Former MDA head explains Golden Dome, command and control, startups, and more
Transcript
Maggie 00:04
In this episode of the Mission Matters podcast, we sit down with Shield Capital Operating Partner, Lieutenant General Pat O'Reilly, to discuss missile defense. Previously, Pat served as the three-star general in charge of the Missile Defense Agency, the Pentagon's inter-service organization responsible for U.S. missile defense. Before that, Pat had a long career in missile defense. He was the program manager for several key U.S. missile defense programs, including THAAD, National Missile Defense, Aegis, Directed Energy, PAC-3, and radars and space assets.
Matt 01:10
Missile defense is a very popular topic of conversation in national security circles these days, primarily because of the Trump administration's announcement for a Golden Dome, which is an air and missile defense system that would shield the U.S. from any threat.
Maggie 01:26
Yeah. I mean, I feel like every single time I go to D.C., it's basically inescapable at any space event from hearing the words "Golden Dome." But I don't know, Matt, what do you think? Do people actually have a good understanding of what this might actually mean?
Matt 01:40
Well, before we did this interview, I certainly had gaps in my knowledge about missile defense and what a Golden Dome architecture could look like or cost. And when we started preparing for this interview, we realized just how complicated missile defense really is and how little we really knew about it. One important thing that I now better understand is just how difficult missile defense is to get right. It entails thousands of exquisite technologies working together perfectly for a span of a few very crucial seconds. Our missile defense posture today has roots not only in those technical challenges and what's technically possible—it’s also been shaped by wider national security policies dating back to the Cold War. And I think those Cold War policy frameworks are still really important for understanding the state of missile defense today.
Maggie 02:31
Yeah, I will say Matt and I are both giant history nerds, so I always love to be able to dig back into Cold War history to understand why our systems are the way they are today. I'll start by saying, you know, today, the U.S. really does not have a fully comprehensive air and missile defense system. The major policy framework that’s guided U.S. missile defense capabilities was the Anti-Ballistic Missile, or ABM, Treaty, which was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union back in 1972. The ABM Treaty restricted both countries from actually deploying anti-ballistic missile systems with the goal of preventing further acceleration of the nuclear arms—
Matt 03:12
Race. Wait, Maggie, can you explain that? Why would a treaty aimed at preventing an acceleration of the nuclear arms race focus on preventing countries from building up their defensive systems?
Maggie 03:26
Yeah, I think the idea here is that whenever one country built up defenses, another country would build up more missiles in order to actually counter those defenses. So it's sort of an arms control treaty in reverse—that by preventing you from building defenses, it actually disincentivizes me from building more arms in the first place. The idea was that if neither country could defend against the other's stockpile, neither would need to develop dramatically more missiles. But the U.S. ultimately pulled out of that treaty in 2001, as other countries like Iran and North Korea started developing their own ICBMs and nuclear programs, and the United States wanted to make sure we could defend against those systems with our own anti-ballistic missile systems.
So really today, the way to think about it is our system is designed to counter rogue threats—that is, a few missiles launched from Iran or North Korea, or a non-state actor, or maybe even an accidental launch from a larger power like Russia or China. But our system is not designed to counter a full-scale attack from a major peer adversary. Instead, we really have to rely on our nuclear deterrent to protect against a full-scale nuclear war.
So that takes us to Golden Dome. Today, a major part of Golden Dome—I think it’s actually officially called Iron Dome for America—is to be able to defend against any threat, whether that is a nuclear launch from China or a small drone launched by a cartel across the border. And in order to actually build out a system that really achieves those goals, it’s going to require new capabilities—and some capabilities that have never been deployed at scale before, like space-based interceptors.
Matt 05:08
And we'll get into Golden Dome and space-based interceptors and some of these new capabilities. But first, in this episode, in order to understand what the future of missile defense might hold, we actually start with the fundamentals of missile defense. So first, we ask Pat about the types of missiles we defend against, different phases of a missile launch—including when a missile would be most vulnerable to being defended against and intercepted—and what missile defense systems we have to respond at each stage of a launch.
We talk about the different types of defensive systems, including both kinetic and non-kinetic—that’s interceptors versus directed energy—and we cover the core technologies that make missile defense possible along the entire kill chain: how we characterize threats with sensors, algorithms for sensor fusion, and choosing what we want to protect and prioritize with both human and automated decision-making.
Then we talk about why missile defense is so hard. We hinted at that earlier, with all the technologies that have to work well together and the idea of Golden Dome, including new capabilities like space-based interceptors. We conclude by discussing what technologies are still needed to improve and modernize missile defense and where startups and other innovative solutions can help.
And as we said before, throughout the conversation, we gained a much better appreciation for how complicated and difficult missile defense truly is to get right. We hope our viewers and our listeners do too. We're incredibly grateful to Pat—one of the world's leading experts in missile defense—for taking the time to explain to novices like us and our audience.
Now, on to the show. Pat, thanks for being here. You had a storied career in missile defense within the Army. How does one even get into missile defense? Did 18-year-old Pat know that he was going to start a long career working on missile defense issues when he started at West Point?
Pat 07:01
Actually, no—and thanks for having me here. But to answer your question, you know, in the Army, you’d see the old saying, “You do what you’re told to do.” And I had just finished teaching physics at West Point as a captain, and the next thing I knew, I was in an organization called the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization in the Pentagon in 1989. That was started by an initiative from President Reagan, and the Army did not have enough officers participating. So overnight, I found myself in the SDI Organization without any training or background. That’s how I got started, and I literally was the junior person in the entire organization.
Matt 07:53
Can you walk us through how you went from being the junior person in the entire SDI Organization to being the senior-most person in all of U.S. missile defense at MDA?
Pat 08:04
Well, like everything, things are controlled by Congress. I went to work one day and found out that the directed energy program that I was the program manager of had lost all its funding overnight. So then I went down the hallway and literally knocked on 100 doors to see if anybody needed help. There was a program called THAAD at the time—Theater High Altitude Area Defense—that was short some people, and I ended up working in theater missile defense. That’s how I shifted from my physics background and directed energy to missile interceptors.
Maggie 08:46
So, Pat, I want to start off just asking a basic question. You know, I think Matt and I seem to see missile defense everywhere these days. It’s in policy discussions in D.C., it’s in every other pitch deck—I feel like we see it especially in the space domain. But what are all the actual moving parts of missile defense? It’s a really complicated system. Can you just break down what actually is missile defense?
Pat 09:15
It actually is extremely complicated. There are thousands of technologies literally working together in real time for these systems to work. It can be greatly simplified, and I always recommend looking at it from three perspectives. One is the class of missile that you're trying to engage. The second is the kill chain, or sequence of actions that are required to happen in order to destroy a missile. And then the third piece is the firing doctrine you use. So, with those three in mind, you can set up a framework that makes it much easier to understand what does and does not work for missile defense. I just want to comment up front: a lot of times, air defense, which is focused on anti-aircraft and drones, is intermixed with cruise missile defense, which is specific for cruise missiles, and that is also integrated into discussions about missile defense. Those are three different military capabilities, and they require different firing doctrines, different technologies, and different threats.
Maggie 10:32
Maybe we could start with that first piece. What are the different kinds of missiles we might be defending against in the first place?
Pat 10:40
There are two basic classes of these missiles that we're most concerned about. There's the ballistic missile, which, by basic physics, means that after it's been launched and the booster burns out, it then coasts to its target. If it's short range, it might be a 15-minute flight. If it's a long ICBM, it could be over 30 minutes of flight, but it is just coasting, and it's following basic rules of physics and Kepler's laws, or laws of orbital mechanics. So you can pretty well predict where they're going to go at any point in time. The other class of threat missile is the maneuvering threat, and they actually have either control surfaces or they have different types of propulsion systems on board that can steer them during flight. So it is very hard to predict where they're going to be at a certain point in time. Hypersonic missiles that you hear a lot about today are that class of missile. But I will point out maneuvering RVs were introduced by the Russians, or the Soviets actually, in the 1970s, and since then they have been very hard missiles to intercept, because it's unpredictable what their path is. Each missile characteristic, or a missile, is categorized by its range. You have short-range missiles that are 300 to 1,000 kilometers, intermediate-range missiles which are 2,000 to 5,500 kilometers, and strategic missiles are missiles that travel greater than 5,500 kilometers. There's a reason they're broken into those three categories. Number one is the speeds and the altitudes: are they flying inside the Earth's atmosphere? Short-range typically fly inside the Earth's atmosphere. Intermediate-range leaves the atmosphere, sure, short for a short period of time, and then it re-enters, and a strategic missile spends most of its time outside the Earth's atmosphere. You will often ask, "Well, what about 1,000 to 2,000 kilometer missiles?" The reason they're not covered typically is there was a treaty between the United States and Russia, and the Soviet Union for many years, that banned intermediate-range missiles. So there was very little development done in those areas, and typically the missiles today—there are very few that are in that range.
Matt 13:22
Just to clarify: you mentioned earlier ICBMs — is that the same thing as strategic or 5,500-kilometer-plus range missiles?
Pat 13:32
Yes. A strategic ICBM is a strategic missile. It's given that range because it's traveling between seven to ten kilometers a second, and that requires a completely different set of technologies.
Matt 13:48
You also mentioned cruise missiles earlier. Are cruise missiles part of these categories you described, or are they not considered under the same missile defense?
Pat 14:00
They actually have their own class of weapon system, because they're so unique in having maneuvering airborne capability at the same time as the speed and the ranges of a missile. So cruise missiles are considered separate.
Matt 14:18
Got it. When we talk about missile defense, we're talking about ballistics and hypersonics.
Pat 14:22
You're talking about, yes, ballistic and maneuvering missiles of those three ranges: short, intermediate, strategic. Yes.
Maggie 14:31
And now, can you talk a little bit more about that second piece you mentioned, which is the kill chain and command and control?
Pat 14:38
Yes, the kill chain is made up of five different components. First is the sensor, which initially identifies a threat — a missile has been launched — and then starts to track that missile so that over time it can actually predict where that missile is going, especially if it's a ballistic missile. Those sensors can be land-based, maritime, or space-based. An important part that's often overlooked is the communication between these different components: they have to be secure, real-time communications that can handle a lot of data. The third piece is the battle management and control system. That's the overall system that pairs together weapons systems to a particular threat missile that has been launched. The reason that is so important is, as I go back to what I said before, the ranges travel at different speeds and they have different signatures and so forth. Because of that, the interceptor must be paired so that it matches the type of capabilities that the range of the threat missile will have. For example, if you fire a short-range missile, that means it's traveling most of the time through the atmosphere, so an exo-atmospheric interceptor would not have much capability. Therefore, you marry the Patriot system and the SM-2 missiles, which are built and designed to travel primarily in the Earth's atmosphere. The intermediate-range missiles require a THAAD system or an SM-3 missile that is designed to travel at higher velocities, has more maneuverability, but operates in the upper atmosphere. And then the strategic missiles require a ground-based midcourse defense interceptor, which is designed to operate in outer space and literally can maneuver many kilometers in order to be able to hit something traveling at 10 kilometers a second. So the important point is to note that if you mix these up, you cannot be very effective: an intermediate-range threat missile, for example, would not be effectively countered with a Patriot system; a THAAD system wouldn't be very effective against a strategic missile; and a strategic interceptor in GMD would not work well against the short range. So it's very important that they keep track of what the inventory is, what the threats are, and which weapon system is being paired to which sensor or threat missile. Then, besides C2BMC, once that pairing has occurred, it then hands off the mission to the weapon system in order to allow a fire-control solution to be developed, and then that fire-control system is uploaded into the interceptor. The interceptor is launched; it has to take into account the flight time of the interceptor as well as the closing velocity and the flight time of the threat missile. What's really important here is the concept of what we call the error basket. The error basket means we've tracked the threat missile and we can predict it to a point where we are able to fire an interceptor into this — as you could imagine — a basket, a three-dimensional basket in space, and that interceptor is flying towards that basket. By the time the threat missile arrives, the interceptor should be in the same location with enough maneuvering capability to counter any errors that occur in that trajectory prediction so that it can steer itself to an actual intercept. It's quite amazing, because you're intercepting something with closing velocities typically above five kilometers a second, and the size of a threat missile — if you look at them in the press or on TV — you're trying to hit something that's less than three feet across, and they're trying to hit it from often launch points that are five to six thousand miles away. So this is a remarkable amount of technology that has to work in a precise way in order for that intercept to happen. And the final step of the kill chain is the kill assessment. It's extremely important to determine whether or not you hit the target or whether you have to fire another missile at it. This becomes complicated when you have multiple threat missiles being intercepted in a close location because the destroyed missiles' debris is flowing in front of other missiles that are still coming in. So that's quite a challenge to complete the kill assessment, but it's extremely important. So that's the kill chain — each one of those five steps.
Maggie 20:06
And maybe one quick question about the different kinds of interceptors. I know we've talked about this. There's both kinetic interceptors and also some of these non-kinetic or directed-energy interceptors. Could you talk a little bit about those different approaches?
Pat 20:24
Yes. Well, the kinetic interceptor is extremely complex, but the technology is in hand in order to launch missiles. You do have to take into account the battle management, the firing doctrine, the flight time, the control of the missile, what altitude the intercept is coming at — all of that has to be calculated, and the interceptor has to be flown in a precise way in order for an intercept to happen. A directed-energy system obviously moves at the speed of light, and because it's moving at about 186,000 miles a second, the fire control is much simpler. When you hit a missile, the nice part about a directed-energy system is you may not destroy it, but you may disable it. The beauty of that is that then it doesn't break up and cause debris that makes it harder to hit other inbound threat missiles in the local region. So there's a lot of benefit with directed energy. The issue has been developing that technology: getting ranges through the Earth's atmosphere of hundreds of kilometers or longer, and the power required if you base it in space — how do you get that much laser or high-power microwave power in space? Those are all still technical challenges that have not been overcome.
Matt 21:55
So today are we mostly using kinetic interceptors, then, rather than directed-energy solutions? Or is it a mix? You mentioned the technology is not fully, fully ready on the directed-energy side.
Pat 22:10
For missile defense, it's 99% kinetic interceptors.
Matt 22:16
And just one follow-up on something you said. You mentioned that if a kinetic interceptor intercepts a missile, it creates debris that makes it harder for future interceptors to intercept other missiles. Can you talk more about that? Why does it make it harder for other interceptors to work effectively?
Pat 22:35
Because it's creating a shield of debris that, if you're a radar/RF, acts as what we call chaff, and it causes reflections back and makes it very difficult to see through that chaff to determine where the actual oncoming missiles are that haven't been intercepted yet.
Maggie 22:59
One more clarifying question on the world of the kill chain. Could you tell us a little bit more about the different kinds of sensors that we use to actually track these threats? Then how do we take the data from all these different sensors and actually make sense of it in the first place?
Pat 23:16
That's one of the greatest challenges of missile defense, and it's been focused on for decades: how to take not only different sensors, but each sensor has its own angle of looking at the threat target. Each sensor has a different spectrum it's usually looking at, even the way the data is transmitted — it has different formats. Most of these sensors were either strategic or they're airborne or they're on ships, and they were all designed for different missions originally. The C2BMC system, the battle management and control system for missile defense, has to take into account all of these inputs and also the reality of geometry. If you're close to a sensor that's not high resolution, but you happen to be in a location very close to the threat missile that's flying by, it may be your best sensor. Five seconds later, it may be a strategic sensor that's 1,000 miles away that is your best. So the system has to continually go through and calculate what is the best sensor at that moment to use in order to predict the track so that an interceptor can be fired to it. The last point you made was extremely good: the question on fusing. There's a lot of definition of fusing. Fusing a lot of times means make sure you pick the right sensor at the right time. But the real definition of fusing is that the accuracy of the combined data from all the sensors is better than any individual sensor. To achieve that is extremely difficult, and the promise of artificial intelligence and AI agents has made that more realistic, where we can come into these very precise calculations of where the missile will be in the future, given its trajectory and flight, just using sensors that have been used for years, and improving on the speed of those calculations and the actual fused accuracy of the resulting trajectory.
Maggie 25:44
And the way you're describing sensor fusion here, you know, if I have a sensor on some ship somewhere, and then a sensor in space, and then a sensor on land, and I want to be able to combine all the data from all of them to get an accurate picture, like, what is the communications technology needed to manage all that data and make those decisions in real time?
Pat 26:04
Well, the network is extremely important in this architecture. And also you may have not only the particular sensors during the flight of a threat, you may have your best sensor because of its location, but also you may have it because it has an unobstructed view. Long-range missiles, you know, you have to deal with the curvature of the earth, and so a space-based sensor may give its first warning, and the next best warning comes from a sensor that's at an allied location in another country. We had a recent example when we upgraded our sensors, originally back around 2000 or so. When we turned on some of these new high-fidelity sensors, we actually got some disturbing news when we were watching the space shuttle, where it appeared the space shuttle was cracking, was breaking up on us, and in reality the sensor was so accurate we were getting four or five returns off the space shuttle, whereas in the old ones, using the old algorithms, we'd get one return. So we've had a lot of exciting moments during that period of time. But the accuracy of these sensors is getting so good, and like you said, they need to communicate with each other. These networks are designed so that if only part of the network is working, it can still operate, and it'll take its best guess at where the flight trajectory is on a threat missile.
Matt 27:43
Yeah, so we've talked now about the sensor fusion piece, the communications between all the sensors. And you mentioned that AI and agentic systems might be able to better make sense of all those sensors in the future, but today, once you have all that sensing data in one place, once it's all been communicated with each other, how is the decision made about whether to engage a missile threat? Obviously, you don't want to engage a threat that's not actually a threat, like in the space shuttle incident you just mentioned. So how is that decision made, and the decision about which specific interceptor or countermeasure to use against the threat?
Pat 28:24
Well, first of all, there's pre-planning before a missile defense architecture is established, and the most important part is to determine what are you trying to protect. So you have locations on the ground that are marked off that are what we call the defended area. And if the threat missile is obviously not flying into the defended area, we do not engage. We just let it fly and hit a target on the ground or the ocean that is not seen as an asset that has to be protected. So that's the first thing. Second, you have to determine the type of missile — try to differentiate the different types of missiles that are out there, the threat missile, and figure out what it is carrying on board based on historical intelligence. And the third piece is to, as I said before, ensure that you have an interceptor that's capable of intercepting that missile, and when you are going to engage it in flight. So this is all pre-programmed into the missile defense architecture, hopefully before an engagement even occurs.
Maggie 29:46
So we've now talked about the threat. We've talked about the kill chain. So the third piece that we need to understand about missile defense is the doctrine.
Pat 29:54
It's the firing doctrine. And the first thing to look at in a firing doctrine is the phases of a threat missile. When a threat missile first takes off, it's in the boost phase. Obviously its boosters are energetic at that point and usually cause a big infrared signature. Normally a space-based satellite will pick up that thermal signature and indicate a missile has been launched after a few minutes. By observing the missile's trajectory, even in boost phase, you then determine whether or not it is going into an orbital trajectory, meaning it's probably a satellite, or if it's going into a ballistic trajectory, meaning that it's probably a threat missile. That occurs in boost phase. One of the most important phases is right after boost. Right after boost phase, the threat reentry vehicle usually separates at that point, and you go into post-boost phase that lasts a couple minutes. At that point it's the very beginning of its long coast towards its target, and that is a phase where you've had enough time to track the missile that it becomes predictable of where it's going to be for the next minute or so, and you actually have a chance, possibly, of hitting a missile during post-boost phase. It's also where it's so early in the flight that it's typically very difficult to deploy decoys or anything, so the missile is most vulnerable right after boost in that post-boost phase. Plus it's extremely hot because it just flew through the Earth's atmosphere, so it's a very bright signature at that point. After it cools down and continues to coast — and sometimes the coast could be for 10 to 20 minutes — it goes into the mid-course phase, and that's where it's flying above the atmosphere. An ICBM, like I said, can fly for 10 to 20 minutes even before it starts reentering the Earth's atmosphere. And when it reenters the Earth's atmosphere, that's the terminal phase, and that only lasts a few minutes, and it's moving at extremely high velocity. You have plasmas being formed around the reentry vehicle; you have all of the disruption. It's not a smooth flight — a lot of bumpy disruption occurs to those RVs as they're coming through the Earth's atmosphere, which makes it harder to hit at that point. So mid-course is a nice spot to hit it; it's a relatively stable target. Boost and terminal are challenging.
Matt 32:56
Maybe to start to match the systems you mentioned earlier with some of these phases, I assume that you wouldn't use the same interceptor at any phase of a ballistic missile's trajectory. So could you talk a bit about what kinds of interceptor options we have at each phase of a ballistic missile's trajectory?
Pat 33:20
Well, it often comes down a lot of times to geometry. If you happen to have an interceptor launcher that's near the missile that's being launched, you're able to launch it, and you have a good chance of hitting it during post-boost. But that means you have to have a launcher that's very close to where the threat missile is being launched from, and that is typically an Aegis ship with an SM-3 or an SM-2, or there's a longer, higher-velocity Standard Missile. That's what "SM" stands for; we have co-developed it with the Japanese, and that has the opportunity to hit missiles that are not strategic but in the intermediate range and speeds and velocities. So one way is to just be close to where the threat is. You can also do it with land-based systems, for example in the Middle East, where they locate them on the other end. You have what we call goaltending, and it's like hockey. You don't have to be at the goal, but it's best to be in between where the shooter is and where the puck is going to travel past. So another place to focus your missile defense is around the defended area, as I mentioned before, where you want to intercept just as a defender would on a hockey team — a forward hits the goal.
Matt 35:01
Got it. So the first examples you gave where you have your interceptors close to the point of launch was for boost or post-boost phase, and then?
Pat 35:12
Well, post-boost. Boost phase is extremely difficult because you're hitting something that is accelerating and usually out of reach. It's being launched from a location that is safe for the threat — your adversary — so it is very rare you're close enough to actually hit something in boost phase. Post-boost you've had enough time and it's no longer underpowered flight, where you probably have a better chance. The most mobile systems we have for land for that velocity would be THAAD, and for maritime it would be the Aegis system.
Matt 35:55
So the reason that it's more feasible to take out a missile in post-boost is because it's now closer to where the interceptor is, or just because we've had more time to respond? Or—yeah, don't totally understand why it's easier in post-boost than boost phase.
Pat 36:11
Because you've had time to respond. You know, the boost phase is usually only a couple minutes, and now the—if you're in the right location, the post-boost that's flying near you, and so if you're located correctly, depending on your intelligence ahead of time, you can be as close as possible. In the post-boost, you're no longer in powered flight, and it's fairly predictable where it's going to fly, and you've had enough time, and it's difficult to deploy decoys in the post-boost phase. You can, but they're going to eventually become evident that they're decoys in the terminal phase. Again, if it's a short—if you're worried about short-range threats, you can have the Patriot system there. The Navy has the Standard Missile 2 for that and for shorter range, and actually for air defense too, both of those systems. And then for mid-course, it's either the SM-3 missile with the Aegis system on maritime ships, or the THAAD system for a ground base. Again, these interceptors are being used that way because the characteristics of the interceptor—the seeker on board, its guidance system, its control surfaces—are all designed for operating in a certain part of the atmosphere, and that's why they're paired up with threats that fly in that part of the atmosphere.
Maggie 37:45
I know today there is a lot of discussion about what it would take if we wanted to try and hit a missile in the boost phase. Like, is it even possible to do in the first place if that were a goal of trying to take these missiles out before they're able to deploy multiple warheads or decoys or elsewhere?
Pat 38:04
So the challenge with boost phase is, again, first of all, you don't know when it's—once. You don't know when it's going to happen, and once it's launched, you have very little reaction time. So it's going to have to be an interceptor that can be fed information from a sensor that a launch has occurred and its path has been predicted, and it's in a location, typically in outer space, that can reach the target within a couple minutes. So that's extremely fast, which means you have to have a very high proliferation of these boost-phase interceptors on orbit so that they can actually, literally, reach their target within a very short period of flight time. If the threat missiles within that air basket and the interceptor is flying to that air basket, when it gets close to the air basket, the sensors turn on on the interceptor itself—the kill vehicle—and the kill vehicle guides itself into the path of the oncoming missile.
Maggie 39:24
Pat, what is the state of our adversaries' current missile capabilities? Have there been any major changes over the last couple decades? And, you know, what do we need to be prepared to defend against?
Pat 39:37
Well, the growth—the proliferation of ICBMs, in fact missiles of all classes—is very unnerving. Over the past 20 years, it's been exponential growth, not just exponential growth on the black market and in indigenously developed missiles themselves, but also their ability to be launched off of mobile launchers. In the old days, very old days, when long-range missiles were launched off of launch pads, you knew where the launch pads were, you knew where to watch, and you could counter those launch pads if you had to. Today, many of the—even ICBMs—are on mobile launchers that can be hidden. They can be moved. They can be camouflaged. It's very, very difficult to track where they are and know where they are ahead of time. So the system has to be basically able to react to them after they've been launched, because it is so difficult to find the literally thousands of long-range missiles that have now proliferated. It's very well known that Iran has developed missiles, and years ago they tested many tens of missiles being launched simultaneously, so they have that capability. It's well known. North Korea is continually testing their long-range missiles, although the testing for ICBMs is not that impressive yet, because it basically goes straight up and then comes straight down, which is reminiscent of our early missile tests in the 1950s, but they are making progress. And then Russia is using the historic Soviet missile arsenal that's been developed. And finally, China has had a very large proliferation of long-range missiles on mobile launchers.
Matt 41:51
You earlier mentioned the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, which was, you know, the primary system used to take out some of these very long-range ICBM-type missiles. I guess the question is: is that system—which you mentioned we have some in Alaska and some in California—meant to stop an all-out, high-volume attack from a near-peer adversary like China or Russia? Or, you also mentioned some of the tests from Iran and North Korea, which presumably have significantly less developed ballistic missile capabilities. What kinds of threats are they able to take out in that regard versus not able to defend against?
Pat 42:45
In the case of strategic missiles, the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system was set up by law—the 1999 Missile Defense Act stipulated it was designed to counter threats from Iran or North Korea or an accidental launch from Russia or China. The location of the interceptors themselves, especially in Alaska, which has 40 interceptors up there in the open press, and Vandenberg has four more, those are optimized for flights from Iran or North Korea towards the United States. Those locations are not optimized for a launch, obviously—just geometry—from northern directions toward the United States. So there is a limit to how far a missile can go and how fast the missile can go. That's just basic physics and geometry that does limit the capability of those systems. I would also say that when you look at a missile to defend a city, that missile has to be extremely high—have extremely high reliability—and that is very difficult to achieve in a system that's made up of over a thousand parts, which they are. All those components have to work perfectly. So statistically, you're not going to achieve or can count on a 100% reliable missile. What that means statistically is, if you want to achieve 100% reliability, or close to it, you need to fire more than one interceptor at each incoming target. So that's another consideration they have to have, which is part of the firing doctrine.
Matt 44:44
So, for example, if North Korea could launch 10 ICBMs and there are 40 interceptors in Alaska, that’s something like a four-to-one ratio of interceptors to missiles. But how much does the number of missiles launched matter relative to, say, the types of countermeasures that those missiles have, in terms of the reliability of the interceptors for actually countering that threat?
Pat 45:11
Well, the countermeasures are often described as balloons and other things, but in reality, actually using them is much more difficult. It’s hard to make them appear like an RV over a long period of time. You can fool them for a short period, but over a long, 15-minute flight, it becomes extremely difficult. And so our systems are developed in order to differentiate between the different types of objects that are up there.
That’s one thing. The other is, again, the reliability of these interceptors is taken into account to determine how many interceptors are fired. Part of the firing doctrine can be, if you have enough time, what we call “shoot-look-shoot.” You shoot at the missile and then determine the kill assessment — did you hit it? And if you didn’t, or it wasn’t successful, you have an opportunity to shoot again, the second shot.
Depending on the time of flight, the command and control system very quickly calculates the optimum firing solution, and you try to fire as few interceptors as you need to in order to destroy a missile.
Maggie 46:34
So, Pat, I want to shift the conversation a little bit to the hot topic of missile defense today, which is Golden Dome — or, I guess, the executive order is called Iron Dome for America. In reading this executive order, and I know it’s still kind of a new concept that has not been fully fleshed out yet, from your perspective, what is really the new idea here for this next generation of missile defense that we don’t have in our current missile defense system?
Pat 47:05
I think there have been some technological advances over the past few years with our sensor resolution, and the proliferation of commercial space is making affordable sensors flying at low Earth orbit, called LEO. Many of those satellites can now be put into space at an affordable cost because of the commercial reduction of launch costs. It used to be $20,000 to $30,000 a pound in the 1970s; today, it’s about $1,500 a pound on a Falcon 9, for example.
That’s a tremendous reduction in cost, allowing us to put a great number of sensors up there at low Earth orbit because they’re affordable. They can also be built so they don’t have to last 10 or 20 years — they can have a shorter life, return to Earth, burn up, and be replenished. That gives us a significantly greater amount of sensor capability to monitor the threat.
As we referred to before, the command and control system involves literally tens of thousands of calculations going on simultaneously in any large-scale attack. Using artificial intelligence, neural networks, and agentic systems, it’s greatly simplified the software architecture required and allows the command and control system to take in a much greater amount of input data to calculate.
In terms of the weapons themselves, the propulsion systems and so forth are pretty much standard — they’ve been developed over the years, particularly the kinetic interceptors. The one area I think could be different would be launching the interceptors from space — SBI again. That architecture would depend on what the threat is that it’s trying to counter and how many interceptors you need.
If you’re just trying to conduct a mid-course intercept from space, you don’t need as many space-based interceptors. If you’re trying to hit in post-boost or boost phase, you would need a tremendous amount of space-based interceptors so they’re close enough to the launch.
Those are some of the significant technical advances that have occurred. From the point of Iron Dome — as you referred to — I was involved in that development for many years in Israel. That’s a much smaller piece of ground you’re trying to protect versus, obviously, the geographic area of the United States. You’re fairly certain of where the threat trajectories will come from, so you can do goal-tending and other things.
As I said, to protect the United States, you have to be concerned about threats that could come from almost any direction. And again, if there are short-range threats being launched off, let’s say, barges or submarines or nefarious vehicles, you’re going to need an awful lot of short-range missile defense systems. Just by counting up the number you would need for Patriot, it would be a tremendous number of Patriot systems.
For strategic interceptors, you’d need a much larger number and they’d need to be located in places other than Alaska or Vandenberg. So, it’s a much greater undertaking.
Maggie 51:24
When officials go about designing a new missile architecture, what are some of the trade-offs that need to be made?
Pat 51:32
Well, first of all, it’s driven primarily by the threat — where they think the threat is. Second, it’s driven by what you’re trying to protect. High-value targets — typically military bases or assets that give us the capability to respond and deter a threat — are usually considered high-value targets, as are seats of government and population centers.
All that has to be taken into account to design the goal-tending between where the threat is launched from (or estimated to be launched from) and what you’re trying to protect on the ground. Then you decide where in that trajectory to place your interceptors, sensors, and so forth.
I will say, it’s hard to comment on Golden Dome at this time because the architecture has not been publicly released, so it’s very difficult to determine what factors were traded into that architectural design.
Maggie 52:52
So, as we look toward some of these future missile defense plans, as venture capitalists, of course, we have to ask the question — what role do you see for startups in missile defense?
Pat 53:06
I see several. First of all, we've talked a lot about calculations and computations that must go on in real time so that kill chain I described. If there are technologies or algorithms or software modules, genetic agents, things that are set up that can calculate faster and get to a good enough answer—every millisecond matters. That is one area where there could be a significant improvement in the firing doctrine, even using today's interceptors, due to the speed that the kill chain can operate at.
The second one I would think is associated with that would be the different types of technologies associated with object identification and resolution of existing sensors today. Again, it's driven by calculations, and so those are the principal ones. Propulsion systems are very capital-intensive, and they tend not to lend themselves to that. You can do it, but it takes—the safety factors are significant—that you have to take into account, and that drives the cost, and that drives the time that it takes to develop. Those are normally done by larger corporations.
Matt 54:51
Whether it's startups or existing contractors, where do you see the biggest need for investment to improve missile defense technology—to have more reliable systems, systems that can counter a wider range of threats? You've mentioned many today that have room for improvement.
Pat 55:12
So, craftsmanship and quality control systems that are in a lot of the factories building the thousands of components that go into interceptors and the different parts of the missile defense system are key. That's an area that—if you're building, you know, a car in Detroit off an assembly line—the precision, the requirements for that quality control are tremendously less than trying to build what we would call a space-based or space-qualified component.
Technologies that can improve quality control, for example, may not sound like a flashy technology, but it is critical. The higher the reliability, the fewer interceptors you have to fire, and the greater the probability of defeating a threat launch. So that's one example right there.
Matt 56:18
We talked a bit earlier about Israel's Iron Dome, and obviously the executive order for Golden Dome is inspired directly by Israel's Iron Dome. What are the major differences between the interceptors needed for Israel's Iron Dome and the U.S.'s Golden Dome?
Pat 56:39
Because of the size of Israel, most of the interceptors used in Iron Dome are short-range interceptors, so they're lower in cost. You can proliferate the number of them, and the sensors are within line of sight of the threat missiles, typically, so you don't need a long-range communication chain.
In the United States, it's obviously many, many times larger geographically, and the threats could come from a far greater number of trajectories. The ranges can vary greatly, and the amount of time you have to respond can be much less. It also requires a mix of interceptor types. The short-range around the coastline—you'd have Patriot or SM-2. Large cities would require THAAD or SM-3 if near a coastline. And ICBMs obviously are the only things that can counter those types of threats.
Maggie 57:58
Going back to looking at the international stage, we've talked a little bit about Israel's current missile defense capabilities, but what do our adversaries' missile defense capabilities look like? And are there lessons that the United States should be learning from how others have designed their own systems?
Pat 58:20
Well, there are a lot of similarities with some of these systems to ours, which is quite interesting. I have literally shown Russians, many years ago, an intercept that they thought was done by the THAAD system, and it turned out it was a Chinese system. They were surprised by the advancement that the Chinese had.
The basic technologies of command and control and sensors and propulsion systems have reached the point where kinetic interceptor missile defense systems are proliferated, but primarily with only our larger, near-peer potential adversaries. They're less seen in smaller countries.
The real concern is non-nation-state threat actors such as cartels and others, because of the proliferation of threat missiles being sold on the black market. Associated with that is the use of software and modules—and maybe AI, I'm not sure at that level—but it greatly simplifies the training required to launch a missile. You can be a fairly untrained person and successfully erect and launch a missile bought on the black market. That is a tremendous concern, because now you're not dealing with a nation; you're dealing with all of these other, as I said, non-nation-state threats.
Matt 1:00:16
Anytime we think about a new missile defense architecture, or making a change to it—thinking back to the ABM Treaty and limits to the amount of defenses that the U.S. and the Soviet Union would build to maintain deterrence with each other—how should we think about the ways our adversaries might respond to any changes to our missile defense architecture?
Pat 1:00:41
First of all, what I just mentioned is the greatest threat, because it's really hard to deter a non-nation-state actor—some criminal group or so forth—that may want to hold a region hostage. We recently saw the Houthis, for example, threatening international shipping off Yemen for the last couple of years and the impact that has had. So the architectures now have to be extremely agile and flexible, to adjust to not only defeating missiles coming from a certain region but also focusing on the defended assets, no matter what direction they come from, which is a much greater challenge.
Matt 1:01:33
Great. Well, Pat, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.
Pat 1:01:38
My pleasure. Thanks so much.