For homeland missile defense, think Golden Zones, not a Golden Dome 

As the United States embarks on answering the challenges of a more dangerous and complex nuclear era—what some have dubbed a third nuclear age—what should be the goals of its homeland missile defense policy? How should the United States consequently seek to design, build, and sustain an appropriate homeland missile defense architecture? The second Trump administration has sought to answer these questions by embarking on the most capacious and technologically ambitious expansion of US homeland missile defense capabilities since the 1980s. The Golden Dome initiative seeks to defend the homeland against all classes of aerospace threats—including nuclear-armed delivery systems—from all US adversaries. In doing so, it reverses the broad-stroke policy pursued since the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, which sought a limited defense against ballistic missile attacks from smaller states, such as North Korea and Iran, while relying on nuclear deterrence to defend against the larger, more sophisticated Russian and Chinese arsenals.¹Congress.gov. “H.R.4 – 106th Congress (1999-2000): National Missile Defense Act of 1999.” July 22, 1999. https://www.congress.gov/bill/106th-congress/house-bill/4.

While the second Trump administration’s instincts on Golden Dome correctly diagnose a more dangerous nuclear environment facing the country, a sized-up, almost-exquisite comprehensive defensive system is the wrong prescription. Though the precise architectures that will make up the system of systems that will one day represent Golden Dome remain indeterminate, the scope of the endeavor is likely to undermine strategic stability and increase the risks and consequences of nuclear war. In seeking comprehensive missile defense, the United States is further bound to drive adversaries to invest in their nuclear forces and countermeasures. In addition, this approach raises technological feasibility and resourcing questions for the United States at a moment when demands on US nuclear forces and conventional forces are already growing.

A better approach for the United States would be to ask whether its homeland missile defenses can better serve its central nuclear deterrence objectives while improving the odds that the country could prevail in a conventional or, if necessary, limited nuclear conflict. To achieve these dual goals, the United States should pare back Golden Dome and adapt the endeavor to prioritize national-scale preferential point defense (PPD), prioritizing a narrow set of military, critical infrastructure, and nuclear command, control, and communication targets. In essence, instead of a thick, area defense like a Golden Dome, the country would be better served by a range of Golden Zones. These zones would be rendered more survivable through active defenses, conferring a series of advantages that the status quo approach is unlikely to yield. These benefits include serving US nuclear deterrence objectives, increasing the president’s decision space in a nuclear crisis, augmenting strategic stability by improving the survivability of nuclear command and control and communication, and reassuring allies—all for significantly less than the initially proposed Golden Dome approach.

Identifying the critical zones

The proposed PPD approach has the advantage of clear scoping. A preferential approach, by definition, suggests that certain classes of US targets would be valued for defense more than others. Instinctively, US nuclear strategists and war planners understand that there are a range of targets that, if hit by an adversary with either conventional or nuclear weapons in a conflict, would be exceptionally escalatory. A non-exhaustive list of such targets might include:

• facilities supporting early warning  
• national leadership  
• continuity-of-government targets  
• ballistic missile submarine ports 
• certain civilian economic targets, such as oil refineries, dams, and power substations.  

A point defense approach, meanwhile, would emphasize the defense of geographically contained nodes—i.e., the targets listed above. While such a system could co-exist with the limited area defense systems deployed by the United States pre-Golden Dome—including the exoatmospheric Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) and ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense systems—US declaratory policy on missile defense should emphasize that the core purpose of missile defenses is to augment the survivability of facilities key to US nuclear and conventional military operations and thus raise the threshold for nuclear conflict. It should further emphasize that the United States relies on strategic deterrence to address sophisticated, large-scale attacks on the US homeland. The proposed PPD approach here emphatically precludes the deployment of any space-based interceptors, as they are inherently a non-preferential, large-area defense system. 

A key benefit of this proposed approach is resource efficiency. The interceptor magazine depth required for the terrestrial components of a capacious Golden Dome-style area defense will likely be far greater than that demanded by a PPD approach. The US should further cancel its plans to field a costly next-generation interceptor for the GMD system on the basis of this strategic rethink, while prioritizing the development and modernization of missile defense system architectures to support missile tracking, warning, battle management, and research and development (R&D). As a PPD approach would seek to defend the homeland against hypersonic glide vehicles  and cruise missiles—both nuclear and non-nuclear—R&D on glide-phase intercept systems and cruise missile defense should remain a priority.²Low-flying cruise missiles are a prominent concern in US missile defense debates today. They are inherently better suited for engagement by point defense systems than area defenses. Admittedly, an important component of resource efficiency will be for the United States to adopt a truly preferential approach, which will necessitate exceptional selectivity in the set of targets to defend. Certain targets, such as ground-based radars supporting early warning dual phenomenology, might be uncontroversial, while others—particularly civilian economic targets—will be politically fraught.³Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, “Chapter 2: Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy, Planning and NC3,” in 2020 Nuclear Matters Handbook, https://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB2020rev/chapters/chapter2.html. Congress can play an important role in this regard by requiring the US secretary of defense to commission classified and unclassified studies to support selection criteria. Notably, the proposed PPD approach excludes the US land-based nuclear deterrent as a set of targets for coverage. Unlike during the 1960s, when the United States sought to defend its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with nuclear-tipped point defense interceptors, the robustness of the US launch-under-attack option today precludes a requirement for such a capability that would otherwise create an unreasonable requirement against the 450 silos that exist today. Notably, the facilities that support a launch-under-attack option—such as radars—would be covered under the proposed PPD approach.

Augmenting strategic stability

A second benefit of the proposed approach is its implications for strategic stability with adversaries would be relatively better than those of a Golden Dome. While Russia, China, and North Korea will critique this approach as detrimental to strategic stability—as they would any US homeland missile defense system—it will still likely be preferable for aggregate stability compared to Golden Dome. This is primarily because the proposed approach largely renders missile defense systems deployed on the homeland compatible with a survivability-seeking approach for US nuclear operations. As such, the core purpose of US missile defense is to augment US survivability, not to threaten the survivability of adversary nuclear forces right of launch. There is a Cold War precedent for such a preferential approach to homeland missile defense being compatible with arms control agreements with Russia (such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) agreement and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty).  Russia also currently fields a preferential missile defense system for Moscow.⁴As stated above, a key difference with the Cold War ABM-era approach is that this proposal does not fixate on the defense of land-based nuclear forces. The ABM Treaty allowed for limited preferential deployments to support the survivability of nuclear forces. Moreover, by explicitly excluding space-based interceptors, the proposed approach deprives adversaries of incentives for investing heavily in new counterspace capabilities, nuclear weapons in space, or other undesirable countermeasures.⁵The Russian space-based nuclear weapon system allegedly under development might still be seen as valuable for its benefits in interfering with support systems and sensors to queue the proposed missile defense system. Importantly, nothing about the proposed approach should be taken as advocating against deploying proliferated space-based constellations supporting missile tracking and early warning functions. These would serve the dual purpose of strategic situational awareness in a crisis and assist in cuing interceptors; they would further improve the survivability of key functions supporting US conventional and nuclear operations. Finally, like the pre-Golden Dome status quo, the proposed approach would augment defense and hedging against notional rogue or accidental launches; the sustainment of a limited exoatmospheric capability can further support this objective against ICBM-class threats.

While a full technical appraisal of the benefits of the proposed approach is out of scope for this analysis, policymakers and military planners should consider that US adversaries have increasingly turned toward a variety of missile defense countermeasures focused primarily on overcoming exoatmospheric orbital and co-orbital missile defense systems. This is especially true of their nuclear delivery systems, as Russia’s Avangard, Poseidon, and Burevestnik systems attest, and the US Department of Defense has observed for more than a decade that “China is working on a range of technologies to attempt to counter US and other countries’ ballistic missile defense systems, including [multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles], decoys, chaff, jamming, and thermal shielding.”⁶Vikram, Akshai, “Russia’s New Nuclear Weapons: Understanding Avangard Kinzhal, and Tsirkon,” Nuclear Network, Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 2, 2021, last modified October 28, 2021, https://nuclearnetwork.csis.org/russias-new-nuclear-weapons-understanding-avangard-kinzhal-and-tsirkon/; U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2014, July 21, 2015, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2014/2014-prc-military-security.pdf Should the United States proceed to augment existing defenses and adopt a thick, area defense approach through a Golden Dome, these efforts will continue. A PPD system, while disadvantaged against ICBMs that are most desirable to engage in their boost or midcourse phases, would have particular advantages against hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles. Hypersonic glide vehicles, while invulnerable to exoatmospheric defenses, slowly lose speed as a result of drag forces in flight, arriving on target at a considerably lower speed than ICBM reentry vehicles.⁷Cameron L. Tracy and David Wright, “Modelling the Performance of Hypersonic Boost-Glide Missiles,” Science & Global Security, vol. 28, no. 3 (2020): 135-170 https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/2020/12/modelling_the_performance.html. As a result, glide-phase point defenses should remain more feasible than counter-ICBM point defenses. Subsonic and supersonic cruise missiles would be similarly vulnerable to interception; the more urgent challenge remains detection and tracking. Sensor requirements for cruise missile defense inherently make area defense approaches infeasible. A good PPD system is not only more feasible than an area defense approach; it is more credible as a result. It contributes to deterrence by denial and complicates adversary military planning, while minimizing negative strategic stability consequences.

Reassuring US allies

A final set of advantages concerns US allies, who value homeland defense programs in the United States for their role in the country’s willingness to accept risks on their behalf. Nothing about the proposed approach should preclude missile defense from continuing to play such a role in actual allied assurance and in assurance-related diplomacy with allies. Notably, PPD would present a number of opportunities for the continuation, deepening, and establishment of new cooperative missile defense development programs with allies in Europe and Asia alike. The consequences of further US R&D and defense industrial capacity building to support the build-out of a PPD plan could also support deployments to allied soil, improving the survivability of facilities critical for joint and allied conventional military operations. Within NATO, point defenses could improve the survivability of airbases designed to host dual-capable aircraft, which are currently perceived as largely vulnerable to Russian missile attacks of various classes.⁸Alberque, William and Kacprzyk, Artur, “More Pillars Needed: Ten Options for Europe to Improve NATO’s Nuclear Deterrence,” Stimson Center, October 2, 2024, https://www.stimson.org/2024/more-pillars-needed-nato-nuclear-deterrence/. On the Korean Peninsula, such an approach could also augment deterrence by denial of North Korean tactical nuclear attacks.  

As with any policy choice on homeland missile defense, the proposal here is not without its drawbacks and complications. One matter deserves particular consideration in this regard: the problem of ICBM-class conventional missiles. These leave open the risk of attacks on the homeland that might fail to transgress the threshold for a non-nuclear strategic attack that could credibly be met with a US nuclear response. For example, Chinese military writings, including the leaked 2004 edition of the Science of Second Artillery Campaigns textbook, allude to the coercive value of such strikes.⁹PLA Second Artillery Corps, The Science of Second Artillery Campaigns (Beijing: PLA Press, 2004). Point defense systems are inherently limited in their ability to kinematically engage ICBM reentry vehicles in their terminal phase, where endoatmospheric speeds exceed Mach 22. Fortunately, there are at least four possible pathways to seek solutions. First, the United States could rely on a sustained, limited exoatmospheric interceptor magazine (primarily Ground-Based Interceptors and Standard Missile Block-IIAs) to deter such attacks. This would present declaratory policy challenges, as adversaries would be primed to view any available missile defense system to contribute to homeland defense against nuclear and conventional attacks. Second, should political circumstances with adversaries improve, the United States could prioritize a ban on conventional ICBMs in arms control negotiations, seeking to preserve all systems above a given range threshold as exclusively nuclear capable. Third, the United States could prioritize frontier R&D efforts on kinematic improvements in point defense systems such that ICBM reentry vehicles might reasonably be engaged; a feasibility study assessing the wisdom of such an endeavor could be conducted by the JASON advisory group or another independent commission of experts. Finally, the United States could dissuade conventional ICBM attacks against valuable targets by investing in passive defenses, such as camouflage, concealment, deception, hardening, stealth, and mobility.

As the second Trump administration seeks to rush forward with the development and deployment of a Golden Dome, it should consider that an alternative pathway on homeland missile defense could better suit US national defense needs while augmenting deterrence. The proposed approach here—call it Golden Zones—is more cost-effective, feasible, and credible than a capacious Golden Dome, while leaving sufficient space for arms control given its limited implications for strategic stability. It is not too late for the administration to shift course as it seeks to answer the tough questions facing US missile defense policy planning in this more dangerous third nuclear era. The administration should act now to correct course.

This issue brief is part of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Great nuclear debate series, a curated anthology of perspectives on arms control, force sizing, and missile defense from leading experts.

Ankit Panda is the Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon (Polity, 2025). 

Forward Defense leads the Atlantic Council’s US and global defense programming, developing actionable recommendations for the United States and its allies and partners to compete, innovate, and navigate the rapidly evolving character of warfare. Through its work on US defense policy and force design, the military applications of advanced technology, space security, strategic deterrence, and defense industrial revitalization, it informs the strategies, policies, and capabilities that the United States will need to deter, and, if necessary, prevail in major-power conflict.

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