Today’s highly volatile geopolitical environment is just a glimpse into the future, according to political pundits and military leaders. From the pressures of resource scarcity to impacts of climate change, nation-states are looking to expand their territorial ambitions and tighten their alliances to preserve their futures and their population’s safety. Inevitably as the post-World War II order changes, so too do the strategies, tactics, and tools used by military organizations to build the future of national defense and secure these ambitions.
While some nation-states have invested in blue water naval capacity, for the United States, which already maintains dominant power projection capabilities on the sea, air, and land, attention and investments have turned to securing the space domain. Interest in space-based defenses dates to the Reagan Administration’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was designed to protect the continental United States from Soviet ballistic missiles in the event of nuclear war. While SDI withered because of skyrocketing costs, technological immaturity, and a lack of political will, the Trump Administration’s Golden Dome is, thus far, well-funded and benefitting from an AI accelerated tech boom.
“Historically, US strategic defense has been limited by stagnant technology,” shared Chris Miller, Senior Account Director, USAF and USSF, at Lumen. “But the concept of protecting the continental United States and other strategic assets from space has never fully disappeared. Added Adam Rogge, Senior Director – Department of War Specialized Sales, at Lumen, “the threats the United States is facing today are not like our Cold War enemies; there are more of them with nefarious intent. The homeland can be reached, and not just by ballistic missiles, but by hypersonic missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).”
The intent of Golden Dome is to neutralize both kinetic and non-kinetic threats to the homeland using a complex network of sensors that transit mission critical information to all domain command and control (C2) operations facilities and require an instantaneous decision and response based on incoming information as well as the United States Air Forces’ operational and warehoused data. “The focus on Golden Dome is often the advancement in satellite technology, but the bigger challenge for this mission is connecting, analyzing, and deploying data at the speed of need,” shared Rogge. “To deliver on the mission the kill chain has to become much shorter, which means data inputs and outputs must be nearly instantaneous and unfailingly accurate.”
As with all major advancements today, AI plays a key role in the success of Golden Dome because of its capability to make sense of data on a scale far beyond human capability. But Rogge noted that AI creates underrated challenges for Golden Dome effectively creating bumps in the network capacity as it consumes bandwidth moving, analyzing, and applying data. “What the Department of War and the USAF need to focus on is ensuring they have a digital infrastructure with a network that is fit for mission,” he explained. “A low latency network that can handle the surges in data and not falter under duress or an attack.”
For Miller, today’s legacy networks and infrastructure are capable of effective terrestrial transmission but far outclassed when it comes to the fundamental requirements of assured, survivable, redundant, and low latency. “In the private sector it might be enough to have a fast network; to be fit for purpose for this critical national defense mission, Golden Dome’s network has to be a fundamental part of the first strike capacity,” he explained. “If a nuclear, or even a non-kinetic strike, occurs the network still needs to function seamlessly; there’s no opportunity for degraded bandwidth or functionality.”
To support the warfighter and deliver on the mission the Department of War cannot, therefore, rely on legacy networks, nor on wireless networks. “A Golden Dome-ready network is a terrestrial fiber network that is buried underground,” Miller explained. “Fiber networks are the enabler of terrestrial to orbit communications, capable of collecting and transmitting data from critical sensors in near-real time, without interruption. While wireless networks have value they are neither as secure as fiber nor capable of physically withstanding a kinetic attack – towers are easy to locate and easy to incapacitate.’
With our homeland no longer a sanctuary from the conflicts that are happening around the world, Golden Dome is a mission for the Department of War. And for it to be a mission, the complex architecture and infrastructure that will create the protective dome starts with a network. “Having built robust fiber networks for DoW and operating over 11,000 fiber miles for the DoD Information Network, we’re ready to take on the challenge of what is likely the nation’s most important network,” Miller concluded.
Lumen Technologies Government Solutions was awarded an Indefinite Delivery Contract (HQ085926DE203) by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) as part of the SHIELD (Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense) Multiple Award IDIQ contract vehicle.