On December 6, Golden Dome director General Michael Guetlein joined Kathy Warden (CEO, President, and Chairwoman of Northrop Grumman), Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, and U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE) at the 2025 Reagan National Defense Forum for a panel discussion on Golden Dome and homeland missile defense moderated by Kristin Fisher. Two of our MDAA Board Members were in attendance during the discussion—RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and John Rood, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under President Trump. From the panel’s insightful conversation we have generated the following executive summary.
Defending the Homeland: Establishing Superiority in Space and Missile Defense
This panel was a big-picture conversation about Golden Dome and what it will take to defend the U.S. homeland against modern missile and air threats — technically, politically, industrially, and strategically. Senator Deb Fischer, Secretary Troy Meink, Kathy Warden, and General Michael Guetlein walked through why Golden Dome exists, how it might work, what industry has to do, and why the threat environment makes it urgent.
Executive Summary
- Golden Dome’s purpose: A layered, system-of-systems defense for the entire U.S. homeland (including Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam) against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, and larger UAS (“counter-3-4-5 UAS”) — shifting from relying on oceans and nuclear deterrence alone to actual homeland defense and “deterrence by denial.”
- Not a tech fantasy: The panel repeatedly stressed that most of the required technology already exists; the real challenge is integration, scale, affordability, and culture, not physics.
- Integration & complexity: Meink and Guetlein highlighted that the hardest part is stitching together sensors, shooters, and C2 across all services, agencies, and eventually allies, under tight timelines and different cultures, authorities, and legal regimes.
- Timeline & ambition: The President has directed an initial operational Golden Dome capability by summer 2028 — acknowledged as ambitious and risky but achievable if plans hold and industry/government alignment stays strong.
- Industry role: Warden emphasized existing capabilities, digital engineering, scaling solid rocket motors and microelectronics, and the need for stable demand signals from DoD so industry can invest in capacity, not just exquisite one-off systems.
- Space-based interceptors (SBIs): Seen as one of the most ambitious and controversial elements — technically more feasible now than in the Reagan/“Brilliant Pebbles” era, but needing scalable, affordable designs and careful political handling.
- Threat & “why now”: All panelists pointed to Chinese and Russian nuclear modernization, space weapons, massive missile/drone raids in Ukraine and the Middle East, and proliferation of long-range strike as reasons the U.S. can’t rely solely on traditional deterrence anymore.
General Michael Guetlein’s Perspective
General Guetlein was the central voice defining Golden Dome’s vision, scope, challenges, and deterrence logic. His key contributions:
1. Defining what Golden Dome is and why it matters
- He framed Golden Dome as building a layered defense for the homeland because adversaries can now hold the U.S. directly at risk and current defenses make deterrence by denial “a challenge.”
- He described it as a “systems of systems” architecture, leveraging industry and international labs and next-generation technologies to change the deterrence equation — not just another program, but a restructuring of how the U.S. defends the homeland.
2. Explaining secrecy, transparency, and how he’s working with industry
- He pushed back on the idea that industry is “in the dark,” saying he’s met “well over 200 to 300 companies one-on-one” to walk them through Golden Dome and that the real transparency is happening in private, not big public symposia, because adversaries are also in the audience.
- He stressed that secrecy is threat-driven, not arbitrary: there are people in open forums he “doesn’t want to tell what we’re doing”, but industry partners are informed to the maximum allowed and will be more so as new mechanisms come online.
- He said he hopes to open up more public dialogue starting in the new year, and even credited the movie A House of Dynamite with helping start a national conversation about changing the defense equation and providing more “decision space” for the President.
3. Identifying the real challenges: social engineering and authorities
- Guetlein went beyond the usual “integration is hard” line and framed Golden Dome’s hardest problem as “social engineering and organizational behavior” — integrating across all services, agencies, and potentially allies, each with their own cultures, rule sets, and processes.
- He explained that’s why the “direct report program manager” construct was created: to give him new horizontal authorities across DoD and the interagency to build an integrated homeland defense capability — something “we haven’t done before.”
- He highlighted this as a culture, policy, and legal challenge, not just software and wiring diagrams.
4. Committing to the 2028 operational goal — with eyes wide open
- Guetlein stated that the President has directed an operational Golden Dome capability by summer 2028, and that they have delivered a plan to get there and are meeting milestones so far.
- He was candid that this is “not a gimme putt” — it is extremely complex and carries significant risk, and much of his focus is on identifying and mitigating that risk early.
5. Clarifying scope: what Golden Dome will protect and when
- He laid out that Golden Dome, per presidential direction, will defend the homeland against ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles, and larger UAS and is focused on the entire homeland, including Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam.
- He described a phased, “mini-domes” approach in practice: capability will be delivered incrementally, prioritized by threat lethality and probability, not all at once on day one.
6. Reframing SBIs and space as contested terrain
- On space-based interceptors, he reminded the audience that Reagan’s “Brilliant Pebbles” actually worked, but failed on scalability and cost, not technology — and that today’s tech makes scale and affordability more realistic if the culture shifts.
- He argued that the U.S. must flip the current paradigm: instead of a few exquisite interceptors with tiny magazines and huge cost per shot, Golden Dome must pursue high magazine depth and low cost per shot, tapping broad industrial innovation.
- On the broader space environment, he was blunt: “space is not a sanctuary anymore” — China and Russia already field anti-satellite weapons, robotic “kidnappers,” and “nesting doll” kill vehicles, meaning Golden Dome isn’t starting the arms race, it’s responding to one.
7. Pushing non-kinetic layers and “left of launch”
- Guetlein emphasized that Golden Dome is multi-domain from seabed to space, with both kinetic and non-kinetic layers. He called out directed energy and left-of-launch capabilities as essential to increase magazine depth and drive down cost per shot.
- He said this will require serious R&D and the return of national labs to the table, alongside industry, to rethink how the U.S. does deterrence and defense in a world of mass, cheap threats.
8. Changing the demand signal to industry & contracting approach
- Guetlein admitted that industry has been building exactly what DoD asked for: exquisite systems, sized for efficiency rather than capacity, because DoD has been buying in small quantities. He said Golden Dome will change that demand signal toward capacity, depth, and stable, multi-year buys.
- He described how Golden Dome is leveraging other services’ contracts rather than building everything from scratch — injecting Golden Dome requirements into munitions expansion efforts and awarding 18 OTAs for boost-phase space-based interceptor work, plus teams already working C2 and fire control software.
9. Golden Dome as national, not just NORTHCOM, defense
- He pushed the idea that “homeland defense is national defense”: satellites and other assets for Golden Dome will simultaneously support INDOPACOM, STRATCOM, SPACECOM, and other combatant commands. Nothing built for the homeland is single-use; it all transfers to other theaters.
10. His “why”: restoring credible deterrence and strategic stability
- In closing, Guetlein argued that deterrence requires credible capability and that we do not currently have strategic stability: both Russia and China are expanding and modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and Russia openly rattles nuclear sabers.
- His core thesis: Golden Dome is the credible deterrent capability that can impose consequences on bad behavior, restore stability, and give U.S. leaders more options than a binary choice between “do nothing” and “go nuclear.”
