OPINION — “The Golden Dome for America Business Summit shall be held on June 11, 2025 on the Von Braun Heart downtown Huntsville, Ala., on the UNCLASSIFIED degree…The purpose of the Summit is to equip non-traditional and trade companions with the information and understanding of MDA’s [Missile Defense Agency] and Area Pressure’s function in Golden Dome for America, empowering them to take concrete actions that help and align with authorities necessities. There shall be no deliberate One-on-One periods, or panels throughout the occasion. Non-Conventional Contractors are extremely inspired to attend as MDA is extraordinarily all in favour of ‘outdoors the field’ pondering and we imagine that non-traditional contractors are very important to shaping the way forward for missile protection.”
That was a Might 13, MDA announcement to contractors of an trade day to listen to extra about Trump’s Golden Dome concept for an anti-missile protection for your entire United States.
On Might 20, President Trump introduced from the Oval Workplace that he had chosen an structure for the system that “can be totally operational by the tip of my time period,” which means January 20, 2029. He added, “We’re most likely speaking about $175 billion whole value.” That’s an quantity and a timeframe that most individuals with expertise in related companies imagine are completely unrealistic.
Then on Might 22, MDA launched a pre-solicitation discover to publicize its intent to subject — 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 car for use by it and different taking part Protection Division (DoD) companies.
MDA defined, “As a long-planned technique, SHIELD will enable MDA and different DoD entities to quickly subject orders below one enterprise versatile [contracting] car.”
However maybe extra importantly, these proposed contracts, in accordance with the MDA discover, anticipate “a interval of efficiency of 10 years, which is able to include a base ordering interval and a number of elective 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 varieties.”
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MDA’s assertion of labor is breathtaking: “The MDA requires a complicated, multi-domain protection system able to detecting, monitoring, intercepting, and neutralizing threats to the USA homeland, its deployed forces, allies, and pals 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, house, cyber, and hybrid threats originating from any vector – land, sea, air, house, or our on-line world. This effort helps providers and provides of each labeled and unclassified packages on a number of safety domains.”
Maybe SHIELD’s most bold purpose is: “This contract will present speedy supply of modern capabilities to the warfighter with elevated velocity and agility, leveraging synthetic intelligence and machine learning-enabled purposes the place pertinent, and maximizing use of digital engineering, open techniques architectures, model-based techniques engineering, and agile processes within the acquisition, growth, fielding, and sustainment of those capabilities.”
It first must be understood that Golden Dome is mostly a plan to increase on numerous current native and regional U.S. missile protection techniques that are already deployed, plus new components presently in growth.
What these techniques have in widespread are sensors and interceptors. The sensors should be capable of observe the goal from launch by way of trajectory to terminal dive. Interceptors should be capable of get shut sufficient to destroy targets all through their enhance part, midcourse, and terminal descent.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, Area 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 techniques, together with ground-based Military Patriot missiles and THAAD interceptors, the Navy AEGIS ship-fired missiles, and the Air Pressure and Area Pressure satellites for sensors and space-based weapons.
Earlier, earlier than he was named, Guetlein appeared to the long run telling a Senate subcommittee, “Investing in maneuverable satellites outfitted with state-of-the-art sensors will improve our means to detect and observe rising threats, making certain we are able to keep fixed consciousness of the battle-space, present well timed warnings, and finally, deny our adversaries the ingredient 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 attention-grabbing, unpublicized subject: 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…We might 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 consultants have identified, SBIs must be positioned on satellites in low-earth orbit so they may spot the flame/warmth from launched missile throughout the three-to-four minutes of the enhance part that begins a missile’s flight.
Right here is the difficult 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. could possibly 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 imagine the SBI ingredient 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 house – resulting in a complete new arms race – in house.
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