Air Force envisions air-to-air combat role in Golden Dome missile defense
The Air Force’s role in President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense architecture could be to shoot down enemy bombers before they can fire their missiles at the United States, according to a senior officer.
The Golden Dome for America initiative — previously referred to by Trump as the Iron Dome for America — calls for a multi-layered shield for the U.S. homeland. The Space Force is expected to play a central role in setting up the architecture — which emphasizes the need for space-based sensors and interceptors — and the service has already established a cross-functional “technical integrated planning team” and is reaching out to industry.
However, while Golden Dome is expected to include next-generation technologies, there could also be a role for some of the Air Force’s “traditional” capabilities such as fighter jets, suggested Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, the service’s director for force design, integration and wargaming.
Homeland defense is already a key element of the service’s force design vision, he noted during a Hudson Institute event Wednesday.
“This thought of a Golden Dome that protects the homeland, that is completely in line with the force design, and how we do that is completely in line. But I would suggest that the threat and the number of threats and how the threats are being presented, presents new challenges, but it also offers opportunities for … some of the capabilities, the traditional capabilities that we would call mission area three,” Kunkel said.
“When you think about how the Air Force and … the nation has defended itself, we defend ourselves as far away from our borders as possible. And when we build this Golden Dome, we can’t think of this Golden Dome as this thing that stops at the borders. And where we’ll use this air layer is in the countering of, you know, adversary bombers that are approaching our borders and shooting missiles from those borders. So you know that combined arms approach that we took in our force design, it’s equally applicable to this Golden Dome concept where there’s going to be a combined arms requirement for that to counter the different threats that we’re going to see,” he added.
Trump’s executive order directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to develop a plan to field additional missile defense tools noted that it must address the development and deployment of capabilities to defeat missile attacks before launch.
While sensors and weapons will play important roles in the multilayered missile defense architecture, battle management will also be key, Kunkel noted.
“The sense is a big part of it. The effectors are … a big part of it. But this battle management of the whole thing is also a big part of it. I know that Air Force is right in the middle of that with DAF Battle Network,” he said.
The DAF Battle Network fits in with the Pentagon’s next-generation warfighting concept dubbed Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2, which aims to better integrate the sensors, shooters and data streams of the U.S. military services and key allies and partners into a more unified network.
Kunkel sees AI as an enabler of these types of concepts.
“One of the major areas where I think artificial intelligence will help us is in decision-making, you know, that’s in battle management and those types of things, and understanding risk calculus and that. I think it’ll help us in autonomy,” he said. “There are opportunities there where AI can be introduced in some capabilities to achieve even longer endurance, you know, flights or longer-range weapons. And those are some of the areas we’re looking at. But I do think the area that is like ripe for exploitation for artificial intelligence is decision-making and how we do battle management.”
