Keith B. Payne, Misuse of Deterrence Arguments Against Strategic Missile Defense, No. 674, November 9, 2026

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A program envisioned at the scale of the Golden Dome for America (GDFA) missile defense initiative presents complex and technical hurdles, but the increasing and very real threat of conflict from a rogue or state-sponsored actor requires the nation and its highly capable defense industrial base to find a way to achieve the program’s lofty goals. With the basic requirements for success now laid out, the Pentagon and this community now must focus on developing, integrating, and fielding the command-and-control (C2) components of the program that will underpin the program’s success across the space, air, and sea domains.

The concept of a comprehensive missile defense system has been met with varying degrees of success in the past, but we as a nation now have much of the proven technology necessary to achieve this. Golden Dome will leverage new technical breakthroughs, such as the ability to get assets into space cheaply and the availability of robust processing and compute power. Further, the government has provided more specific focus to its industry partners around Golden Dome requirements.