Can Golden Dome truly succeed without logistics and sustainment in space?

The missile defense challenge facing the United States has changed dramatically since Lt. Gen. (ret.) Henry “Trey” Obering III led the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Ballistic missiles remain a central threat, but today’s architecture must also contend with hypersonic weapons, maneuvering warheads and potential fractional orbital bombardment systems.

Breaking Defense spoke with Obering, now a senior executive adviser with Booz Allen and a board director and proxy holder at Astroscale U.S., about the architectural challenges of missile defense in space and where on-orbit logistics fits.

Breaking Defense: At MDA you focused on protecting the homeland against ballistic missiles. Looking at Golden Dome today, what has fundamentally changed?

Obering: There are so many things that have changed, but there are three that I’d like to highlight. The first and foremost is that the threat has changed. When I ran the Missile Defense Agency, the threat we were focused on was the emerging ballistic missile threats out of North Korea and Iran, and being able to protect the homeland from those.

What we’ve seen recently is a move primarily by Russia and some indications from China away from the mutually assured destructive, all-out attack deterrent of the Cold War era toward something called ‘escalate to deescalate.’ This strategy involves launching a much smaller attack at the United States to shock us into not interfering with a takeover of Taiwan or Russian aggression. That becomes much more dangerous and more destabilizing than what we’ve had in the past.

Another thing that’s changed is the threat diversity. Today, ballistic missiles still remain the vast majority of the inventory of these threat countries. But now they’ve added hypersonic missiles, maneuvering warheads and fractional orbital bombardment, where they could put a warhead in orbit and then deorbit it without warning anywhere on the Earth within that orbital plane. More recently, we’ve seen the proliferation and sophistication of drone attacks in the Middle East, as well as in the Russia-Ukraine war.

The third thing that’s changed is the technology itself. Advances in sensors and processing power, algorithms, mesh communication networks and certainly artificial intelligence, machine learning, manufacturing techniques — all of that combined, most importantly with the dramatically reduced space launch cost, have put an architecture that has a space-based element very much back in play.

Golden Dome is a layered architecture connecting many different systems. Where do you see the greatest architectural risk?

In my mind, command and control, battle management and fire control are going to be the most important and the cornerstone pieces of the entire architecture.

When I was the director, we were simply trying to tie an Aegis SPY radar into the fire control system of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system in Alaska and California. That took us time, but we figured that out. Now you’re talking about integrating multiple sensors and interceptors, not only terrestrial-based but space-based, as well.

Another risk to the architecture would be the space-based interceptors. They offer so much in terms of capability with much earlier intercept of threat missiles and global tailored coverage. To be able to scale and afford those is a challenge that I believe we will meet.

Why does on-orbit logistics become important as Golden Dome adds more space-based capabilities?

As I stated earlier, space basing of missile defense sensors, communications elements and interceptors offers so much more capability. In the past, space launch costs were so high, we would need to build exquisite systems to be able to survive a long period in space without servicing.

On-orbit logistics was not economically viable to do that, to be able to extend their life. Well, that’s changed. The technology has gotten to the point now where we can afford the space launch cost. Now, on-orbit logistics, which includes refueling, servicing, repositioning, resupply and deorbit, can have a major impact on the viability of a constellation.

It’s not every service for every single satellite, and the trades need to be done for the prime candidates. For example, it certainly comes into play where you have satellites that typically are at higher altitudes and you want to extend their life, because it’s cheaper to go up and do multiple refuelings of a constellation than it is to launch whole new satellites to be able to perform the mission.

What has to be designed into a spacecraft from the beginning — such as interfaces — to make refueling and servicing possible?

Let me bring in an analogy to make it easier to visualize. I started my Air Force career as a fighter pilot, and I would go up and meet with a tanker aircraft that would provide fuel so that I could extend my flight time or range.

The bombers, the cargo aircraft, the fighters: even though they were extremely different aircraft, they had receptacles for refueling that were compatible with the tanker.

Being able to develop and decide upon standardized receptacles for refueling, for example, or other potential line-replaceable units where you may have something you want to change out on the spacecraft is what we’re talking about, and it includes mechanical, electrical, data, refueling interfaces and then serviceable locations.

A good example of space-based logistics is actually the International Space Station. Think about it; we go up and can interface and connect with the space station. Russia’s done the same thing. That, again, gets to the fact that we standardized the interfaces that we needed. We made the hatch accessible to the station by incoming spacecraft.

Does the government need to establish those requirements, or should industry develop them?

I think the government needs to send the demand signal and then let industry decide what that is. That seems to be the best way to solve a lot of these problems.

We’re seeing more and more of that in the Golden Dome program, where Golden Dome is initiating a demand signal and then they’re allowing the industry to interface and to build together what that’s going to look like.

Where is the dividing line between satellites that should be serviced on-orbit and those that should simply be replaced?

It is a matter of determining if their life extension would make economic sense as opposed to replacing the spacecraft. Typically that depends on the mission and the constellation, altitude, orientation and the pace of the technology developments available for that particular mission.

But again, different services make sense for different orbits and applications. In proliferated LEO, for example, where you have much smaller satellites that basically would be easier to just replenish with a launch, you could do inspection, maneuver or deorbit rather than life extension or refueling.

How do space-based interceptors and on-orbit logistics address the magazine-depth problem facing missile defense?

Space-based interceptors actually improve the magazine depth of an integrated, layered missile defense architecture as a whole. They could be the first layer engaging threat missiles from shortly after launch and in their midcourse phase as well. This thinning effect, when integrated with the terrestrially based interceptors such as the SM-3s, THAADs, Arrows, Patriots, etc., provides the defense the ability to handle larger raid sizes.

Tell us about Astroscale U.S.’s Provisioner^® refueling spacecraft upcoming launch?

Astroscale U.S.’s goal is to provide the Provisioner^® spacecraft for refueling in the 2026 timeframe. It’s important because it actually moves refueling from a concept to an actual demonstration of operational capability supporting the Space Force.

What’s even more significant than that is once they’ve demonstrated that it can safely refuel in orbit, then it becomes a question of how fast we can incorporate that capability into future architectures.

As the operators, the combatant commanders and others begin to understand what you can do in terms of on-orbit logistics and how that plays into the fight, you’ll see that begin to proliferate in some of the government demands and in these exercises and war games.

Final thoughts?

Historically, logistics have been foundational for the success of any military operation. Sustainment is one of the Pentagon’s joint functions and it applies to every domain — land, sea, air — and now it’s time for space.

Golden Dome represents more than just a new missile defense system. It represents a true warfighting capability in which we have the opportunity to build resilient, integrated architecture that’s designed to operate through conflict.

As we’ve talked about, resilience is more than just proliferation. It means that proliferation, rapid launch, reconstitution, maneuvering, on-orbit logistics, they should all work together. Overall, the bottom line is we should view logistics as a true warfighting enabler, not just a commercial servicing capability.

Just like we view the tankers that we use in the air or the replenishment ships we use at sea, we can view this in the same way for space.