President Trump recognizes the grave threats posed by adversary ballistic and hypersonic missiles and has issued mandates for the Department of Defense to deploy a “Golden Dome” defense shield for the country. Significant taxpayer investment has already gone towards the arsenal of sensors and shooters for our existing missile defense and more will be needed. The organizational and manufacturing challenges will be immense, unlike anything the Defense Department (DoD) has faced in generations, perhaps since Schriever’s ballistic missiles or Rickover’s nuclear fleet.
The primary limitation to achieving the capability will not be the physical hardware, but the ability to connect all the components. Of all the development tasks, the most critical technical hurdle in Golden Dome will be its data architecture. And of all the personnel hires, one of the most critical will be the Chief Data Officer (CDO), directly reporting to the Program Director, who will have direct control over the overall data architecture and network, and its implementation on Golden Dome hardware. In an environment with a greatly expanded number of interactions between sensors and shooters, the likelihood of a gap or security blind spot increases exponentially — unless the supporting data architecture is built to account for it from day one.
Current ballistic missile defense systems target a limited threat — rogue nations like North Korea or Iran — using relatively few satellites, radars and interceptors. Fielding the new system will require disruptive innovation. Golden Dome aims to counter a much broader range of threats, including hypersonics, cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks. It seeks to defeat missiles before launch and during boost phase and be highly resilient against adversary counter efforts, whether cyber, RF or kinetic. This not only necessitates a dramatic increase in the number and types of sensors and shooters, but also an exponential increase in data processing and exchange points.
The Golden Dome will generate a massive volume of data and present new challenges in setting standards, security design and enforcing governance. Our current missile defense tool for data management, fusion and command and control approach is built around the Missile Defense Agency’s Command and Control Battle Management and Communication (C2BMC) system, which operates at a much smaller scope than the proposed Golden Dome. As a point-to-point system, it is likely unable to evolve to meet the DoD’s needs, and forces a white-page approach.
At its core, Golden Dome is a data problem, which is why the decision to create and appoint a CDO is so critical. If the program is to have any hope for successful fielding in the shortest of timespans, the CDO must report directly to the Program Director and have several key responsibilities. These include authorities to define a comprehensive data architecture, develop a robust data management strategy, implement security standards and lead the integration of AI.
Sensors and shooters will have to work together, cue and hand-off to one another, feed C2 systems and decision makers, work over both long and short distances, cover shot approaches from all directions, and provide layered capabilities. The data generated, reduced, fused, passed and acted on will be significant. Effective data management strategies and low latency network design are crucial for the system to identify threats and close kill chains. The addition of AI and machine-assisted decision-making will be essential to operate at the speed of threat. If the data architecture is not addressed and controlled throughout the Golden Dome’s life cycle, component interoperability, system surety, and weapon system effectiveness will all suffer.
Equally important, the CDO must be fully independent from, and not employed by, one of the Golden Dome hardware primes.
The Department of Defense and the classic primes are adept at building hardware but have struggled at creating and controlling data architectures. Accordingly, relying on a major sensor or shooter prime for this task is unwise. First, the CDO will have insight and control over the data design of the other Golden Dome primes. If the CDO is also a hardware prime, this vendor would gain a future competitive advantage. Second, building hardware on time, on budget and meeting performance standards will be challenging enough without the added responsibility of leading the CDO effort.
Recognizing that the industry’s leading primes aren’t best suited for a complex systems engineering and integration task isn’t without precedent. In fact, this was one of Schriever’s key observations when starting the ICBM program, which led to Ramo-Wooldridge (later Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge, or TRW)’s appointment as the lead systems engineering firm with authority over the team of companies building the technology.Traditional prime contractors from the defense industrial base will contribute exquisite hardware sensor and shooter technologies, but the Department should resist the temptation to go to this corner of industry for the program’s data leadership.
Golden Dome is a data-centric program and appointing a CDO to build and oversee the data strategy is perhaps the most critical action the Department of Defense can take.
Rob Gordon is the Chief Technology Officer at Omni Federal. His career has been focused on solving complex data and software problems within commercial and Department of Defense architectures. He has championed nine commercialized Phase III SBIR technologies focused on modern software development, cyber, API based data management, data tagging, training and user experience.
BGen Damon Feltman (Ret) served more than 30 years in the Air Force. After retiring, he spent nearly two years at the Space Development Agency as the Chief of the Transport Cell, directing strategic initiatives for the $5.1 billion satellite communications network and driving innovation across 330+ satellites to enhance national defense capabilities. He is the founder of OXR Consulting, LLC.
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