How Russia Could Break Through America's "Golden Dome"
Author: Igor Garnov
The old plan of America's global missile defense system has a new embodiment. The Strategic Defense Initiative project from President Reagan's era, after revision, is now called the "Golden Dome." What changes have been made to it, what role does Elon Musk play in this, and can this "dome" protect the United States from Russian nuclear warheads?
The current state of America's missile defense system (anti-ballistic missile system, ПРО) is called "strategic" only because it can intercept the re-entry vehicles of intercontinental (strategic) ballistic missiles (ICBMs). However, it cannot provide comprehensive protection for the entire territory of the United States.
This system is built on the basis of ground-based GBI missile interceptors, designed to counter incidental (single) or limited attacks. Its ability to intercept ICBMs is, under optimal conditions, approximately capable of dealing with about twenty targets, with each target requiring two missiles. For a MIRVed ICBM, this equates to a combat payload of 2 to 6 missiles. However, any large-scale attack on the U.S. homeland would involve hundreds of ICBMs, which would carry means to penetrate the anti-missile system as well as various electronic warfare systems. Even if the efficiency of the U.S. anti-missile system reached 100% (which is technically impossible), it would quickly become saturated and exhaust its combat resources within the first few minutes of a large-scale attack.
Including sea-based Standard - 3 (SM-3) interceptor missiles and land-based THAAD systems in the strategic anti-missile system is not entirely correct. Their mission scope is to intercept medium-range and short-to-medium-range missiles. In the face of a truly large-scale strategic attack, their role is almost negligible.
However, the White House has announced the start of creating a new strategic anti-missile system for the United States, codenamed "Golden Dome." It is said that the effectiveness of this system will be greatly improved. The preliminary plan for this anti-missile system has been submitted for review by the Pentagon leadership.
Is this possible? How can such a vast country be covered by an invincible shield? To answer this question, we need to look back at some situations in the history of the creation of America's anti-missile system.
Although Reagan's "Star Wars" plan was announced to have stopped, it never truly ceased.
Just as the ambition of developing anti-missile systems was inconsistent with the technological capabilities at the time, even in the mid-1980s when the United States was the leading superpower, it lacked the corresponding technological capability. In the public memory, the main things left behind were nearly science fiction projects: nuclear pulse-based X-ray lasers, orbital particle accelerators, relativistic klystrons, and other similarly exaggerated research results. Most of these "revolutionary" ideas did not even progress to the prototype stage. In the early stages of the "Star Wars" plan implementation in the mid-1980s, the United States shifted its focus to more practical and relatively simpler space-based strike methods.
The first preliminary scheme of such a system was called "Smart Rocks." Essentially, it was a heavy orbital space station (so-called "garage") equipped with a large number of lightweight interceptor missiles. This concept was considered flawed because even destroying one such orbital space station would create a significant gap in defense. Meanwhile, it was found impossible to make missiles lighter and required redeveloping space targeting and maneuvering systems.
The second project was named "Brilliant Pebbles." Conceptually, it inherited the idea of "Smart Rocks," but unlike several large operational orbital space stations, it envisaged sending a large number of individual capsule-interceptor missiles into orbit. During peacetime, these interceptor missiles would remain on standby orbits, and once a large-scale attack was detected, they could almost immediately intercept enemy ICBMs after they entered space.
The "Brilliant Pebbles" project was completely feasible, but it was too costly. To protect the U.S. mainland, more than 7000 interceptor capsules needed to be deployed in space. At that time, the U.S. Space Force and NASA did not have such capability. However, this project was not completely terminated.
The "Star Wars" plan of the 1980s was not limited to the development of strike means. One of its important components was the new space-based monitoring and target indication system. This was the "Brilliant Eyes" project, later renamed the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS). This system includes both a geostationary orbit version (for monitoring large areas) and a low-orbit SBIRS LEO version.
Like the "Brilliant Pebbles" project, the SBIRS LEO project also faced major technical challenges. Despite this, actual prototypes were built and tested within the framework of the project, proving the possibility of tracking ballistic targets and generating target indications for anti-missile system elements. However, deploying the full system required not just a few satellites in orbit, but hundreds. Even during the testing of SBIRS prototypes in the early 21st century, the U.S. did not have such capability.
However, everything is changing before our eyes — thanks to the efforts of American entrepreneur and engineer Elon Musk and his company SpaceX. As of April 2025, his Starlink satellite system has more than 5200 satellites in orbit, with over 6000 having been launched. The total planned scale of the satellite group is no less than 12,000 satellites.
The Starlink satellites began deployment to space in 2020. Thus, SpaceX annually launches more than 1000 complex satellite systems into orbit. Simultaneously, its batch production, satellite group communication and management systems, and ground infrastructure have all been debugged. We have witnessed their practical value as a global interference-resistant communication system in Ukraine.
What we are seeing now is a fully debugged satellite platform mass-production system and the capability to send them in large numbers to their respective orbits. These are precisely the missing elements for the successful implementation of the "Brilliant Pebbles" and SBIRS LEO plans.
Of course, the U.S. new strategic anti-missile system will officially select the winning bid after reviewing the tender proposals. But we can assume that this bid is more of a formality, as the overall architecture of the future project has already been determined by 40 years of research and development. The details of the current tender more involve the allocation of funds among different stakeholders, the selection of contractors for various system components, and the clarification of implementation outlines. Additionally, to emphasize innovation, names will change — for example, SBIRS LEO has already received a forward-looking name "Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared System" (NG OPIR), i.e., the next-generation continuous coverage infrared sensor system for Earth. Ultimately, the U.S. new anti-missile system is very likely to be a revamped version of "Brilliant Pebbles" (2.0) and "Brilliant Eyes" (2.0), using new basic components.
Such a solution is not without merit. All necessary technologies have been tested at the prototype level — the remaining task is engineering debugging and organizing large-scale production.
The main combat elements of the system are already available — these are the kinetic kill vehicles (KKVs) currently installed on the GBI missile platforms. There are also other possible solutions. For example, the small warhead "Lightweight Exoatmospheric Projectile" (LEAP) designed for the SM-3 can overcome its main problem in the space-based version: the limited range of the missile platform due to energy constraints based on air defense missiles. It is possible to use both types of kinetic kill vehicles in the deployed space-based strike means: the long-range heavy KKV for interception during the midcourse phase, and the shorter-range lightweight LEAP for locally increasing protective density when covering the latitude regions of the continental United States.
The sensor system inherited from "Brilliant Eyes" (Brilliant Eyes) and SBIRS LEO has been tested. It has not entered mass production not so much because of being overly complex as because there was no capability to launch hundreds of satellites into orbit at that time. The experience of deploying the Starlink network can be fully utilized here.
The cumbersome and expensive tactical information exchange network that existed during the design of the "Brilliant Pebbles" project already exists — this is Starlink.
All that needs to be done is to connect all operational platforms and sensor constellations to a closed-loop satellite internet. At this point, the entire communication system will also have additional interference-resistant characteristics because it does not use any ground transponders and laser systems can be used for orbit-to-orbit communications within the visible range of the satellite platforms, which are unaffected by electronic warfare. Such transceivers have been tested and mass-produced in the Starlink system. Installing them on future operational satellite platforms is a simple technical issue.
The future "Golden Dome" may have other defense layers, including ground-based anti-missile missile systems. But its conceptual foundation will almost certainly be the idea of "Brilliant Pebbles" (2.0), possibly refined according to modern sensor and image recognition algorithm capabilities, which are now often associated with the popular field of artificial intelligence. The development of basic components will also make the sensors and combat elements of the system simpler, simplifying the mass production process compared to the technology of the 1980s, and enabling the deployment of tens of satellite platforms in a single launch instead of individually.
The main advantage of the system will lie in its mass producibility, replicability, and scalability. It can begin deployment with hundreds of elements and gradually increase the satellite constellation to the calculated 7000 or more, allowing it to utilize modular construction principles and systematically enhance the capabilities of the created anti-missile system.
A recent Reuters report confirms this analysis, stating that in the bidding for the infrastructure creation of the future "Golden Dome," SpaceX is most likely to become the general contractor. Also mentioned are Palantir and Anduril companies. Likely, they will be responsible for producing the sensor systems and refining management algorithms, while SpaceX will be responsible for launching the components of the created system into orbit on a large scale. In other words, the foundation of the "dome" will be space-based rather than land-based.
Will such a "Golden Dome" be impregnable? No. Russia's current anti-missile breakthrough system includes decoys and jamming devices, as well as means for physically countering anti-missile system elements. That is, in a large-scale attack, we can slightly reduce the delivery of combat loads to open a path to the target.
But this path is only accessible to the core members of the nuclear club, and the created system is not claimed to be a reliable means against carefully planned large-scale nuclear attacks. However, its capabilities far exceed those of the existing U.S. land-based anti-missile systems. Moreover, it was created from the beginning as an expandable system.
Reuters points out that the first tier of the satellite group will consist of 400 to 1000 orbital platforms. Such a global coverage network will be able to intercept up to 150 warheads, roughly equivalent to the ballistic missile nuclear strike potential of the UK, India, and France — excluding Russia. However, even the first tier of the system can reliably defend against attacks on the U.S. homeland from North Korea or Iran. Based on the batch production scale of the Starlink satellite platforms, the estimated time to deploy the first tier is around two years, or slightly longer.
But this tier will certainly not be the last. The ambitions of the U.S. anti-missile system are unlikely to reach the level of providing absolute protection against attacks from superpowers, but it is entirely possible to defend against or significantly weaken potential attacks from relevant countries, whose current nuclear strike potential is estimated at 350 to 400 warheads. With the deployment of the second batch of the "Golden Dome" system, defending against such attacks (which is the current total nuclear force of relevant countries) will become a reality. This might happen in five to six years. Given the shift in U.S. foreign policy direction, in the medium term, addressing the strategic potential of relevant countries will likely become the key goal for deploying and producing components of the "Golden Dome" system.
Original Source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7495705248451871286/
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