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As the United States advances its ambitious Golden Dome missile defense strategy, we face a critical question: what constitutes a truly comprehensive defense system? While advanced tracking capabilities, AI-enabled data synthesis, interceptors and directed energy weapons rightfully command attention, we cannot focus solely on the terminal phase of the threat continuum. Effective missile defense must begin well before a missile leaves the ground.
American security demands an approach that expands the defense timeline to encompass persistent monitoring of pre-launch indicators. The commercial remote sensing sector’s rapid technological evolution — spanning radar, optical and signals intelligence — has created yet unrealized opportunities to strengthen our defense posture by identifying and mitigating threatening activities before things go kinetic.
The Golden Dome initiative presents a historic chance to build an integrated system of government and commercial capabilities to thwart missile attacks. By balancing robust investment in operational commercial platforms while simultaneously developing next-generation government systems, we can establish immediate security advantages while building toward an even more capable future. Commercial solutions aren’t merely complementary — they’re essential components of a layered, resilient architecture that can transform our approach from reactive interception to proactive prevention.
The pre-launch imperative
Strong missile defense begins with persistent, advanced awareness of adversary activities. Proactive pre-launch monitoring provides indications and warnings patterns measured in months rather than in the minutes available to react after launch. This expanded timeline transforms our options from point-solution interception to active prevention.
With adequate warning, there’s time for diplomacy before military action — and time to activate military strategies should diplomacy fail. Defense systems can be optimized based on anticipated launch vectors and non-kinetic options can be readied. Perhaps most critically, intelligence teams gain the advantage of time, applying tradecraft to especially distinguish between genuine threats and feints designed to deceive.
Preparedness requires persistent observation across the entire missile deployment chain; tracking movement of component supplies, observing known facilities, following mobile launcher developments, identifying fueling operations, detecting command and control patterns and monitoring other supporting activities. These opportunities contribute pieces of the strategic puzzle, only resolvable when observed continuously over time.
The cyclical coverage gap
Missile threat monitoring requires rapid information refresh, environmentally agnostic collection capabilities and persistent tipping and cueing mechanisms that enable rapid data sharing with allied nations. Our competitive edge as a nation lies in the strategic complementarity of commercial capabilities with U.S.-owned assets.
America’s exquisite national systems deliver extraordinary capabilities but face inherent limitations for comprehensive pre-launch intelligence-gathering. Requirement development cycles, budgetary constraints and deployment timelines are innate, long-term challenges. Fiscal year prioritization shifts, rapidly evolving adversarial capabilities, mission-centric optimization and vulnerabilities to political imperatives add layers of complexity to navigate. While these impediments are not terminal, they underpin the case for commercial sensing sources to augment national programs and ensure gaps in threat monitoring are minimized.
The strength-on-strength solution
Commercial space innovations have created powerful new options for missile defense across multiple sensing modalities. All-weather synthetic aperture radar (SAR), agile electro-optical systems, advanced SIGINT capabilities and emerging hyperspectral sensors all provide essential pieces of the monitoring puzzle.
These complementary commercial technologies maintain persistent watch when traditional systems face coverage limitations. They deliver the continuous monitoring needed to track mobile launchers, monitor supply chain activities and detect launch preparations across diverse environments. This persistent commercial layer enables national systems to focus their unique capabilities on the most specialized collection requirements.
A compelling yet infrequently discussed benefit of today’s commercial space architecture is the asymmetric collection patterns they offer especially when combined with government systems, leaving adversaries guessing. For missile warning, redundancy is critical. Commercial integration creates resilience through sensor and orbit diversity, creating a complex monitoring ecosystem that complicates adversary attempts to degrade our awareness. Such a layered approach among competitive private companies ensures no single point of failure exists in our monitoring architecture.
Advanced analytics platforms can today process this diverse source data in near-real-time, detecting anomalies that would overwhelm human analysts and providing early warnings of potential launch preparations. This integration of commercial and government capabilities creates a more comprehensive awareness picture than either could provide alone while preventing detrimental ‘vendor-lock’.
The path forward
The economic and strategic case for integrating commercial space capabilities extends beyond cost considerations. While government programs typically require four to seven years from requirement convergence to fielded capability, privately funded capabilities can be deployed in months, surged depending on real-time mission needs, and are naturally refreshed as the competitive landscape evolves. The innovation common to today’s defense oriented hard-tech companies ensures our country’s missile defense capabilities keep pace with evolving threats.
Lawmakers continue to emphasize the “commercial first, national always” imperative through legislation, including within the National Defense Authorization Act and recent executive orders, which explicitly direct intelligence agencies to “give preference to using domestic commercial capability” when cost-effective options exist and prioritize privately funded defense technologies.
The FY26 budget cycle arrives at a pivotal moment for America’s missile defense capabilities. Several existing commercial monitoring contracts that currently support global intelligence gathering activities for the U.S. and allies are set to expire without renewed appropriations. These aren’t theoretical capabilities — they’re operational systems delivering actionable insights especially in contested regions. Without sustained funding, combatant commanders will lose access to a reliable, integrated network of commercial space sensors that today provide persistent awareness, resilience through redundancy and other asymmetric benefits. This unified awareness, combining government precision with commercial persistence, is particularly critical in areas where strategic competitors are expanding their offensive missile arsenals. The goal should be to maintain the multi-domain monitoring ecosystem that commanders depend on for early warning and high confidence threat assessment.
Congress must rise above agency infighting to establish a sustainable funding baseline for commercial sensing capabilities — SAR, Earth observation, SIGINT — which are proving their worth supporting daily operations worldwide. Such multi-year programs would incorporate commercial remote sensing as a core component of missile defense. Balancing investment across both commercial and government capabilities creates immediate security benefits while establishing a strong foundation for the future.
Now is the time to implement an integrated commercial vision through concrete policy commitments and budgetary appropriations. Our competitive edge rests on our ability to effectively incorporate private Earth observation capabilities. The urgency of today’s missile threat environment demands a strategic approach that eliminates coverage gaps and ensures continuous awareness — not siloed development resulting in exploitable vulnerabilities. By leveraging the best-of-industry, America can transform its missile defense strategy from reactive interception to proactive prevention.
Eric Jensen is the CEO of ICEYE US, a company that develops synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology, and Vice-Chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Space Leadership Council.
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