“It has been a remarkable year for missile defense, probably one of the greatest ever in the history of our country, with the Golden Dome Initiative by the President Executive Order, and the progression of that to where we are today.
We are just real fortunate to have our guests here today that were with us, Dr. Mike Griffin and Dr. Lisa Porter. Five months ago, they were with us before there was a DRPM, before there was any movement, and they were with us here in helping move the narrative a little bit on scoping space, and we spent some time on boost phase missile defense last time we spoke here. We are now at a phase where we’re still developing our leadership, and also getting everything in place.
There is, as you know, a gag order with the Department of Defense on the Golden Dome aspect of it, but this discussion is bigger than that from my perspective, and we can start off with three weeks ago today. I just got home yesterday, but three weeks ago today, I was in Huntsville, Alabama, at the world’s biggest missile defense conference, SMDC, and three weeks ago this morning, we had Mike, Brian Gibson, we had a group and a Breakfast of Champions that we’ve done for 23 years.
The next day was the industry day of Golden Dome. The first time that was announced and led by Lieutenant General Heath Collins and MDA, and put forward was the architecture that was laid out for the Golden Dome to the industry, and that was really three major levels. It was three, space, upper layer, and the under layer, and probably the most exciting was a young Lieutenant Colonel, I believe, that was talking about space and the engineering of creating platforms. He didn’t specifically say what those were, but platforms to be able to have a space-based intercept capability and sensing capability, but certainly intercepting capability. And that really, I think, has invoked a lot of excitement with young engineers and movement on doing that because we have the policy to move forward on that. That is a critical part of our movement for this architecture. I think the biggest part is the command and control. The C2, I think, will get integrated. We’re going to integrate everything, but how do we get it to the right people, the right service, the right time for the right aspect of that?
After that, I had the opportunity to go to NORTHCOM in Colorado Springs and just sort of reflect what happened in Huntsville. And the NORTHCOM commander will be probably the number one client, him and the SPACECOM commander, for the Golden Dome. It is his responsibility, and I think they’re working that out on whose responsibility is that going to be up in space, but because it’s such a U.S. Homeland Defense capability, I think that’s going to end up with the NORTHCOM commander to be the warfighter for this right now as it stays in it. As it grows into a more global position and getting collective data from other allied nations and so forth, I think you’ll see some movement back over to the SPACECOM Commander, Stephen Whiting, on that. But it’s clearly a priority, the space part of this is very clear on how powerful that is. We had the opportunity to go to the border down in Arizona and also look at those aspects of how important that data sharing is. And this is, we’ll bring it back down to land a little bit, but the data share amongst our own agencies is the same problem we’re having at the top end of it. And then we had a chance to go to INDOPACOM, which I just returned from, and they’re facing China. They’re the ones in front of our biggest threat.
And it’s very crystal clear that if we don’t win in space, we do not win. That was clearly put forward. It’s not about buying more aircraft carriers or buy more planes or buy more major weapon systems. We have to win in space. We have to do this and so they are aligned, everybody’s aligned to move in that direction.”
Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Speakers:
Dr. Lisa Porter
Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering
Dr. Michael Griffin
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering under President Donald Trump, Former Administrator of NASA under President George Bush
Mr. John Rood
MDAA Board Member, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Mr. Riki Ellison
MDAA Founder and Chairman
