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In 2019, China’s military showcased a hypersonic ballistic missile reportedly capable of breaching existing anti-missile shields. The question facing U.S. strategic planners ever since has been simple but daunting. How do you stop weapons that fast, unpredictable, and affordable enough to be produced at scale?
One increasingly popular answer is the Pentagon’s ambitious Golden Dome initiative. It would leverage orbiting interceptors and sensors to destroy missiles (ballistic, hypersonic, cruise, and even drones) at different moments of flight. In President Donald Trump’s plan, Golden Dome would be fielded in roughly two to three years at an eventual cost of about $175 billion. Converting an inspiring goal into reality poses enormous technical and organizational challenges.
While U.S. efforts have successfully advanced missile tracking constellations, the interceptor layer remains the long pole in the tent. Gen. Michael Guetlein recently noted, “We’ve demonstrated the physics.” Yet, questions remain.
Will the United States be able to produce interceptors at the volume and cost needed for the project to remain feasible? The challenge in this question will not be science, but the capability of the United States to surge manufacturing capability and production. The Golden Dome’s architecture calls for three layers of defense (space, upper, and under). To build the architecture and systems necessary to meet this call to action, the United States must fuse the defense primes’ integration discipline with the start-up company’s speed. If industry works in silos, it will remain a science experiment.
My background is a blend of experience working for conventional primes and venture-backed startups. As a veteran of the aerospace and defense manufacturing industry, the company I work for has a vested interest in the future of hypersonic weapons, missile systems, and space-based interceptors. However, this article is not meant to champion a particular company or solution. Rather, it reflects my opinion of the broader challenges and opportunities facing the industrial complex of the United States when it comes to the challenge of the Golden Dome.
Golden Dome and the Future State of Deterrence
The Golden Dome concept, a 21st-century iteration of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars,” envisions orbital interceptors positioned to destroy enemy missiles during their vulnerable mid-course phases. Unlike earth-based defenses, space-based interceptors could engage threats globally, theoretically creating a shield impenetrable even to hypersonic threats. However, such an orbital deterrent is inherently costly. While official White House estimates place the cost around $175 billion, others warn it could exceed $800 billion. Potentially hundreds of satellites, in multiple orbital planes, would be required to provide persistent coverage and tracking. For example, the Missile Defense Agency’s plans anticipate dozens of launches per year for space-based sensors, interceptors, and supporting platforms, as well as ground systems and test ranges.
Nevertheless, political momentum has solidified behind the concept, with presidential directives and initial funding signaling its seriousness. The solution demands not only new doctrine but a radical reshaping of the industrial base by embracing innovation, agility, and collaboration between established primes and agile startups. The Missile Defense Agency plans to leverage industry on a larger scale, pulling away from traditional Department of Defense Directive 5000.01 requirements, utilizing both defense primes and small businesses in an unprecedented fashion. By using non-traditional approaches, the official tagline for the project is “Go FAST, Think BIG.”
History, however, counsels caution. Missile-defense systems have consistently exceeded original timelines: Ground-based Midcourse Defense was first fielded in 2004 and is only just transitioning into a Next Generation Interceptor in 2028. The SM-3 required years to mature, over a decade, from an early 2002 flight test to an intercontinental ballistic missile-class intercept in 2020. Even with cheaper rockets cutting costs by 30 to 40 percent, Golden Dome could demand a larger space-based fleet than planned, with 20-year costs estimated at $160 to $542 billion. Delivering such a large-scale system in just two to three years would be without precedent. The Missile Defense Agency’s own planning documents indicate a 10-year base contract and phasing reflecting that full deployment will be in tranches.
Exquisite but Inefficient
U.S. hypersonic interceptor development has historically focused on performance, leveraging materials like carbon composites and exotic high-temperature alloys such as tungsten. These materials withstand extreme heat but are expensive and complex to produce. Manufacturing relies on repeated high-temperature curing in scarce facilities, creating a slow, costly, low-volume process ill-suited for mass deployment.
Over a decade and $12 billion in, America has yet to field an operational hypersonic weapon system. The Air Force’s Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon boost-glide missile exemplifies these challenges: despite investment and testing, development delays and failures continue. Performance matters, but Pentagon planners now see scalability and affordability — long U.S. weaknesses — as strategic imperatives.
Russian and Chinese Agility
Moscow and Beijing prioritize speed, affordability, and mass production in hypersonic weaponry. Russia’s Avangard glide vehicle and Kinzhal missiles employ proven technologies combined with advanced composite materials. By leveraging existing systems, Russia rapidly achieved operational status, fielding systems in Ukraine and elsewhere.
China’s approach is even more instructive. Alongside advanced composites, Beijing recently announced a breakthrough that reportedly allows hypersonic missiles to use common stainless steel rather than rare metals like tungsten. By combining ultra-high-temperature ceramic coatings with innovative thermal insulation, China claims it can produce Mach 8-capable hypersonic weapons affordably and at scale. This development could dramatically reduce production costs, enabling a much larger arsenal compared to the American approach. America’s focus on exquisite manufacturing techniques leaves us vulnerable to adversaries willing to trade elegance for scale and affordability.
America’s adversaries project strength, but the U.S. government and industry should be clear-eyed about the threat. Patriot PAC-3s have intercepted hypersonic and other advanced missiles in Ukraine and the Middle East, showing defenses can work in limited cases. The real challenge, however, will be mass salvos. China’s Dongfeng-series missiles are built to overwhelm radars and command networks with simultaneous, multi-directional strikes. Such volumetric attacks will be the true test of U.S. missile defense readiness.
Don’t Send a Ferrari to do a Ford’s Job
The timeline that the president has called for is intense. To meet the call, the United States will need to trade some performance for what is manufacturable at speed.
For hypersonic vehicles, United States defense programs have historically relied on exotic non-metallic materials to survive the extreme heat and stress of Mach 5-plus flight. This in turn ensures top-tier performance at hypersonic speeds. The downside is that these exotic materials are difficult and slow to produce. In contrast, using more conventional metallic structures for hypersonic missiles promises faster, cheaper production, but comes with its own trade-offs. Most metals fail by exceeding melting points or yielding under thermal stresses at temperatures lower than the thermal loads a hypersonic airframe experiences.
The alternative is to take high-temperature alloys (such as nickel-based and refractory alloys) and apply a thermal barrier coating, so they survive hypersonic flight. Engineers can coat a metal airframe in ultra-high-temperature ceramic layers and add insulating material underneath, creating a thermal barrier that keeps the underlying metal from overheating. This approach might sacrifice some performance (for instance, focusing on vehicles in the Mach 5–8 range instead of Mach 20), but it dramatically lowers costs and simplifies and speeds manufacturing.
Using metallic airframes has potential for many reasons, including an industrial base with expertise. Traditional aerospace parts have relied on metals shaped through machining, rolling, stamping, and hydroforming. Newer agile methods — like additive manufacturing and incremental sheet forming — expand capability and speed production. Combined with advanced joining (e.g., laser welding), they allow scale and agility even with harder-to-process materials like carbon composites. Digital tools, predictable supply chains, and known materials further reduce bottlenecks and ensure quality. Lastly, these processes have shown they can be automated, unlike high-performance, exotic materials, which present more challenges and further investment is required.
For U.S. defense planners, finding the right balance between cutting-edge composites and pragmatic metals will be crucial to building hypersonic arsenals that are both advanced and abundant. It is critical to rethink the model, just as the commercial space industry moved away from ultra-expensive launch systems in favor of cost-effective, reliable platforms.
Heritage Meets Innovation
To counter this industrial shortfall, the United States intends to look beyond legacy aerospace companies. While defense giants like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon dominate hypersonic contracts, their traditional approach is insufficient alone.
For instance, companies like Stratolaunch, among others, are now participating in hypersonic testing and manufacturing efforts previously reserved for primes. SpaceX initially dominated discussions about Golden Dome’s orbital infrastructure. Yet, concerned about reliance on a single provider, the Pentagon has diversified, engaging with firms like Jeff Bezos’s Project Kuiper and newer launch providers to foster competition, innovation, and cost reduction.
Forging the Dome Through Strength
America’s ability to defend against next-generation missile threats depends less on singular “exquisite” weapons than on the industrial system that produces them. Building concepts like the Golden Dome will require more than ambition: It demands an industrial transformation that fuses experience with speed. Established defense giants bring integration expertise and scale, while newer firms contribute agility and fresh technologies.
To connect these worlds, a third role is essential: translators, who stitch prime integration to start-up velocity and turn it into deployable capability. By rethinking how programs are managed, contracts structured, and architectures designed, the nation can unlock a more responsive, resilient, and affordable defense enterprise. Success will rest on whether the United States can leverage its full measure of expertise and technological ingenuity into a unified engine of deterrence.
John Borrego is the senior vice president of aerospace and defense at Machina Labs. He has extensive experience in aerospace and defense, spanning both heritage primes and high-growth startups. He has held technical and leadership roles at Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, Rocketdyne, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he focused on advanced manufacturing for aerospace and defense applications. His work bridges traditional defense industrial power with emerging agile technologies. Opinions expressed in this article are his own and do not reflect the views of any company or government agency.
Image: Midjourney
