Defending the Homeland: Making Golden Dome a Reality
September 14, 2026
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Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Kevin Chilton, and I’m with you here from the Mitchell Institute, and welcome to our panel discussion where we’ll be talking about defending the homeland and making Golden Dome a reality. The urgency behind Golden Dome is straightforward. The homeland is no longer insulated from attack. Ballistic missiles, obviously, hypersonic weapons new, cruise missiles new, one way attack drones and other next generation aerial threats are all growing more capable, more numerous, and more difficult to defeat. Making Golden Dome an operational reality is therefore not just a technology challenge. It is a strategic imperative that will increase deterrence and assurance for our allies by delivering enhanced protection to our citizens, critical infrastructure, and our military forces.
Here to speak with us today on this topic, I’m proud to be joined on stage by Senator Deb Fischer, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, General Mike Guetlein, Director of Golden Dome, and General Greg Guillot, commander of USNORTHCOM. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for being here with us this morning, and let’s just jump into some questions here and get the discussion going. And Senator Fischer, I’d like to begin with you. Can you give us a feel for the levels of support you’re seeing on Capitol Hill for Golden Dome? Because Golden Dome can be a PowerPoint chart or it can be a reality depending on funding.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
Well, thank you very much, and it’s great to be here with you today and with two gentlemen who I have so much regard for, and I’m very, very happy that they’ve taken me under their wing and try to impart some knowledge to me as we move forward in the important work that we have to do for this country. When I look at Golden Dome and the support we have, I would say that there still is a lot of work that has to be done. We’ve always had, I think, a really strong bipartisan support in Armed Services Committee when it comes to working together to be able to identify threats, to be able to work together and meet the needs that the department and the military present to us. But the main object is to be able to recognize the threats.
We’ve seen that change, and especially with the issues that I have oversight with on my committee when it comes to our nuclear arsenal, with modernization of platforms and with the weapons themselves, with space as a war fighting domain, and with missile defense. And missile defense now is Golden Dome. And to be able to, I think, first of all, get the information that we need is extremely important, but also to have a better understanding of just what Golden Dome involves. I think a lot of times people forget that it was in our 2024 NDAA that came out of the Senate Armed Services Committee. We had a provision in there to do a study on a layered defense system, the missile defense system.
And when President Trump came into the White House, he named it Golden Dome, but it started within Congress and that I think it’s important to remember it because it shows you the level of commitment that’s there. As we do move forward, we’re going to have to be able to have, again, better information. We were talking backstage a little bit about CBO scores and how really unrealistic some of those can be sometimes. And I think it’s due to the fact that there’s not a clear understanding of this layered defense that we’re looking at when it comes to defending our homeland.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Very good. That’s great. Well, General Guetlein, welcome. It’s been a little over a year since you had the rose pinned on you, I think, and this great venture. Since then, that effort I think has moved beyond concept to some levels of execution or actually acquisition. Could you give the audience a brief update on where Golden Dome stands today, what progress has been made, and maybe peek under the tenet what milestones we can be anticipating being accomplished in the near term?
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
So let me start at the end and come forward. So what milestones are we going to see? What we promised the nation was that we would deliver an operational capability by the summer of 2028, and we are on path to do that. As far as what have we accomplished that says, “Hey, what evidence do you have that you’re actually on path?” Quite a bit of evidence, actually. The first thing we did right out of the gate was put industry consortium on contract to get after command and control, because that really is the secret sauce of any kind of national missile defense capability you want to put out there. That has been on contract.
We have already tested it twice. It was effective on both sets of tests, once last December and then once this past summer. So we know based on those tests that we are on the right path with command and control. We know based on those tests that the munitions that we are planning to bring to the fight, the sensors we’re planning to bring the fight are going to be effective against the threats that we have defined within our threat set as the president identified in the executive order. So then we step back and look a little bit further under the hood and Congress last year gave us 22 and a half billion dollars to get this thing started. We are currently sitting at about 95% obligated, so we have gotten all of that money on contract.
We have space-based interceptors on contract. We have command and control on contract. We have radars on contract. We have some munitions on contract. We’re already digging dirt. We stood up our first operational site already and have been digging dirt across the homeland, building the construction of our sites. So we have the evidence that says we’re making the progress that we told Congress and told the president that we would make, and we have the testing evidence that says we’re on the right path. I firmly believe that we will deliver an operational capability in the summer of ’28.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
’28. Very good. Thank you. General Guillot, welcome. I guess you’re kind of at the center of the storm here. You will be ultimately the supported combatant commander when it comes to defending the homeland. And in that regard, I suspect you have a heavy hand in writing requirements for Golden Dome and how that will all come together. Occurs to me, we just celebrated 25th anniversary remembrance is a better thing I would say of the attacks on 9/11. That changed the way we did air defense of the continental United States, stood up your command in fact. So it was dramatic change. What’s going to be different in your mind about going forward as we expand the defense of the United States against these other future threats, current and future threats?
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Well, thanks General Chilton, and it’s great to be here with Senator Fischer and General Guetlein, great teammates in this endeavor. You’re right, we’re kind of the center of the storm, but we actually have the easy job at NORTHCOM, which is to say this is what we need. And then Mike and his team actually have the tougher job of building that architecture. Let me just say upfront that they’ve done a fantastic job of that. What has changed is not only the number of threats, but the complexity of those threats over the last 25 years with ICBMs going from rogue nations having ICBMs, IRBMs, hypersonics, cruise missiles, things that you mentioned in your opening comments, UAS systems, of course, and then to the homeland, narco-terrorism threat.
So it’s not just a number of threats, but it’s the complexity of those. And all of those threats we can address with independent systems today, I’m very comfortable with that, but to keep pace with an adversary that’s growing very fast and then a number of areas that are growing very fast, we need a comprehensive system and that’s what Golden Dome is going to do. It’s going to tie capabilities that we have now together under an integrated and hopefully easier to use C2 system so our operators can get to all threats from seabed up to space very quickly and very effectively.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
So there’ll be an integration of new systems and current defensive systems that we’ve already fielded. Do you anticipate that to be the case? I guess that’s for you, General Guetlein, but also for you.
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Yes, from our perspective, Mike will tell you how we can do that, but from the very beginning we said the systems that we have work really well against the number of threats, systems that are under development, we need to continue. And then there’s some future capabilities that we need. And then Mike can tell you how they’re doing that, but I think they’re doing a fantastic job of blending them to make sure we have capability today that expands into the future to match an increasing threat.
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
Yeah. Chili, I want to hit on what Chairman Guillot is talking about here. He’s talking about the threat and I often get asked as, “Hey, why do we need Golden Dome? Why are we spending so much national treasure to build this thing called Golden Dome? Where’d those requirements come, et cetera?” And it is clear, all you got to do is watch the TV. You see the threats every single day unfolding on our own televisions. Those threats are now capable of holding the homeland at risk. So we’ve got to figure out how to get after those threats. What we also see on television is that the kit that we’ve already delivered as a nation is going to be effective against the threat.
We just have got to figure out how to bring it home and integrate it, network it in a new and innovative way to make sure we can defend the entire homeland. That’s really the challenge in front of us. So when we got asked to do Golden Dome last spring, the first thing I said is, “Hey, this is not a technology challenge. This is organizational behavior and social engineering challenge. How do I get all this kit that was built for a different fight, a different customer, and never meant to be integrated network together to get after this set of threats?”
That’s a social engineering organizational behavior challenge, which is why the deputy secretary stood up this direct report program manager concept is so that I can integrate horizontally across the department and across the agencies to bring to bear the capabilities that General Guillot just said he needs. And the real crux of all that becomes the command and control back to where we started this conversation.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. If I can go back to one of the newer threats that probably came up since you all took your positions, and that’s what we saw Ukraine do within the borders of Russia against their strategic bomber force. That’s something I don’t think any of us had thought a lot about until that happened. That’s part of the plan as well is to increase defenses of our air bases, our forts, our naval facilities, whatever.
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Yes, absolutely. The first day after General Guetlein was confirmed, he flew out to Colorado Springs and he met with myself and with General Stephen Whiting, and we just talked in the office and said, “This is what we think we need.” And at the end, Mike said, “I can build that.” And what we needed was from seabed to space to include UAS and air threats, cruise missile threats, hypersonics, all the way up to the ICBM threats. So absolutely that is part of what we need and that’s what makes the C2 system so important. Instead of having 13 or 14 independent C2 systems for different parts of this layered approach, it has to be integrated into one C2 system where our operators can look at a cruise missile threat, a UAS threat, all the way up to an ICBM threat on the same system with an integrated approach.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. Thank you. General Guetlein, next question is for you. Golden Dome raises hard questions about cost, capacity, capability. How are you balancing a hundred percent solution with the need to field an affordable and “good enough” architecture to meet the goals of one deterring attack, assuring our allies, and then of course executing if necessary?
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
Yeah. When we stood up, the first thing we did was make affordability and scalability the number one objective for what we’re trying to build. We could quickly, easily set a number of requirements on a table and bankrupt a nation. When we’ve become very good at building the most exquisite platforms that during times of crisis or conflict do not fail. But when you build a system like that, it’s very expensive and you have very few of them. That’s not what I need for the homeland. I need something that’s affordable and scalable. So we set that initially right out of the gate as our objective.
Then we sat down and decided based on these threats, how are these threats going to manifest themselves? How can I best protect and defend what we think those threats are going to go after? And then how do I build that kit at the most economical, affordable, and scalable manner as possible? Then we stood back and partnered with industry. I have personally met with well over 500 companies one-on-one, not in a group setting like this, one-on-one where I pitched to industry, “Here’s my challenges, here’s my problems, what can you do to help us solve it?” The innovation coming out of industry has been miraculous. They’ve got some great ideas on how to do this scalable and affordable, and those are the paths that we’re pursuing.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks. Senator Fischer, on the good enough issue, can you give us a perspective of what the tone is in the halls of Congress and in your committee particularly that you oversee the strategic subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, when they hear good enough, what is the Congress thinking?
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
Well, right now we aren’t defended, so that’s not good enough. Sure, we can defend against a massive strategic attack in this country. We can deter it. That’s our defense. We can deter it, and that’s through mutually assured extinction. That’s not good enough. We need to present our president with options and we need to be able to defend the homeland. That’s when we have a good enough defense for our homeland so that we don’t get into a situation where we are looking at massive destruction.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yes. I think another area that I’ve heard discussed is if you look at kind of the Chinese strategy, a strategy of coercion, in other words, putting you in a position where you have to make a very tough choice as to whether to defend our security requirements overseas in the Western Pacific, will Golden Dome help in this regard in your view?
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
I personally believe it’s better to have friends and it’s better to have allies and that we need to make sure that they understand that we’re there for them as well. When we work together, we’re stronger. I think it’s also better that we can inform the people of this country to a greater extent about what are some of the threats that we face. It was very telling when the Chinese balloon came over the country and the reaction of citizens here in the United States on… Some of their reactions that I heard in Nebraska and elsewhere in the country as I traveled, it was like, “Well, when was it detected? Why didn’t you just take it down right away? What was on it?” So people are aware of threats that are out there.
They should also be aware that we are working to make sure that this country is defended, that we do have the information. So I think it’s a fine line to walk there where we can discuss threats more openly, which I have pushed as a member of Armed Services Committee to unclassify some material so people have a better understanding. But we also want people to be assured that this country can and will defend itself, that we will not back off from that, that we are committed to moving ahead. And that falls on Congress and it falls on an administration who are not shy about the fact that not only are we looking short term on what we need, but we are looking long term as well.
And we continue to move ahead to look at current assets that we have that we can use, but also what’s ahead for us with new technology. What can we tap into there in order to meet what these two generals have discussed are the needs of the country to be able to defend against anyone that has mischief on their minds.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
I think your comments about assuring our allies is so important and missile defense or Golden Dome, the broader defense plays into their assurance. We don’t get to decide if they’re assured, they get to decide. But I think this sends a strong signal that we don’t have to absorb a blow and then decide to defend you. We can actually defend against a blow and that raises the calculus of a first strike against our homeland to a higher level for our adversaries, I think, and assures our allies. So General Guetlein, do you have any thoughts on that as well? Would you agree?
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
Yeah, you’re scratching at something, Chili, based on deterrence of a coercive attack. And you’d asked about the support on the Hill. We’ve got amazing stakeholders on the Hill that understand the threats that we’re talking about. And the threats that we are talking about are something south of a mutually assured destructive type scenario. And if you look at what are our response options as a nation, if we were to be attacked at something less than a full on nuclear attack on the homeland, I either launch ICBMs or I invade your territory. That’s my two response options. And what we’ve got to do is give our national decision makers some response options in between there that says, “Hey, we can not only defend this nation, but we’re going to deter those attacks. We’re going to deter that bad and unsafe behavior before it ever starts.”
That’s really what we’re trying to get after. So when Senator Fischer says, “We have unlimited capability to defend ourselves,” absolutely. And that’s the equation. We’ve got to change as fast as we possibly can so we don’t get ourselves into coercive type scenario where decapitation or a rogue nation attack on this homeland like we are seeing happen across the rest of the world. In order to do that, you have to have credible defense capabilities put in place. And that’s really what Golden Dome is about. How do I build and deploy credible defensive capabilities that General Guillot can use to defend this nation to deter that bad behavior before it ever starts?
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. Great. Thanks.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
And I think we’re seeing, hopefully, we’re seeing good discussions, whether it’s on Armed Services Committee, whether it’s on Appropriations Committee, I’m on Appropriations Committee as well, that there are a majority of members who want to be able to make these investments and make sure that we do have those options out there and that our adversaries have an understanding that we have those options. We’re going to develop more and we’re going to continue on that. We’re committed to it. I think that’s a message that sometimes we fall back on. We’re so busy with our work that we don’t get the message out as we should. We should be driving that narrative.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. Thank you. We’ve talked a little bit about command and control and General Guillot, and this is up in your lane. Time is never on your side in the job you have. You always want more time and current threats even compress our ability to make a decision and respond. The hypersonic threat though really got our attention when we realized maybe the first time we’d see the weapon is when it broke a radar fence and now you’re really short on time. Can you talk a little bit about how space and the space architecture that you and General Guetlein and you’re writing requirements for and he’s delivering will help in this regard with some of these various threats that we’re now seeing being deployed?
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Yes. That’s why that initial meeting when Mike came out to Colorado Springs was so important that we had Stephen Whiting there as well because it’s a layered approach, but the overlap between the layers is so important. So there’s overlap and not seams. And so our approach from the first day is to make sure that there’s not a seam that a clever adversary can exploit, but we just have reinforced overlap between the space layer, upper layer, underlayer, and then the limited air defense layer, limited in geography, not limited in capability.
So absolutely space takes an extremely important part of that because not only are they a layer in themselves, but they inform all of the other layers to make sure that we have the decisionable information that we need when we need it against a rapidly expanding threat that I spoke about earlier. One of the unique things that we’re doing, or at least I think it’s unique, is from the very beginning, we’re incorporating the operators into the design of the C2 system because C2ing ICBM threats is difficult and important, but it’s very different than how you C2 cruise missiles or an air threat. But we have to have one system that allows the operator to do all of that.
And so Mike and the consortium that he’s established is allowing us to provide input on not only operators, but also on sustainability and logistics because we’re going to need to have these C2 nodes at different locations, whereas right now it’s fairly centralized, to make sure that we have decision makers at the right appropriate place across the country or even across the globe to make these decisions. And Mike’s done a great job of making sure that all of those inputs are put in early and not after the fact where we try to tweak it after the fact. It’s being built in from the start.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. If we can go into a little bit of AI, because I’m no expert on it, but a lot of people worry about the human control versus computer control of systems, and particularly on the offense where you put lives at risk. But is there a different consideration when you have to make a quick decision, choose between multiple different layers to defend maybe a variety of threats coming at the homeland? Is there a different level of sensitivity, maybe lower, to automated weapons release on the defensive side for a system like Golden Dome? Or will it be there’s always going to be a human in the loop to say yes, do that, but can you talk a little bit about your feelings about that?
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Again, we’re working closely with Mike. We certainly need to use AI and we’re very receptive to AI because frankly right now against the rogue nation, we have one missile and one intercept, or two or three interceptors to make one. Fairly simple. But if you were to look at us doing it would look very, very complex with the number of screens and options we have just to do that. If we’re building a system to defeat the threats that we anticipate seeing, which could be waves, swarms, all domains simultaneously, we would have to have AI to give our operators the choices that they need to quickly make those decisions.
So I welcome AI. I think it’ll be a very important part of what we’re doing. And then that placement of the operators in the discussion early that I just mentioned will be very important to make sure that we have the operators, the humans, where they need to be to effectively use AI to defend our country.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. General Guetlein?
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
Yeah. So Chili, it’s about how you leverage those tools. And that’s really the conversation we’re having with General Guillot and his war fighters. They are fully embedded in development. They are fully embedded in all of our decision making. They are engaged every day on the command and control capability that we’re building to dial in those options. If you look at the way we used to fight, we used to have a human sitting on a scope trying to make heads or tails out of what that dot on the scope looks like. Is that an airplane? Is that a bird? What is that thing that’s flying? Then once they do make that decision, then we need to hand that off to another human.
Maybe we’ll go send a fighter to go look at it to get eyes on target. Then maybe we’ll communicate to another commander and say, “Hey, may we launch on this thing? We’re about 50% confident that it’s a threat.” And in all that kill chain, we had decisions being made at human speed. What AI has allowed us to do is to accelerate that decision making process to machine speed. And we don’t have to go fully automated to take advantage of that. AI is really good at looking at the phenomenology behind the scenes of the radars and the sensors to say, “Hey, without a shadow of a doubt, that is a cruise missile coming at you and here’s where it’s going to hit.”
Machines can do that in a split second where it might take a human a minute or two to make through that decision making process. Now using AI and the current algorithms, I can actually present better information to the war fighter to allow the war fighter to make a better informed decision on a more rapid timeline and start approaching machine speeds. Then when you start talking about the sheer volume of the threats that are going to come at us, just like we saw on TV with Ukraine and Spiderweb and some of those, now I can present a lot better options to the war fighter in a different operational tempo to allow them to make the decisions.
And it doesn’t have to be all or none. It can actually be scalable. During times of peace, it can be 100% human in the loop. And then as the threat starts to accelerate it and the operational tempo of the fight starts to accelerate, we can move more and more towards more and more automation to where the commander is comfortable with what’s going on, the decisions that are being made.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Reminds me of DEFCON levels.
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
Absolutely.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. Yeah.
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
We know how to do this.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
We know how to do that. Right. Very good. General Guillot, we’re going to be defending, it’s your job going to be to defend the homeland, but I can’t imagine you won’t be relying on other combatant commanders as well, both terrestrial, space and cyber to support you. We hear a lot about efforts to address this issue of attack on the homeland left of launch. And it seems like the Cyber Command, Space Command and some others might be in part a critical part of the defense. Can you comment on that, how you’re working with the other combatant commanders to both develop requirements and think about how you’d execute?
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Yeah, I absolutely can. I don’t think that a threat to the United States any longer will be just a regional threat. It’s going to be a global problem for us to solve. And the initial indications and warnings will come from the geographic boundaries of another combatant command, whether it’s EUCOM or PACOM or SPACECOM will give us those first indications. The threats to the United States will probably originate from another combatant command as opposed to just off of our shores. And if we need to preemptively address that threat, it’s probably going to be in somebody else’s combatant command.
So therefore we have to work very closely with the other combatant commands and we are. I would say that we’re sharing pictures, we’re sharing intel, we’re sharing battle rhythm events in our daily meetings, and then we’re sharing resources that are allocated to one combatant command loaned to another because to me, all it does is it pushes the defense of the United States further away, which is good. And then the combatant commanders, mainly Papi in PACOM, Grinch in EUCOM, and then Frank Donovan in SOUTHCOM, we all work together to make sure that we’re in that posture.
In the layered approach to Golden Dome, left of launch that you mentioned is one of those layers. Anything that we can do prior to a launch using geographic combatant commanders and partners is better. And then I’m very comfortable in what we’re doing to address them after the launch. But I do think that left of launch is something that’s very important. We’re the synchronizer of that, but as you mentioned, the other combatant commands are firmly at the same table as we look to address that challenge.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
But likely you would be in the supported role across that, right?
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Yeah, that’s right. For Golden Dome, we are the supported commander.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Right, okay. General Guetlein.
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
The capabilities we’re building are not stovepiped into one combatant commands. I fully understand I have four primary customers, really five if you include Cyber Command, INDOPACOM, STRATCOM, Space Command and NORTHCOM. We’ve been integrating with all four of them simultaneously to make sure that the capabilities that I’m building get after their problem sets as well and fully integrates into their command and control capabilities so that we are fighting as one nation, not as individual combatant commands.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s great. That’s so important. Senator Fischer, is this well appreciated on Capitol Hill, the need for multiple commands addressing this issue?
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
Yes. I mean, any time that we can use capabilities to get left of launch to destroy or disable an adversary, I think it should be done.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. But that would require additional resources for those combatant commands so they can contribute as well.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
And that makes it trickier.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, makes it trickier, I’m sure. See, I’m thinking Cyber Command and Space Command in particular. Yeah. Thanks. I asked you earlier about current support on Capitol Hill for Golden Dome. In the past, occasionally we’ve seen great support for fielding of a system and then not great support for sustainment. What’s it going to take to keep the momentum going in support for multiple administrations going forward and multiple congresses, do you think?
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
That’s tricky too.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. Predicting the future here. I’m sorry.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
Just to sustain a commitment through different administrations, through different majorities, through different changes in our country. We’ve seen fallout from that across the board in the past. I’m worried about it right now, to be honest with you, to be able to fund what we need. I’m a supporter of the 1.5 trillion. That’s what we need. I am also a supporter of it going through regular order, going through an appropriations process, having subcommittee hearings, having transparency, being on the record with your votes, laying it out that an administration can then follow it. So you see that commitment. We had 24 billion in reconciliation last year for Golden Dome. That was fine, but in my opinion, that’s not the way we can have certainty going forward.
I believe we have to go through an appropriations process and we have to have that commitment. We have to have not just the buy-in from Congress in order to support our military and the defense of this country, but we have to have the buy-in from the people of this country as well. And that goes back to having them understand the threats, understand the needs, and understand the resources that are being committed to address all of those needs and have it transparent and accountable. Those aren’t just words. We need to make sure that they are followed and there is that strong buy-in, not just from Congress, not just from any administration, but from the people of this country. And I think they’ll be there. They are there when they know what’s at stake.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
I couldn’t agree more. Educating the public on the need for these capabilities is so important. That’s where support comes from for funding and continuation. So thanks for bringing it up. And the Air and Space Force Association is committed to helping in that area. That’s one of the reasons we exist is to educate not only the public, but Congress and our military men and women so they understand and can explain to their neighbors why we need this capability. We’re running out of time, so I want to just go quickly around. Senator Fischer, we’ll start with you. Any final comments you’d like to make to close things out here?
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.):
Well, first of all, thank you for everything you do. I think you summed it up well and it’s important that we see organizations, that we see individuals step forward in their support, in their confidence in what we need for our military and for the security that we need.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. Thanks. Mike.
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein:
Yeah, thanks. I’m going to hit just a few of my talking points to set the narrative here. First and foremost, the reason there is a Golden Dome is because of the threat, period, dot. And you heard Senator Fischer talk about it. We have been working really, really hard to educate our stakeholders to understand just how prolific the threat is and what the intentions of our adversaries are. So first of all, it starts with a threat. The second thing is the technology. The technology exists today. We are not going to bankrupt the nation. This is about affordability and scalability. So the cost estimates that you’re seeing out there are not estimating the architecture that we’re building.
We’re not talking a lot about the architecture to the general public because we don’t want to give the adversary a heads up. So for operational security reasons, we’re kind of keeping that close hold. We are sharing it with our stakeholders, we’re not sharing it with our adversary. That is very intentional. The second thing is the program is progressing on schedule. It’s 185 billion. It’ll be operational capability as early as the summer of 2028, utilizing hardware and technology that we already own. And then we will scale into next generation technology and hardware after that.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
General Guillot.
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:
Well, first I’d like to thank my teammates up here for the outstanding partnership and support they give in the Homeland Defense Mission, Senator Fischer and General Guetlein. We opened up talking about the threat and Mike just mentioned the threat. It is certainly out there and growing. I’m very comfortable where we are right now in defeating the threat. But as you look at the adversary advances and what’s around the corner, Golden Dome is necessary to tie in today’s capabilities under development capabilities and future capabilities into one integrated system to ensure that we can defend a country that used to worry about threats from one avenue of approach and really in one domain.
Now in all domains from all avenues of approaches over the last three to five years is how rapidly that’s changed. And so I’m very, not only comfortable, but confident in the capabilities that Mike and his team are delivering. And I think the American public should know about the threat, but they should also have confidence that we’re doing everything we need to to address this growing threat because like we like to say, we have the watch and we’re going to make sure that we’re watching and protecting with these great capabilities that Mike’s delivering.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. Thank you. Well, General Guillot, General Guetlein, Senator Fischer, thank you for your time. I know it’s precious in the jobs that you have for joining us here today, but more importantly, thank you for your continued service to our country in all your different capacities. And God bless you all. Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately we’ve run out of time. This comes to the end of our presentation. If you enjoyed this discussion and would like to learn more, when you go out the back door, turn right at the top of the escalator is the Mitchell booth and there’s lots of articles there that can help support today’s discussion. Thank you very much. How about a round of applause for our panelists?