Golden Dome program blurs the line between missile defense and space war
A defense editor who tracks conflicts worldwide explains how China's rapid rise in orbit is reshaping deterrence calculations
Missile defense and military space power are merging into a single fighting domain. The clearest evidence is a sweeping American program known as Golden Dome, which stitches together existing missile interceptors, a new layer of orbital sensors and, eventually, weapons stationed in space itself.
Golden Dome builds on systems already in service, including Patriot interceptors familiar across the Middle East, and folds in a space tracking and custody layer built under the previous administration to spot hypersonic and air-breathing threats flying low over the horizon.
“A golden dome, in some ways, is just what America has today,” said Shashank Joshi, defense editor at The Economist. “Boost phase intercept is a technically challenging problem, but in some ways it’s easier to take out ballistic missiles at the boost phase than it is in mid-course or in the terminal phase.”
“The overall trend I take from this is that we are seeing a convergence of these two domains of missile defense and military space in a big, significant way,” he added.
Trump’s executive orders revive Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, calling for operational space-based interceptors.
The interceptors would not be limited to shooting down missiles. The same space-to-space, space-to-ground, and ground-to-space capability could deliver fires in other ways, a huge technological and financial undertaking. The clearest example is Israel’s 2024 interception of a Houthi ballistic missile using its Arrow system.
“That interception was the first one they had done exo-atmospherically, which got Israel classified as a country possessing counter-space capabilities,” he said.
The technologies used to intercept an incoming missile and to attack a satellite in orbit are not fundamentally dissimilar, he said. As more countries invest in advanced missile defense capable of exo-atmospheric interception, their neighbors will increasingly assume they also possess counter-space capabilities.
Joshi is defense editor at The Economist, where he covers national security, defense and intelligence, and has reported from Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The China question
The conversation took place at the 2026 Space-Comm Expo Europe in London. The event was organized by Space-Comm Limited in official partnership with ADS Group, the UK trade body for the aerospace, defense, security and space sectors.
Andy Lison, a partner in PwC’s defense and space practice, moderated the fireside chat on the shifting balance of power in military space.
“I think you could sum it up in one word, and that’s China,” Joshi said.
Russian space capabilities have effectively atrophied over the past 15 years, leaving Moscow reliant on Beijing for some intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) from orbit, with degraded space-based communications and missile early warning systems.
Chinese space launch activity grew tenfold between 2015 and 2025.
“China provided real-time orbital ISR to Pakistan, enabling it to conduct air-to-air operations quite successfully against India, possibly downing as many as five jets in the first night of that conflict,” he said, having covered the India-Pakistan skirmish himself for The Economist.
Established space powers are now watching newer rivals do things once off the table.
“Chinese satellites are getting close to American ones and trying to block American surveillance satellites, and the Chinese ability to do that is worrying them,” Joshi said.
Open source intelligence gives outside observers a rare view of these rendezvous and proximity operations. China is also ahead of the United States in practicing on-orbit refueling, a capability closely tied to satellite maneuverability that increasingly worries American military planners.
The conflict with Iran offers the clearest recent demonstration of what space-based sensing can do.
Citing figures from Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joshi said Iranian missile launch activity was down about 73% over the first four days of its conflict with the US, falling by a further 23% within a single day soon after.
That decline, he said, reflects the success of American efforts to suppress Iranian missile launches.
Conventional military assets deserve some credit, but so does space-based infrared missile launch sensing, which Joshi called a technological marvel with a remarkable, real-time impact.
“Military space is coming back to the forefront of policy conversations in defense,” he said.
The battle above
Joshi has tracked the shift in mindset firsthand. He first visited US Space Command in 2019, shortly after the first Trump administration re-established it as an operational war-fighting command, when officials were still cautious about discussing offensive capabilities in space.
He returned last summer, driving to Colorado Springs to interview General Stephen Whiting, the command’s current chief.
“It was really striking to see the explicit, open, very comfortable embrace of the language of the offense. We need offensive space fires,” he said. “That language would not have been said even by American generals two years ago.”
“That is not the language you will hear in Europe from European military space officials, although they may be thinking it; they just won’t say it entirely at this stage,” said Joshi, after Whiting told him the United States needs offensive capability across all three domains: space-to-space, space-to-ground and ground-to-space.
The shift also extends to greater use of artificial intelligence, and a move away from a fortress mentality of satellite operation.
“At the operational level, what I saw was really a deepening of this alliance,” Joshi said.
Operation Olympic Defender, the US-led campaign for on-orbit protection, is a case in point. Its initial operating capability came on stream last year and now includes the Five Eyes nations along with France and Germany, evidence of deepening operational ties despite wider political turbulence.
“We’re seeing software-defined weapons transform conventional military capabilities,” he said. “You don’t just sell a product, but with software that is iterated every two weeks in order to remain relevant on the battlefield.”
The same process is unfolding in space.
A recent interview with Will Marshall, chief executive of Planet Labs, focused on pushing more data processing onto satellites themselves so only necessary information is sent down, a response to growing jamming and electromagnetic interference. Of all the areas where European dependence on the United States runs deep, Joshi ranks space first.
“Space is at the top of that list,” he said.
Storm Shadow and French SCALP cruise missiles supplied to Ukraine could not be used against the most heavily defended targets without American help, because their own manufacturers could not supply the necessary high-fidelity geospatial intelligence needed to hit them precisely.
“If you want Europe to be on its own two feet and act even with an American veto, where would you invest? It is in exactly those geospatial capabilities to help with battlefield intelligence,” Joshi said.
Space interference incidents totaled about 10,000 in the year ended February 2025, according to the Secure World Foundation.
The majority were jamming related. Jamming was observed during the passage of the Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group from northern Europe to the Mediterranean, with further incidents in the Baltic.
The same trend shows up in disruptions to Starlink availability for Russian forces in Ukraine.
He said the disruptions had an immediate impact on battlefield dynamics in the country’s east, alongside interference with other communications tools such as Telegram and social media.
He added that the level of jamming and spoofing has been normalized on a day-to-day basis, an enormous problem for NATO forces across Europe. With the industrial and political will now aligned for the first time in years, the next test is whether Europe invests quickly enough to close the gap.