The Golden Dome czar must get control of all US missile defense programs – Defense News

The Golden Dome czar must get control of all US missile defense programs  Defense News

Opinion: The Defense Department must heed a vital organizational lesson from the past if Golden Dome is to succeed, writes analyst Thane Clare. The United States is largely defenseless against Russian and Chinese aerial attacks. This is a major strategic problem in today’s era of massed drone and missile warfare—and no one is clearly in charge of solving it. President Trump’s February 2025 executive order, “The Iron Dome for America” (later rebranded as Golden Dome), directed the Department of Defense to protect U.S. citizens and infrastructure from all forms of aerial attack. The department took a first step toward assigning responsibility for a U.S. air and missile defense architecture by standing up the Golden Dome office.

But critical elements of any near-term defensive shield remain outside its control: namely, the U.S. air and missile defense systems that have proven their worth on Ukrainian and Middle Eastern battlefields. The Aegis system, for example, is a U.S. Navy program—though its ballistic missile defense component is funded by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Patriot interceptors, in turn, belong to the Army. Theater High Altitude Aerial Defense (THAAD) batteries and the Ground Based Midcourse Defense System (GMDS) are developed by the MDA but operated and maintained by the Army. U.S. Northern Command is responsible for U.S. air surveillance but relies heavily on radars belonging