The Golden Dome czar must get control of all US missile defense programs

The United States is largely defenseless against Russian and Chinese aerial attacks. This is a major strategic problem in today’s era of massed drone and missile warfare—and no one is clearly in charge of solving it.

President Trump’s February 2025 executive order, “The Iron Dome for America” (later rebranded as Golden Dome), directed the Department of Defense to protect U.S. citizens and infrastructure from all forms of aerial attack. The department took a first step toward assigning responsibility for a U.S. air and missile defense architecture by standing up the Golden Dome office. But critical elements of any near-term defensive shield remain outside its control: namely, the U.S. air and missile defense systems that have proven their worth on Ukrainian and Middle Eastern battlefields.

The Aegis system, for example, is a U.S. Navy program—though its ballistic missile defense component is funded by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Patriot interceptors, in turn, belong to the Army. Theater High Altitude Aerial Defense (THAAD) batteries and the Ground Based Midcourse Defense System (GMDS) are developed by the MDA but operated and maintained by the Army. U.S. Northern Command is responsible for U.S. air surveillance but relies heavily on radars belonging to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — and so on.

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The Golden Dome director’s position in the Defense Department hierarchy — reporting directly to the Deputy Secretary of Defense — reflects the urgency of the task. But it does not convey any actual authority to direct the decisions of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Transportation secretaries.

Diffusion of responsibility is a recipe for failure.

For Golden Dome to work, the Defense Department must draw on lessons from some of its most successful Cold War innovations — specifically, the organizational innovations that made its game-changing technologies and operational concepts possible. Admiral Hyman Rickover, perhaps the leading exemplar of Cold War innovation, took nuclear propulsion from the blackboard to the fleet in just five years.

To quote Rickover: “Unless you can point your finger at the one person who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.” Golden Dome fails this test, precisely because — according to the Defense Department itself — it is a “team effort” in which “we’re going to need all the services and agencies that do this kind of work to step up.”

Rickover took the opposite approach. If something was critical to the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program, he established de facto (and often de jure) control over it. For example, he successfully co-opted the Cabinet-level Atomic Energy Commission. Established in 1947 to oversee all U.S. nuclear matters, the AEC was a potential bureaucratic roadblock. At Rickover’s prompting, therefore, the Navy issued him orders to “report for duty with the Division of Reactor Development” in the AEC (and to the Navy for “additional duty”).

With one foot in the Navy and the other in the AEC, Rickover became the central U.S. authority for nuclear propulsion. This allowed him to coordinate the activities of two separate executive departments, often by proposing an action from one department and then convincing the other to approve it. His dual office, Naval Reactors, remains part of both the Navy and the Department of Energy (successor to the AEC) to this day.

The Rickover approach is not how the Pentagon normally does business. “I can assure you,” Rickover told Congress in 1979, “that having one individual responsible for a total program is a unique concept within the Department of Defense.” But Rickover made it his business to acquire unchallenged authority over all areas that concerned “his” reactors.

The Secretary of Defense must likewise assign total responsibility for Golden Dome, with autonomy and authority to match. This will entail taking the requisite authorities from their normal stewards and re-delegating them to the Golden Dome director.

For example, ballistic missile defense responsibility is currently bifurcated between Golden Dome and the Missile Defense Agency. MDA should be moved under Golden Dome. Similarly, airspace surveillance operations and modernization are divided between DoD and the FAA, with the latter contributing the lion’s share. The Golden Dome director must have a Rickover-like dual assignment in the FAA. And if homeland defense is indeed an urgent priority, DoD should take a hard look at whether the Aegis and Patriot programs should be moved under Golden Dome as well.

This process will be challenging, but far from impossible. And while Rickover’s nuclear power program is one of the most remarkable Cold War innovations, other success stories such as General Bernard Schriever’s Atlas ICBM and Undersecretary of Defense William Perry’s F-117 stealth fighter applied the same core insight: comprehensive organizational authority is just as important as any technological or industrial-base factor. DoD must heed this lesson if Golden Dome is to succeed.

Thane Clare is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.