SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — President Trump’s “Golden Dome” czar says he’s held “one-vs-one” talks with more than 300 private companies in recent months to hash out the secretive architecture of the futuristic missile defense shield that the administration is determined to put into operation over the entire U.S. homeland by mid-2028.
In his first public remarks since being named to the position in June, Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, the vice chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force, told an audience at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum that while the layered design of “Golden Dome” remains classified, he’s confident that “our industry partners have a pretty good insight into what we’re doing.”
Golden Dome is a signature, and potentially very expensive, national security initiative of the Trump administration.
Speculation over what technology it will actually entail — specifically the extent to which it will be space-based or revolve mainly around more conventional ground-based missile interceptor systems — has been rampant for months, particularly since the Pentagon issued a gag order in August to prevent officials involved in the initiative from speaking about it publicly.
Gen. Guetlein cracked the lid on that gag order during an appearance Saturday at the forum — one of the top yearly gatherings of political leaders and national defense stakeholders — by suggesting broadly that the system will integrate both existing ground-based missile defense assets, as well as futuristic space-based assets, including potentially space-based missile interceptors.
“Golden Dome is about building a layered defense capability for the nation to protect the nation against an attack against the homeland,” he said.
Secrecy around the space layer remains tight. The Space Force quietly awarded small contracts to develop prototypes for space-based interceptors last month to a group of companies, according to a report by Bloomberg News. The Pentagon did not identify the companies by name, and the contracts fell below the dollar amount threshold that would require detailed disclosures.
In his remarks over the weekend, Gen. Guetlein defended the need for secrecy, given that the intelligence agencies of U.S. adversaries, particularly China and Russia, are watching closely.
“Golden Dome is about partnering with industry in new and innovative ways…and to do it with transparency,” Gen. Guetlein told an audience inside the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that was packed with executives from several top American defense technology companies.
“That transparency may not come in an industry symposium, but it is coming in one-vs-ones,” he said. “It’s not coming in an industry symposium, because you guys are not the only ones in the audience. There are people in that audience that I don’t want to know what we’re doing. I don’t want to tell what we’re doing. I don’t want to give them a heads up. But I do know that our competitive advantage, being our industrial partners, are all in on it and are supportive, so they are pretty well informed.”
Russian ’nesting dolls’ in space
Gen. Guetlein went on to say that Moscow and Beijing have militarized space.
“Space is not a sanctuary anymore. The adversary has been holding space at risk for years now,” he said. “The Chinese have the ability to launch a missile at a satellite — take out a satellite. The Chinese have the ability to have a robot in space, kidnap … another satellite, take it someplace else. The Russians have nesting dolls in space and a satellite spawns another satellite, spawns a kill vehicle. So space is already contested.”
He stressed that an undergirding principle of Golden Dome is to establish “a credible deterrent capability” against China and Russia.
Congress approved $24.5 billion in funding this year for the initiative. Defense industry sources say the system’s development will cost dramatically more over the coming years.
There is consensus among many in the national security community that the missile shield is urgently needed amid rising nuclear and ballistic missile threats from not only from China and Russia, but also from North Korea and Iran.
But some lawmakers are watching the money closely and have expressed concern over transparency around how it is spent.
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, has warned Golden Dome could create a kind of “slush fund” for the Trump administration to spend however it sees fit.
There are, however, signs of broad public support for the initiative. The annual Reagan National Defense Survey, published ahead of this weekend’s forum in California, showed 68% of Americans polled expressed support for developing a Golden Dome.
Sen. Deb Fischer, a Nebraska Republican and member of the Armed Services Committee, defended the secrecy around the initiative.
“We have major adversaries who are very interested in anything that that we do in this country, and especially with regards to this and so we need to be very careful in holding a lot of this information close for the time being,” said Mrs. Fischer, who was part of the forum panel that included Gen. Guetlein.
Incremental roll-out
U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink was also onstage with Mrs. Fischer and Gen. Guetlein. So was Kathy Warden, the CEO, president and chair of the board of directors at Northrop Grumman.
Ms. Warden said there are “many capabilities that exist in our nation today that can be brought to bear” to make Golden Dome a reality, and that “it is going to take an all-of-industry effort.”
“There’s an industrial base with companies of all sizes that are ready to get behind this mission and support it with investment in not only people, but also the capacity needed to build it out,” she said. “I’m very confident that this industry has what it takes to field this capability for our nation.”
Gen. Guetlein said “the technology exists” to deliver Golden Dome.
“This is not a technology problem. We have proven all the elements of the technology in one way or another,” he said. “The real challenge is, how do I bring together capabilities that have never been integrated — networked together into a system of systems type architecture, and then how do I leverage the entire innovation industrial base of the United States?”
The general said Golden Dome’s rollout is likely to occur in pieces, suggesting the system may evolve technologically over time. “We will be incrementally building out that layered defense capability,” he said.
“The president has requested that we deliver this capability, an operational capability, in the summer of 2028 and we are on that timeline to deliver,” Gen. Guetlein said. “That will not be the final capability, but we will have the ability to protect and defend the nation against advanced threats by the summer of 2028.”
