Lawfare Archive: The Golden Dome Missile Defense Program

So, the new Bundesliga series, as well as the future, is a great mental and sport director.

“Because all games are then in the same way as the KickBass series.”

And if you're now watching KickBass, what's that? KickBass is the fourth fan of the Football Manager.

But that's the first thing I'd like to say.

You're a little bit more ignorant, you can even read the rules. You can't just write the real Bundesliga profile in your card. So, I'd like to show you that you know your football and the other person. The Count on Love, the Bundesliga season on tag is the best. Trommet or a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit.

And side-to-side, one-to-one, one-to-one, the KickBass app. Just download and leave. Good kick and fun. Hangarbo, one-to-one, do you want two-to-one? No, I'd like to read it again.

No, one-to-one, one-to-one.

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From the beginning, it's about time to start. Monatly, kundba. For 10 Euro in Monat. Frank. No.

Frank. And I'm Sarah Lowich, intern at Law Fair with an episode from the Law for Archive for August 22, 2020. Recent reports have raised concerns about the United States rapidly using

opits missile stockpiles amid the war with Iran.

Particularly, the U.S. has supply of patriot and fat and ballistic missile systems is running low. Due to limitations on the production of such high-tech systems, a full replenishment of the stockpile could take years. Old Secretary of Defense headsets and President Trump have pushed back against this

reporting, stating they are not concerned about the stockpiles. For today's Archive, I chose an episode from April 11, 2025, in which Daniel Biamins spoke with Tom Carico, director of the missile defense program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about the Trump administration's proposed Golden Dome Missile Defense Plan.

They discussed what it is, what success could look like, whether the U.S. could feasibly execute such a plan and more. It's the Law Fair podcast. I'm Daniel Biamins, the foreign policy editor of Law Fair, and I'm here today with Tom Carico, who is the director of the Missile Defense Project at CSIS.

You've seen the Russian kind of proliferation of crews and hypersonic and, yes, under sea, you know, Megaton delivery devices.

“It's going to be wicked hard to get everything, and that's why I think it is far more”

stabilizing than destabilizing when you put a pen to paper you're thinking through. Today we're talking about the Trump administration's Golden Dome Missile Defense programs, so we're going to talk today about the changes or possible changes in U.S. Missile Defense, and I want you to start really by educating us. On January 27th, the President Trump issued an executive order entitled "An Iron Dome

for America." It's since come to be called the Golden Dome Effort, and for those of us who are outside the Missile Defense Community, can you give us a description of what Golden Dome is, why it's happening now, the cost, and purpose, and just make us smart, please. Well, look, I think fundamentally, as it kind of said at the outset of the January 27th

executive order, this is driven by a particular problem set, a particular threat set, and that is the very considerable proliferation and expansion of Missile threat capabilities globally. This, what was once perhaps seen as a boutique threat, has very much now become weapons of choice. And we've seen this in spades, and the Ukraine conflict over the past three years.

Likewise, we've seen it in the number of very sophisticated air and missile attacks on Israel, for instance, over the past couple years. And you've also seen a real, I would say, stepping out and a demonstration of the technical prowess of active air, air missile defense, you know, Ukraine has put the patriot air defense system on its currency because of the significance of its, to preserving Ukraine sovereignty

today. Air missile defense is not going to win a conflict for you by itself, but it's absence will lose one for you pretty quick in this environment. We can just imagine what would have happened, in terms of, for instance, Israel's response on April 14th of last year when hundreds of hundreds of things were coming in simultaneously,

air and with the missile defense, it would almost certainly emit a massive response by Israel

to Iran. And so the executive order kind of recognizes that very significant missile threat and to say, we're going to do something about this, especially for the homeland and it's very much attentive to the U.S. homeland, especially, but not only colonists, and the United States, as opposed to, say, force protection abroad, things like that.

“And so that's, I think the fundamental impulse here, you know, the title iron known for”

America plays off of the executive order. It plays off the, what is perhaps the best publicly, you know, popularly known missile defense system, the lowest layer of Israel's multilayered defense. But it's definitely, and, in fact, not about the iron-domed product made by Raphael, it is going to be about a very different threat set and a very different set of capabilities.

Some of those things were going to kind of draw on what's already in existence today. And yes, it's also going to be about new capabilities, new domain, basing things like that, but it'll be a mix and it's going to have to be a mix, because just in the same way that Israel has a multilayered system, there is a multiplicity of threats, UAVs, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, various things, hypersonic, gliders and the like.

And all of those are the threats that are here, they have arrived, and those were things that would have to be contended with to provide some degree of protection for the American

people, for critical infrastructure and the like.

And so that's kind of the, the problem said it's to deal with, it is a very wicked hard problem. And this is not to say that the golden dome effort aspires to catch everything, but rather to have it, as I said, the degree of protection for certain things against, I would say, this full spectrum of threats.

When we talk about these systems, my impression is that the cost can very considerably depending on what you're trying to achieve. Can you talk us through what some of the estimates are both for the near term, but also as we think of this as, you know, five years out, ten years out, what this might end up costing?

“Yeah, well, I think it is important to emphasize that, you know, every weapon system”

and DOD is limited, every one of them, and missile events will be a limited scarce asset as well. It's not going to be unlimited, I think that's something that somehow gets in the conversation in the water and needs to be disabused. The threat is very robust, and so I think that's the beginning of wisdom, is the recognition

that you can't defend everything, especially in terms of non-belistic maneuvering threats. You can't defend everything. You have to, you have to pick and choose in terms of what is your defendant asset list. So that's sort of the beginning of wisdom, and so therefore it's hard to cost or throw out numbers because we don't need to know what the architecture is exactly.

We don't yet know how many threats are going to be baked in, in terms of, okay, we're going to defend against 100 cruise missiles or 500 cruise missiles. So in other words, it's hard to cost what it is when we don't yet have an hit and a scale for it. I don't worry, the CSI and Special Defense Project will be costing the, the Jesus out

of this once we get the architecture and some numbers. What I would say is based on various atmospherics and things, for instance, in Congress

and otherwise, I would not be terribly surprised if you're looking at it perhaps a $10 billion

a year increase, and I'll tell you, we've put out various studies, including one on, for instance, Homeland Cruise Missile Defense, and we've been holding our architecture we cost that conservatively, and it was, it was a couple billion dollars a year of funding

“to be able to provide cruise and air missile defense for, I think it was five areas of the”

country. And so, in extra $10 billion, I would say, is going to go fast, even if you are constrained in conservative terms of what you're trying to defend and I guess how many things you're trying to defend. Again, the threat gets a vote, it has arrived in spades in terms of air and missile strike capability.

You're also almost certainly going to see, because it was there in the executive order, more space sensors, which is critically important for tracking, especially hypersonic gliders and the like, and yes, you're probably going to see a significant research and development effort on the space base interceptor front, we're recording on April 4th.

interceptor specifically that will be held at the end of the month, April 30th.

So that's coming, it's coming, because it was directed in the executive order. Space-based interceptors is useful. If you, if you can do it, to kill especially ballistic missiles in their boost phase, but it's hard. So this missile defense is hard, as I like to say, we have demonstrated positively and

definitively that you can't hit bullet with a bullet. In fact, we can hit a bullet in a very specific place with another bullet. The precision guidance of hit to kill has come so far and again, demonstrate in real life

with every single missile defense system of ourselves and the Israelis has been used successfully

in combat over the past five years and actually just over the past two years, a fab, patriot, you name it, he just has been used successfully against especially Iranian missiles for instance, and also Russian, of course, in Ukraine. So you're going to see some of the more the same, but you're also going to see I predict a lot of new stuff.

So let's talk a little bit more about the threat. I at least was surprised in some ways, by the effectiveness of missile defense against what around through Israel, and also impressed by what's been happening with Ukraine when the

systems have been in place.

That said, China is a different adversary, and it has impressive capabilities, it has lots of systems and it's going to get better. So could you describe how China might use hypersonic, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles,

“in all conflict, and what's some of the problems would be for the United States in these circumstances?”

No, that's absolutely right, and I'll tell you, Dan, I was also surprised. I say it was probably nothing short of a miracle that so very few of the 600 or so projectiles that were fired in Israel last April 14, nothing short of a miracle that more didn't get through. And then again, October, I think it was October 1 of last year when they sent like a hundred plus ballistic missiles alone, that's pretty stressing.

But you're right, I'd like to say China, on a bad day, will be sending to Guam, or to various other places military bases, Okinawa, ports, and airfields and colonists, they're going to be sending an order of magnitude more than that. And so that's why, again, recognizing that you can't do everything, you can't defend everything,

“that's why I think the protection of military forces is going to be so important.”

The Golden Dome effort is apparently more on the counter-value protection, but it is also said to be a capability based approach, which means you develop the capabilities, and then you can adjust your defendant asset list or now, you can adjust that as needed. And so, yes, the Chinese would throw a lot in terms of numbers, but significantly, just as on April 14 of last year, it was a complex and structure and integrated attack, which is to say

complex in the sense of having multiple different types of things, and structure or integrated so that they arrive simultaneously, or in some other way, that stresses the radar as it stresses the defender in various ways. And so, you can bet that China would structure and attack on, let's just say Guam, to be as difficult as possible. Now, the other thing is to recognize is, and people talk about the cost of exchange ratio, and they talk about real costs,

they also talk about inventory or magazine depth. It's also really important to recognize that as I said at the outset, it is limited. And the purpose of missile defense is not to sit and play catch. It's not simply to defend. It is rather to defend long enough to answer

“or end the threat by other means. And that's why as we do these cost exchange ratios, offense versus”

defense, it's very stilted and partial approach to it. It just as we think about air power and ground land power within the broader joint force, as part of a larger thing, you have to do the same here as well. And so, air missile defense, its job is to defend long enough to bring your diplomatic, military, economic, various other tools in the broad national toolbox to bear. And especially, you know, let's just say the back of the Guam example, you may defend long enough to get your

bombers off the ground, or long enough to get your ships out of court. You're not going to be able

has an increased doubt that they aren't going to pay a very heavy price for doing that sort of an attack. And so, it's the offense defense integration, or it's the combination within the broader

“force, that that's how you got our approach. And that is how it contributes to deterrence,”

but also to our broad defense goals. So, you've talked us through the capability question, you've talked us through the exchange

ratio question. Let me give you a third, I'll say, common criticism that I've heard. And this

frankly goes back to our well, listeners can guess my age by this type of question, but if you go back to the kind of late Cold War period, there was a criticism of the US nuclear build-up or other methods that at times things like the strategic defense initiative, saying basically in response, the Soviets will simply increase their arsenals. And in the end, we'll have both spent a lot of money. And the situation will not be any safer for the United States. And in fact,

it'll probably be less stabilized. Is that a fair criticism here where all we're doing is really incentivizing China to get a lot bigger arsenal? Well, I think China's doing a really good job of building up their missile forces and their destroyers, all this other stuff already. It looks

“strategic stability as a thing. It can be defined in many different ways. I think it's important”

that we not have simply the carryover, the intellectual baggage of the past and we approach the situations days as a present itself, not kind of with the recollections of what we thought or thought we thought about the Soviets from years gone by. And so what I would say is how to do this while, as well, that the conversation on missile defense, I would say has changed and changed dramatically in the past three years. And I think the Ukraine conflict has emphatically altered the perceptions

of missile defense. And it's done so in a couple of ways. One, it wasn't so very long ago when people would say, you know, it's just impossible. Russia missiles are just too good. It's going to be impossible for us to be able to intercept these. And what we've seen with patriots and may sands and other systems in Ukraine conflict is actually there shouldn't down Russian kit. And they're doing not a bad job of it. Do we have enough interceptors? Of course not. Again, to sit there indefinitely,

“that's why in the Ukraine case they need to win the war by other means while air defense buys”

them time and protects their sovereignty in the near term. The other thing that has changed dramatically in the past three years is, I used to debate folks in Europe and here in the US on, you know, is missile defense provocative and destabilizing. I haven't heard any of that hardly at all in the past three years because again, it has proven to be a stabilizing force. Now, I think it's

critical to distinguish here between the big nuclear thing and the especially non-nuclear

strategic attack, which is really what we've seen over the past a couple of years. It is the abundance it is the supply of lots and lots of precision guide capability, more and more missiles and more more sophisticated missiles that has lowered the threshold for use and has, again, made these weapons of choice. And so what we've seen is that active air and missile defense contributes to stability, providing what I call speed bumps in the sky, that we're slowing down, but might

otherwise be a fainted company kind of a thing. And so that's, that I think is a nuance and I think a really important one in terms of how we think about this. Nevertheless, there is this idea, this worry, let's say that if the United States had its death star and was capable of taking out every Chinese or Russian ICBM that that would be destabilizing because that would lead the

the Russians and the Chinese to worry that we would strike first and be able to stop up anything

and if they know that, putting that aside, first of all, I think you have to be even more of a

faith-based believer in missile defense than I am to have that much confidence or to play that kind of a game of risk just assuming that missile defense would be perfect. Again, back to April 14, I think it was a miracle that it caught as many as it did. This is not something you would be saying going about or take lightly. So I think that you've seen the Russian kind of proliferation of cruise and hypersonic and, yes, undersea, you know, Megaton delivery devices. It's going to be

“wicked hard to get everything and that's why I think it is far more stabilizing than destabilize.”

And when you put pen to paper and you think it through. And so the threat is really, really hard

and you shouldn't take it lightly that we could take care of everything that our adversaries could throw at us at a stroke. Let me just ask us a specific question on China. Would China develop something similar? And, you know, does it have the technical capability? Is it something the China is talking about right now? Yeah, it's a good question. In fact, the Chinese are. Go take a look at the latest report on the military power of the people's Republican China

from late last year. And you'll see a description there of the several families of air missile defense systems that they're pursuing to include mid-course ballistic missile defense. Of course, the Russians have had various forms of missile defense for some time. They talk about in that in that PRC mill power report of their kind of S300 and S400. Those are Russian systems. Classes of capability and then there's the Chinese HQ versions of those. But they also talk about

not just ASAP, but explicitly mid-course ballistic missile defense tests and capability development.

“I think it is important to demystify and de-exotify this capability. It's something that is”

in high demand for our cells, for Russian China, for our allies and partners. You're seeing a massive demand signalling Europe with the Germany-led European sky shield initiative. Everybody wants air defense. Everybody wants missile defense because that's where the threat is. It's not a boutique thing. It's a central thing to how folks fight wars now. And you saw in the Turkey acquisition of the Russian S400 missile defense, air missile defense system, kind of a perfect storm. One of our

NATO allies going and buying the Russian kit. We canceled their involvement in F-35 for good reasons as a result of that. Because we didn't want them flying there F-35 in front of the Russian radars and the Russian radars figuring out how to get the F-35 for instance. So it's a massive surge. I like to say in this supply of various long-range strike missile threats. But it's also a surge in the supply and demand globally of active air missile defenses to content with them that

you're seeing. One ourselves, our adversaries and our allies. Let me switch gears, given that this is law fair and ask you to kind of take us through some of the legal implications. What types of

“your national agreements or legal restrictions might be abocated by some of the golden dome systems?”

Yeah. So again, we don't know yet what the gold dome is per se, but the good news is on this

front that the answer is probably very, very few of any. You know, there's sometimes the idea that

the outer space treaty of 1967 for instance would preclude space space interceptors. Well, no, that's it doesn't. What it precludes is putting nuclear weapons in space. You know, if the Russians go ahead with putting some kind of a nuclear device in the lower orbit, that would be a violation. But these sort of things hit the kill or various non-nuclear intercept means would not be an issue per se. No, I tell you, I have somebody who I did my dissertation on tree law and executive agreements.

There's a very rich and extensive legal history of the ABM tree versus, you know, the ABM tree was signed on the same day as the salt, salt 1 agreement in 1972. 1 was an article 2 treaty. 1 was a congressional executive agreement, and there's been a lot of a lot of different forms and species in terms of U.S. con law and international law over the years. The ABM tree, of course, went away after some some tree law questions after the Soviet Union

of the new start treaty that precludes the conversion of ICBM silos into essentially ground-based

“interceptors silos, without one provision there should not be any restrictions in terms of this”

this capability development. And oh, by the way, the new start treaty is going to go away in February of next year, and it's not going to come back. I predict we may be in a bit of the the waterists for a while in terms of nuclear arms control, and that's probably okay because we don't trust the Russians anyway and just having a piece of paper isn't any real solace anyway. The Chinese in a similar way have made it pretty clear that they don't want to do any of that

nuclear arms control agreements any time soon. So I say that because once new start goes away, we will and principle be able to if we should so desire convert, let's just say some old piece keeper silos of Aneberg to next generation interceptor silos, if we should desire, that ought to be a bit of a good, I suppose, but probably a small one in terms of the Russians and the Chinese. So Tom, let's pretend it's 2035 and we're looking at golden dome and if it's a success,

what would you say it looks like? And the same question, if it's a failure, what do you think

“probably went wrong? Hmm. Well, I would say first of all, it's going to be important to move fast.”

And so there doesn't need to be substantial funding in PB26, but I would say I would go further and I would say waiting until 2026 funding is too late. The reconciliation bill that's percolating through Congress really, if it doesn't include sort of a head start on this, that will have been a massive

missed opportunity. Another couple would say a very essential ingredients is less exotic, but

absolutely important considerations like acquisition authorities, you know, making it very clear who's in charge and giving them the access, the budget control and the ability to make technical trades between these different systems and being able to put together, put these, the different systems together into a coherent hole. I say that because that's kind of something that's being worked out right now in the Pentagon and any day now or perhaps already has happened, that will be

sent up to the president, kind of a plan in terms of what they're going to build and kind of the plan for how to implement. You know, amateurs do cost exchange ratios and strategy and professionals due logistics and acquisition authorities, and that's going to be true here as with what's above the things as well. In terms of going sideways, look, there's lots of ways that we can get distracted. If we spin our wheels and kind of don't do the things that I emphasized earlier in terms

of moving out smartly by folks that know what they're doing and being attentive to that, have questions about clarity on what we're trying to defend. I think again, the

“defense of population is important, infrastructure, but also I think it's going to be important to”

be attentive to the protection of military forces. And the reason I say that is because the thing that can contempt an adversary to attack is thinking that they can get away with it. And my metaphor here is people talk about cyber-proharber, a space-proharber. I worry about a pro-harber, which is to say missile attack, aerial attack, on, let's just say, forward-based military forces. In the hopes that the U.S. joint force can be penned up and impeded long enough for them to go on about their

business with some kind of regional aggression. And so the protection of military forces, I think, is something that's going to be super important here to actually contributing to no kidding deterrence of shenanigans in aggression by the bad guys. It is to be clear, going be absolutely

critical that we reorient our focus to the bigs, to Russian China. And I'll say that notwithstanding

the fact that the last two national defense strategies have said, hey, it's all about rate-power competition or China's the pacing threat or what have you. Our missile defense efforts haven't quite been in alignment with that. We've still been pretty focused as the January Executive Order correctly noted. We've still been fairly focused on the roads, North Korea and Iran in terms of

aligned with the really big priorities of the country of the Department of Defense.

“Tom, though, seemed like fitting words to end our podcast on, thank you very much for guiding us today.”

Hey, thanks, Dan. Thanks to Laugh Fair. Great. Great show.

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