satellites for sensors and space-based weapons.
Earlier, earlier than he was named, Guetlein regarded to the long run telling a Senate subcommittee, “Investing in maneuverable satellites outfitted with state-of-the-art sensors will improve our capacity to detect and monitor rising threats, making certain we are able to preserve fixed consciousness of the battle-space, present well timed warnings, and finally, deny our adversaries the aspect of shock. These capabilities [will] help to ship on the President’s Golden Dome for America initiative and spotlight the central function space-based capabilities will play in bringing that effort to fruition.”
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Guetlein additionally raised an fascinating, unpublicized difficulty: One of many greatest wants is the approval to conduct on-orbit testing and coaching. “It’s a really constrained set of authorities that we’ve got…We’d ask that that [on-orbit testing, training] open up in order that we are able to improve our readiness of our forces on the entrance line to have the ability to try this defend and defend mission,” he mentioned.
Trump’s Golden Dome plan requires “growth and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors (SBIs) able to boost-phase intercept,” a weapon that doesn’t but exist.
As many specialists have identified, SBIs must be positioned on satellites in low-earth orbit so they might spot the flame/warmth from launched missile in the course of the three-to-four minutes of the increase section that begins a missile’s flight.
Right here is the tough half. Somebody or one thing has to provide the order to shoot inside a minute or two and your SBI must be in place to hit the rising missile. Since SBIs are at all times in movement, you want a parade of SBI-armed satellites to defend in opposition to one missile, and twice that many in opposition to two, and so forth.
Since Golden Dome should take into account each Russia and China, plus North Korea as potential missile threats, which means the U.S. might be 10,000 or extra SBI satellites for even minimal deterrence.
There was a logical motive why the Reagan administration dropped the concept of its Strategic Protection Initiative (Star Wars), and I consider the SBI aspect of Trump’s Golden Dome plan could face the identical future.
For sure simply proposing Golden Dome defenses has drawn threats from Moscow and Beijing that their reply could very effectively be extra offensive weapons – and maybe a few of them in area – resulting in an entire new arms race – in area.
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