Setting Military Requirements for Golden Dome

President Donald Trump’s January 27, 2025, Executive Order (EO) directing the development and fielding of a “Golden Dome” air and missile defense system for America provides opportunities and challenges for the Department of Defense (DoD). Senior leaders must alter the way that the Department generates and validates requirements for an integrated air and missile defense system-of-systems in order to meet the bold objectives of the EO.

The benefits of deploying an effective integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) system for the homeland include strengthening deterrence of aggression by complicating the adversary’s risk calculus, denying or reducing the benefits from such attacks, enhancing protection of U.S. critical infrastructures, enabling U.S. power projection capabilities to respond to aggression abroad, and reducing risks to societal resilience and cohesion, among others.

Those who question whether an effective homeland defense is feasible need look no further than the recent highly successful U.S. and Israeli air and missile defense operations. The U.S.-orchestrated coalition helped Israel defend itself against major air and missile barrages from Iran and its proxies, thereby preventing potentially catastrophic damage and likely averting an escalatory response that could have led to a broader Middle East war.  Additionally, US- and NATO-provided air and missile defenses are playing a key role in countering Russian air and missile strikes against Ukrainian national critical infrastructure. The central lesson leaders in Washington should take away from today’s conflicts as they refocus the homeland air and missile defense program is that defenses are vital even if they are not perfect and cost more than the missiles and air vehicles they defend against.

A key challenge relates to the military requirements that will be established to determine which systems are built and ultimately how effective the Golden Dome system will be in defending against a broad range of air and missile threats to the homeland. In this regard, DoD leaders should reject the traditional requirements process, which involves establishing detailed performance specifications for a system that will be fielded years in the future and instead embrace a more agile and flexible approach.

Specifically, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine should direct adoption of an incremental approach to requirements that lays out achievable objectives for each of the four homeland defense “epochs” proposed by the Missile Defense Agency. (Epoch 1 includes capabilities delivered or demonstrated by December 31, 2026; Epoch 2 includes capabilities delivered or demonstrated by December 31, 2028; Epoch 3 involves capabilities delivered or demonstrated by December 31, 2030, and Epoch 4 involves capabilities delivered or demonstrated by December 31, 2032.) 

This evolutionary approach underscores the fact that the rapid deployment of even modest and imperfect air and missile defenses can play an important role in deterrence and defense by beginning to immediately close shortfalls in today’s capabilities. It also helps usher in an era of combined space- and ground-based defenses that maximize the contributions of each layer for a more synergistic and effective defensive architecture.

A “build a little, test a lot, and refine and upgrade as deployments expand” strategy would allow technology developments and test results to inform decisions as to which combinations of capabilities should be fielded and at what pace and scale. The incremental approach recommended herein is entirely consistent with the President’s direction to DoD to establish and leverage “capabilities-based requirements” for Golden Dome. It also presents an opportunity to fully embrace agile acquisition authorities that are often talked about but sparingly implemented.

Such an evolutionary approach is much more well-suited to the fielding of a Golden Dome homeland defense system as opposed to setting a monolithic, “one size fits all” requirement for such a complex system-of-systems. Attempting to establish all-encompassing and rigid requirements now will do little more than delay the deployment of air and missile defense elements central to making Golden Dome a reality. If DoD civilian and military leaders impose overly stringent or unachievable requirements for Golden Dome, it will jeopardize any opportunity to make significant progress to address threats to the homeland during the President’s term in office. The consequences of this would be to prolong America’s strategic vulnerability and invite deadly attacks on the homeland by adversaries.

The President’s Executive Order to establish a Golden Dome for America presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to begin remedying decades of strategic incoherence. It signals a clear break from past policy constraints which for decades rejected any protection of the homeland against missile threats from Russia or China in the failed expectation that leaving the American homeland vulnerable to missile attack would induce restraint in Moscow’s and Beijing’s strategic weapons programs and contribute to a more benign geopolitical relationship.  Adherence to long-discredited “strategic stability” arguments unilaterally disincentivized U.S. homeland air and missile defenses even though America’s adversaries are building such defenses for their homelands. Likewise, a sole reliance on offensive forces for deterrence and defense in an era when America’s adversaries are threatening the use of limited strikes on the U.S. homeland with increasingly advanced strategic nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, would leave us vulnerable to coercion and blackmail.

The nation stands at a crossroads. President Trump’s determination to defend the American homeland from increasingly dangerous threats is forward-looking and justified. Doing so, however, will require breaking free from bureaucratic inertia and other constraints that stand in the way of rapidly fielding much needed capabilities for homeland defense. Agility in the military requirements process must lead the way.

Chris Williams served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Professional Staff Member of the House Armed Services Committee, and chair of the Defense Policy Board. He currently serves as Chair of the Moorman Center for Space Studies.

Dr. Peppi DeBiaso served in a number of positions in the U.S. Department of Defense, including as Director of the Office of Missile Defense Policy. He is currently Adjunct Professor in Missouri State University’s Defense and Strategic Studies Graduate Program and a Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.