The US’s ambitious Golden Dome air defense project may have to factor in the kind of drone threat demonstrated by Ukraine’s recent Operation Spiderweb attack on Russia, according to a top US Air Force general.
Gen. David Allvin, the USAF chief of staff, said on Tuesday that it was “fascinating” to consider that the Golden Dome would not only counter “the larger ballistic, cruise, hypersonic missiles but also some of these closer-in, more effective ones.”
Allvin was speaking at a conference three days after Ukraine unleashed a surprise attack on four air bases deep within Russia by sneaking the drones right up to the bases by truck and releasing them.
The attack exploited the fact that Russia stores many of its military aircraft out on the tarmac, unprotected by hardened shelters that might have helped shield them from the drones.
The Golden Dome, announced by President Donald Trump in May, is a planned layered air and missile defense system modeled loosely on Israel’s missile shield, but is anticipated to include space-based satellite weapons for the first time.
It’s intended to detect and defeat the most advanced threat the US faces: Large numbers of ballistic missiles that could be armed with nuclear warheads. It must also face the newer threat of hypersonic missiles designed for erratic and high-speed flight that could evade existing air defenses.
But Ukraine’s attack, which used cheap drones at close range to make a deep strike, may force a rethink of the range of threats that the Golden Dome must defend — or be protected — against.
“We’ll see how the conversation gets stirred up again based on this strike,” Allvin told conference attendees at the Center for a New American Security, adding: “But it shows us that seemingly impenetrable locations need to pay more attention.”
The space-based components of a future Golden Dome are safe from small drones. But that can’t as easily be said for its land- and sea-based elements like early warning radars, ballistic missile defense warships and Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense systems.
Effective defenses from cheap drones are still being developed out of the cauldrons of combat in Ukraine and Israel, and are likely to be a mixture of physical and electronic shielding with more short-range weapons, including lasers.
Ukraine’s fiery drone strike, which it claims destroyed or damaged at least 41 valuable bombers and fighter jets, hit sites thousands of miles into Russia that will likely have been considered less vulnerable to attack.
The gambit has set analysts chattering about the wide-ranging ramifications of the tactic for both Russia and Ukraine’s Western allies — particularly military sites far from the front lines.
It’s “only a matter of time” before NATO adversaries take up the tactic, Karl Rosander, the CEO and cofounder of the Swedish defence tech startup Nordic Air Defence, said.
The attack has also, once again, raised concerns about the US’ own air base safety, with many air bases still vulnerable to aerial attack.
In this regard, the attack was “a sort of eyebrow-raising moment,” Allvin added. “We’ve always known that hardening our bases is something that we need to do,” he said, noting that this is within the DOD’s budget.
However, he said, “it’s been a matter of resource prioritization.”
It’s possible to make US air bases more defensible — some forward bases already are — but added that “if all we’re doing is playing defense and we can’t shoot back, then that’s not a good use of our money.”
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