CNAS Insights | The Golden Dome Needs a Strategy 

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For decades, American policymakers accepted that no technology could fully shield the homeland from every threat. Golden Dome, the crown jewel of the Trump administration’s defense buildup, aims to do what generations of defense planners deemed impossible: offer protection against “any foreign aerial attack.”

The proposal dispenses with the strategic limits that traditionally constrained homeland defense and the assumption that vulnerability is an unavoidable feature of deterrence. Because of this departure, understanding Golden Dome requires looking beyond its technical details and cost to its strategic purpose. Policymakers should determine what Golden Dome intends to protect and defend against, as well as which adversaries it’s meant to deter. The United States must safeguard the homeland in the face of new dangers, but the specific approach it chooses could redefine its most consequential strategic relationships.

In the 70 years since the arrival of the bomber in the Cold War, the United States has grappled with the intractable problem of how to defend the homeland against kinetic threats. Despite billions of dollars flowing into missile defense, every fielded system was made obsolete by adversary offensive developments and geopolitical shifts. In this graveyard of failed missile defense programs—from the Cold War–era Safeguard Program to protect intercontinental ballistic missile silos to President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Star Wars initiative—lie important lessons for today. Defense planners must contend with a constantly changing threat picture, and policymakers must grapple with the challenge of justifying the price tags for exorbitantly expensive systems that may be outdated before they are finished.

These perennial challenges of evolving threats led the United States to rely on mutually assured destruction (MAD), the idea that any attack on the homeland would be met with a devastating retaliatory strike, to deter Russia and China from launching strikes against the United States. And while individual programs may have a short shelf life against the adversarial threats they’re designed to protect against, the underlying investments in air and missile defense capabilities carry long-term benefits. Government investments in missile defense led to the first large-scale computer and advancements in radar and directed energy that have paid dividends for the national security community and American society as a whole. From this history, the lesson is not to abandon air and missile defense initiatives, but to pursue a scoped approach that recognizes both their limitations and values.

In designing a framework for homeland defense, the administration will need to select what to defend and consider the implications of those choices. In its 250-year history, U.S. geography and the protection of two vast oceans buoyed national power, but advancements in the speed and range of adversarial capabilities have eroded these advantages. A greater number of adversaries are can now strike the homeland via a range of capabilities across the threat continuum, including conventionally-armed drones and cruise missiles, and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, Capabilities like the Chinese Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBs) and Russia’s nuclear-capable cruise missile could circumvent the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) that’s designed to counter a limited North Korean attack traveling over the poles. The United States seeks to improve its defenses against a wider range of aerial threats than ever before in its history, including lower tier nonnuclear threats that fall outside the normative framework of MAD. As this threat picture expands, Washington’s inability to defend everything is increasingly apparent. It’s this hard truth that makes the questions of what to prioritize and where to accept risk central in the Golden Dome debate.

The idea of choice as part of a homeland defense architecture is not new, but it is more complicated than before. Unresolved debates as to whether government dollars should be spent on defense of military installations or cities animated the early Cold War period. Protecting this dyad should remain a central pillar of any homeland defense frameworks. An attack on a U.S. city could impose unimaginable costs in human life and economic disruption, as well as erode public trust in the government’s ability to carry out its most essential function of guaranteeing security. Similarly, an attack on military bases carrying nuclear weapons or power projection platforms, such as naval bases and air installations, would both restrict the U.S. operationally and take years to reconstitute.

A framework for homeland defense will need to extend beyond this dyad of cities versus bases, anticipating how adversaries could inflict costs on the United States by damaging critical infrastructure facilities, such as energy infrastructure, water facilities, or oil refineries. Such attacks could impose strategic costs on the United States without crossing the threshold of a traditional military strike. For example, an attack on a node in the electricity grid—the importance of which was exposed by Russia’s war on Ukraine—would have catastrophic impacts on civilian life. The threat is not limited to legacy infrastructure. If the United States wants to maintain its leadership in artificial intelligence, it must protect the backbone of these capabilities—namely data centers—that have emerged as high-value targets. The first three months of the war in Iran has shown how even the wealthiest nations can be held hostage by cheap attack drones. As the range and speed of adversarial capabilities improves, regional vulnerabilities in the Persian Gulf could soon become threats to the U.S. homeland. Designing a framework for homeland defense that prioritizes the right assets is no small feat. Even so, what may prove to be more challenging is determining and articulating its strategic rationale to U.S. citizens, allies, and adversaries.

As limited details of Golden Dome start coming to light, what’s notable is not the technical novelty but its strategic departure. Where Golden Dome has set itself apart most is in its rhetorical reach. Since the end of the Cold War and in the 25-year lifespan of GMD, policymakers have carefully and explicitly designated the system to deal with threats from rogue actors and relied on nuclear weapons to deter near-peer threats. The stated ambitions of Golden Dome are to intercept any threat, including those from Russia and China. At home, the Department of War should assess what its tagline of reestablishing deterrence entails in practical terms. If active defense will restore deterrence, policymakers need to identify what assets to protect and whether the system intends to defeat limited strikes or attacks from major nuclear powers. What the Pentagon chooses to defend, and the corresponding strategic rationale, will shape the credibility of deterrence and strategic stability with Russia and China. While it’s true that the development of Russian and Chinese exotic capabilities pre-dates the announcement of Golden Dome, doubling down on air defenses is likely to fuel an arms race, and going it alone is not the answer. The United States could use its Golden Dome initiative to open the discussion of future arms control arrangements for destabilizing technologies.

The Golden Dome debate is not just about missiles or technology, but political and strategic choices. Regardless of what framework it selects, the administration must articulate its intention with clarity and deft diplomacy to its constituents, its allies, and, most importantly, its adversaries. If it fails in this mission, Golden Dome risks undermining the strategic stability of a system it claims to protect.

Kalena Blake is a research assistant for the Defense Program.