America’s “Golden Dome”: Can the U.S. Actually Stop a Nuclear Strike?

In this episode of At the Boundary, retired four-star General Frank McKenzie joins USF’s Dr. Tad Schnaufer to break down one of the most pressing national security questions today: Can the United States build a true “Golden Dome” to defend the homeland from nuclear missile attack?

Together, they explore how America’s past missile defense systems—from Nike and Sentinel to THAAD—shaped today’s strategic landscape, and why emerging technologies may finally make boost-phase interception realistic. The conversation dives into the potential of space-based missile defense, the growing threat of hypersonic weapons, and what future U.S. policy and NATO cooperation would require keeping pace with rapidly advancing adversaries.

General McKenzie provides a candid assessment of the U.S.–China nuclear competition, the limits of current deterrence, and what it would take to shield the American homeland in a future strategic conflict.

A must-listen episode for anyone tracking U.S. defense strategy, missile defense innovation, and global security trends.

Links from the Episode:

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Transcript

Jim Cardoso: 0:12

Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Director for GNSI, and your host for at the boundary. Today on the podcast, we're going to drop in on a discussion between GNSI Executive Director, retired Marine Corps General, Frank McKenzie, and GNSI strategy and research manager Dr Tad schnaufer, earlier this year, general McKenzie sat down with tad to discuss the concept of golden dome as part of our what's really happening video series. Golden Dome remains a focus of the Trump administration and will continue to feature prominently in national security spending and strategy. We felt it appropriate to even more broadly publish the discussion to ensure our at the boundary audience and others could share in the tremendous insight provided general. McKenzie and Tad looked at the promise and cost of a Golden Dome system where an ICBM is most vulnerable to an effective defense. What NATO collaboration in that defense might look like, and the future of US, China, nuclear competition. Suffice it to say, the topic of golden dome remains as hot as ever. To that end, GNSI is preparing for our March 2026, Tampa summit on nuclear warfare, nuclear defense, slash golden dome and the use of nuclear energy for national security purposes. There is no better time to revisit a riveting discussion with an eminently qualified expert like our executive director. So enjoy this discussion on is golden dome The Future of Us, nuclear missile defense.

Gen. McKenzie: 2:05

Welcome back, general Ted, always good to be with you.

Tad Schnaufer: 2:08

So what's really happening with this golden dome concept? Well, Ted, I think

Gen. McKenzie: 2:12

golden dome is a is an idea worth exploring. I think it's a good I think the President's own to something here, I think certainly protecting the United States against nuclear attack is something we should all we should all be interested and in seeing brought to fruition, it will be an expensive project. There's a lot of history here, and we can unpack a little bit of that, if you'd like. But in my bottom line is, I welcome it. I think we should move forward with it.

Tad Schnaufer: 2:38

So let's first start with the history piece. Obviously, during the Cold War, the threat of mutual annihilation between US and the Soviets was a big deal. We obviously had defense measures in place, everything from the missile defense alarm system Midas, not the auto vehicle people in the 1960s and then, you know, the Reagan administration implemented what is popularly known as Star Wars, which got to a level of completion. How does this compare to those older, older systems? Sure.

Gen. McKenzie: 3:04

So, you know, going back into the 50s, 60s, the United States experimented with with systems to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. And in the 60s, the Nike system was a very it was an Army system, not particularly effective, designed to protect major cities. Then, in the 70s, you saw the Sentinel safeguard system, which was one we worked in, sort of in negotiation with, with, with the Soviet Union, designed to protect both missile fields and potentially major urban areas. It used a couple of different types of missiles, a short range missile and a long range missile, and it never really fully came online, but we experimented with it in the 70s. The radar from that system, the perimeter acquisition radar, is still up in lovely concrete North Dakota, where it's in use today, actually, to characterize objects in deep space. It's a huge it's worth taking a look at that actual par. You can see it for miles, but it looks deep into space. It's in concrete, North Dakota. And actually, when the town of concrete ceased to exist, as it did, it's now called the Cavalier air era, probably Space Force station today, but at any rate, there's still, there's a residue of that. Now, the Russians also built a ballistic missile defense system, and there still exists, actually the galoshe is the NATO code name for it, a follow on to galoshe actually is centered around Moscow and is designed to prevent, protect Moscow from attack. I think we would be able to overcome that if we struck them, you know, which would be a tragedy, but if that occurred, I think that that system is probably overcomeable. But nonetheless, it's an active ballistic miss. Active ballistic missile defense system in place today. So of course, when President Reagan came into office in the 80s, we talked about Strategic Defense Initiative. A lot of people oppose that. A lot of scientists opposed it on technical grounds, and a lot of scientists oppose it on theological grounds, which they clothe in technical resistance. So I actually think there was probably some there, there with that we never followed up enough to find out. You know, there's a theory of a theory says we, we pressured Russia, or pressured the Soviet Union, by claiming that we were going to invest in that, which helped push them to finance ultimate insolvency, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 1991 I think there's that's a mixed, there's mixed, mixed opinions on that. The history is not real clear to me that that actually had a huge hand in bringing the Soviet Union down. But the one thing that that we looked at were space based systems. And I'll come back to space based systems here in just, in just a few minutes. But the fact of the fact of the matter is, if you're going to talk about defending against ballistic missiles, you need to talk about putting systems into space. So today, as you and I talk and Tad there, there are not a lot of ballistic missile defense systems out there. Our THAAD theater high altitude air defense system can do EXO atmospheric intercepts above the atmosphere, but it only protects a very narrow footprint. It's not an area defense weapon in the size of the footprints classified and doesn't matter for our discussion today. But you're not going to put one in an Omaha and defend all of the middle the Midwest of the United States. You might be able to defend a section of Omaha, but just a very small footprint. The United States Navy has ships Ballistic Missile Defense shooters, which are Aegis platform ships, typically your Arleigh Burke, late model destroyers and some residual cruiser ships that actually have the capability to do this as well. Again, though they're very narrow, they're not an Area Defense system, so can protect you, but not broad areas of protection. The Israelis have some systems that we've cooperated with them on, not Iron Dome. Iron Dome is a much lower altitude system. It's not effective against ballistic missiles. It's effective against drones. It's effective against short range systems, but would not be effective against an ICBM. What is effective against an ICBM would be David sling, an arrow, or systems that Israel uses to shoot again EXO atmospherically, you're looking at systems outside the atmosphere as they descend in the post boost phase of their flight. So that's what Israel has used in defending itself against the short range ballistic missiles that Iran fired against them in the two attacks that have been made, and generally, those intercepts have been successful, although they have not achieved 100% results, sure. But finally, one other system that's in place now is we have ground based interceptors up in Fort Greeley, Alaska that are designed really oriented against the launch of North Korean weapons against the United States, and they would intercept in the post again, in the post boost phase, after the missile has finished its power flight, it was beginning its descent to the United States. I think there are 44 ground based interceptors up there, and the results have been mixed. Depends on your point of view. Some people would say not likely to be successful in an intercept. Others have been more positive about that. The problem with these types of systems are it's hard to know unless you test it. You got to test it, and it's hard to do those tests.

Tad Schnaufer: 8:11

So what we're looking at with this golden dome missile defense concept that President Trump announced recently is it's more about the intercontinental ballistic missiles. It's more the big missiles, the nuclear attic or something of that nature. We're not talking about smaller drones or anything like that, like you said, with the Iron Dome. So with that in mind, what does that actually look like? How would you intercept a missile being launched on North Korea or Russia or China or something like that?

Gen. McKenzie: 8:36

So Tad, I think what we're going to see in the next few months is we're going to do an intensive study of this, and we're not going to need to uncover new material. We already know the answer to it. Here's the fact of the matter, if you want to shoot at a ballistic missile and intercept it, the time to shoot it is during its powered boost phase. It launches from, say, North Korea. It's going to be in powered boost flight for two minutes, maybe three minutes, depending during that period of flight, that missile is non maneuverable. It's on a very fixed trajectory. It has an extremely bright thermal trail. It's easy to see, very predictable. That's the time to shoot it down if you want to do it. That's when you want to do that. So now you're not going to be able to do that from Fort Greeley, Alaska. You're not going to be able to be able to do that from the United States. In order to do that, you really have to do it from space, which means you have to have systems in space that will observe the launch. And those systems exist. Now we don't need to invent those, but you need something up there that will then engage that missile as it gains speed and begins to exit the atmosphere. The other advantage when you shoot at it, then the missile can't deploy what we call penetration aids, systems that can be deployed as it enters its post boost phase, that cloud your radar as you look at it, that make it hard to acquire the main target of the warhead itself. Additionally, in descent, a missile may maneuver. It may. Deploy multiple warheads, it may do a variety of things that make defense much more difficult. None of those things apply in boost and particularly that also begins now we begin to look at hypersonic missiles who now are going to be able to maneuver pretty radically in their late phases. So you want to get to them again early in flight, while they're still gaining the speed necessary that will allow them to do those successive maneuvers. So what I come back to Ted really, is if we're going to look at this seriously, we need to look at space based systems. I don't know that there's any other way to do it that offers the promise of technical feasibility.

Tad Schnaufer: 10:36

So with the, you know, the idea that people might get in their mind of the Golden Dome is like over the United States is dome of protection. But what would you recommend is that you really have to kind of get out there and touch where the missile takes off or relatively rapidly afterwards. You can't wait for it to come. I think

Gen. McKenzie: 10:49

the evidence is compelling. If you want to gain high, what we call PK probability kill, you got to get it early in flight. And so therefore, you know the and then you've got to make decisions on, you know, how many are you going to deploy, and that'll be based on the nature of the threat. I mean, defending against a North Korean threat is much simpler than defending against a Russian threat. Defending against a Chinese threat today is much simpler than defending against a Russian threat, although the Chinese threat is certainly growing, and we need to be aware of that. And of course, the problem is even more complicated than that. For example, ballistic missile submarines can launch, you've now got to be able to take that into account. So if you're looking at North Korea land based sites, they're fixed. We know pretty much where they will be, and we know the same thing for much of Russia and China as well. But if you're going to defend now against ballistic missiles, you've got to have a little more flexibility in how you position, how you look, at how you position your satellites. All those things again, are within the realm of technical attainment. It will not be inexpensive to do that. But I would argue Ted, look, what's the other side of the coin? People argue that what the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction has kept us safe for many decades. That's a thin tissue, and I would much rather prefer to have the ability to defend the United States against a nuclear attack, rather than depend on the opinions of a national leader in another country who may or may not ultimately prove to be rational.

Tad Schnaufer: 12:15

So what does the threat look like from, let's say, the Russians or the Chinese? Is it primarily going to be these intercontinental missiles that we're trying to defend, or how do we get after that issue today?

Gen. McKenzie: 12:25

Tad, the most significant capability that exists against us is, of course, the Russian threat. They can fire many hundreds of ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles against the United States. At the same time, they can launch submarine launched ballistic missiles against the United States. They pose the most significant existential threat in the nuclear domain that we face today. Additionally, some of their submarines might be able to fire cruise missiles against the United States from much shorter ranges. So it really is a complex threat that we face now. It may be, it may prove too difficult to be able to defend against that total threat. And I'm not sure that we would need to do that. I think you want to be able to protect against a smaller threat, handfuls of missiles, dozens of missiles, not hundreds of missiles. And that then that threat would actually be able to accommodate a North Korean threat, an Iranian threat, potentially a Pakistani threat at some point in the future, and you're probably against China for now, maybe not in the future against China. And would have to, you know, you want to eventually scope and scare your defense to the capabilities of your potential adversaries. So we need to take a look at that. But all those things, I think, are certainly, are certainly, certainly possible things that we would need to be able to defend against, right? Because you hear

Tad Schnaufer: 13:39

people discussing these systems as kind of a bullet hitting a bullet, hitting a bullet, if you will, a missile hitting a missile. And so they have to be very precise. They have to be locked in. The technology

Gen. McKenzie: 13:47

has to be there absolutely and so much easier to do that in the boost phase,

Tad Schnaufer: 13:50

right? So do it early. And additional consideration is you have to have enough of these intercept missiles.

Gen. McKenzie: 13:55

You do have to have enough of these intercept missiles. So now you're talking about putting them on orbit. You got to maintain them in space. There's been resistance to militarizing space. I would argue, China is already there. The Russians are already there. We need to recognize reality and be able to protect ourselves in the space domain, as others are doing now.

Tad Schnaufer: 14:14

So we'll go to space with that. With that in mind, what about the Chinese and the Russians? In a sense, particularly the Chinese pushing back on this is, you know, escalating the overall tension between the nations now that we can better defend ourselves, they now have to, you know,

Gen. McKenzie: 14:30

laughable Tad, actually, because the Chinese have heavily militarized space already, and they're busily building a nuclear capability to be at least equivalent to ours by the mid 2030s so this is typical Chinese propaganda, typical Chinese disinformation, misinformation designed to designed to occlude the argument, if you

Tad Schnaufer: 14:50

will. So either way, the United States should prepare for defensive actions, even if the you know the Chinese,

Gen. McKenzie: 14:56

I would argue the President's emphasis is exactly correct, right? It will be expensive. We need to thoroughly look at the technologies, but I would argue the technologies are there to defend against this. We will look we're probably not going to be able to defend against what we used to call a no notice over the pole, massive Russian attack, but Mutual Assured Destruction is your is your defense against that? But a smaller attack, and even a midsize attack you want to be able to defend against, because then what you know, if a nuclear weapon goes off on United States soil, then that begins to narrow the range of a president's responses. If you can prevent that from happening, actually, it opens the door for de escalation, right? So to say that ballistic missile defense is inherently escalatory, I think, misses the problem completely. That's

Tad Schnaufer: 15:43

an excellent point, that it gives that buffer for negotiation, because once it goes off,

Gen. McKenzie: 15:47

once a city is destroyed in the United States, any president is going to have a very narrow range of options to choose from. In his response, if you can prevent that from happening, you give the President of the United States more options about how to manage the crisis.

Tad Schnaufer: 16:02

So what role with that in mind, managing the crisis the US, it typically works with allies. What role does allies play? We heard Canada would like to be involved with such a, you know, Golden Dome concept. What about other allies, the Canadians? I think

Gen. McKenzie: 16:15

this is something that we should in the long run, we should work with all our allies to give them the capability to do this, you know, and that's a way forward. I think it's good for the US. It's good for them. It would perhaps revitalize some of the alliance structure out there. But I would think, and I don't know this, but I would think that we would certainly work to offer it to our NATO allies as we go forward.

Tad Schnaufer: 16:36

You believe that they bring something to the table as well, obviously, the geography they bring. But do they have other technologies that can

Gen. McKenzie: 16:43

assist I think, yes, I'm sure they do. I think most of these technologies are going to come from the United States and perhaps some from Israel. But I think we should open it up to as broad a broad a tent as possible as we look at it.

Tad Schnaufer: 16:57

And with that in mind, as this program expands this concept, it's obviously not something that's going to happen in the happened in the next year or so. It takes time to really play this out. So what's the operational timeline for something like this? I mean, very grand program. Well, I

Gen. McKenzie: 17:09

think you need to move I think a lot of these technologies exist today. I think we need to move quickly on it. But you're right. It's not a year away, it's much it's much more, much longer than that. But we need to commit to it. We need to lay the scientific research. And that's, yeah, well, mine the scientific research that's already out there in order to move forward with it. This is not something that's 20 years down the road. I think it's much closer than

Tad Schnaufer: 17:32

that. And you mentioned cost a few times. So as the DoD cuts costs in some other areas, is this, is this another program that it should invest in and moving forward.

Gen. McKenzie: 17:42

And again, what's, what's wrong about defending the United States against nuclear attack? Sure, I don't, I don't see any issues. I don't see any issues with it either. And I think it's worth, I think it's worth the expenditure of money that it would require to do that.

Tad Schnaufer: 17:53

And then what looking to our potential adversaries in this type of scenario? What are the defense capabilities of the say, the Russians or the Chinese. They have similar you mentioned briefly, with the Russians, but the Chinese also have defense. The

Gen. McKenzie: 18:07

Chinese have no ballistic missile defense capabilities that I'm aware of. They may have something on orbit that we don't know about. That's always possible with the Chinese. The Russians have the Kalash system that we talked about, which is really designed to protect Moscow, not much else beyond that. So you know, they will be very they will be keenly interested in these systems. As you may recall, President Reagan actually talked about sharing the technology with the Russians so they would be able to protect themselves too. I don't know that that's the way we want to go with this, but it certainly shows flexibility of thought as you approach it.

Tad Schnaufer: 18:39

And then, as we noted, the golden dome concept really focuses on the nuclear missile defense. What about smaller craft? You know, we have drones. We've seen with Israel, the different types of, you know, missiles that could come in. Should the us also look to maybe have another level, level of the stone below the

Gen. McKenzie: 18:57

TED? I think you're exactly right. I think you need to be prepared to operate against long range cruise missiles. The Russians, we know, are experimenting with those with global range. You want to be able to work against drones, not drones so much, but cruise missiles launched from submarines that are off your shores. That requires really air defense capabilities. It doesn't require new technology so much as additive capabilities that already exist. You're not gonna have to invent new things to defend against these capabilities. You are going to have to buy new equipment, buy new radars, buy new missile systems. In order to do it, and you're gonna have to make some basic philosophical decisions. What are you going to defend? Do you want to defend your major urban areas? Certainly, you also want to be able to defend against your submarine bases, the parts of our nuclear capability that would be necessary to fight if we had to fight, and then our missile fields. So some things, and this has all been thoroughly analyzed and discussed for many decades, going back to the 70s, when we first began to look at this, what is it that you want to defend that will lead you to how much. You need, and how much you're going to be willing to spend. And look, the last thing I would simply say on this, on this particular subject, is hypersonics complicate the problem. They're very difficult to strike once they gain speed, once they gain the ability to maneuver. So that, again, I go back to the point you want to be able to get them when they launch, not once they're in flight and have had the opportunity to begin their maneuvers.

Tad Schnaufer: 20:21

So we noted exactly getting them early. So we noted that you'd have to pretty much have something in space to be able to

Gen. McKenzie: 20:26

really, practically. There's no other way to do it.

Tad Schnaufer: 20:30

What else would be? What other components of this golden dome would also need to be in place? Obviously, you need radars.

Gen. McKenzie: 20:37

Or what else we actually have in space? The best early warning missile system in the world. It's actually in a geosynchronous orbit, about 25,000 miles altitude, that looks down that gives us infrared notification if someone launches a missile. We know that very quickly we have other radars that then give us what we call dual phenomenology, which, in this business, is what you want in order to predict a missile you want to get, you want to get two separate sources of its existence and path of movement, so you can then begin to determine where it's going to hit. We can do this in a matter of seconds. It's very quick. I've been part of this process before, so you can do that now for talking about taking weapons in space. Now you're probably going to need to put even better radars on low Earth orbit. So once you get the initial indication of a launch, you can lock in on it. Then you're going to have a missile platform, a bus, if you will, with multiple warheads, probably that would then release those and be guided to the target. Look, there are a lot of ways to do this that are above our technical level of discussion here, active, semi active, passive, all kinds of ways you can apply guidance to a kill vehicle. The key thing, though, is you want to do it when the missile itself cannot maneuver and is on a very, very predictable ballistic path.

Tad Schnaufer: 21:53

And we should note that the these kill missiles are interceptors. They're not nuclear, they're just meant to

Gen. McKenzie: 21:57

destroy. They're not nuclear. They can be high explosive. They can be purely kinetic, where they got to actually hit the vehicle. We got people that will work that out,

Tad Schnaufer: 22:06

right but, but in the end, it is a defensive system. It

Gen. McKenzie: 22:12

is inherently defensive, and I would argue that it actually brings stability. I reject the assertion that ABM systems are destabilizing and that's that argument's been made by a lot of smart people. I just don't agree with it. I think anything that adds to your defensive capabilities provides further stability, right?

Tad Schnaufer: 22:31

And with that stability, as the nuclear problem becomes what's something called a three body problem, as the Chinese are rapidly expanding their nuclear program, is this part of a response to that? Is this?

Gen. McKenzie: 22:42

I think it could be tad is where, because look, as the Chinese nuclear arsenal expands, we're either going to have to expand our own nuclear arsenal as we confront two potential adversaries, or you're going to have to come up with a way to protect our own capability. Well, nobody wants to build more nuclear weapons. So here's a path where you don't have to build more, a lot more nuclear weapons.

Tad Schnaufer: 23:01

And then lastly, to finish up with, the overall threats, a number of us treaties with the Russians on nuclear weapons actually will be ending. They're coming to term here in the next few years, and it doesn't look like those will be reinitiated, particularly as the war in Ukraine continues. Is that another area of cause of concern? Or is it something

Gen. McKenzie: 23:18

I tell you? What causes concern is the way the Chinese are building nuclear capability and to negotiate with a single partner in a three body. Problem is strategic myopia that we can't afford. So I think I'm not particularly concerned at the idea that these treaties are going

Tad Schnaufer: 23:35

to lapse right particularly if you have the defenses in place,

Gen. McKenzie: 23:39

particularly if you recognize you're now dealing with two different entities, the Chinese and the Russians, and you believe you have the capability to at least partially defend yourself against a small to moderate strike.

Tad Schnaufer: 23:50

So with all that in mind, what can we expect of this golden dome project in next couple of years here, as we look forward,

Gen. McKenzie: 23:57

you know, I think, I think we're going to see the pass forward. They're going to look at all these possibilities. We're going to select which ways we're actually going to deploy I think that'll come fairly quickly, because, again, there's a lot of technology that already exists. We're not going to have to invent a whole bunch of stuff to do this. So I think that'll move fairly quickly. It won't be six months, it won't be a year, but it won't be 20 years either, right?

Tad Schnaufer: 24:20

Yeah, it probably won't stall. Stall out as some of those later Cold War programs that ended up not

Gen. McKenzie: 24:25

technology is better. And again, if you shift to the ascent phase vice the descent phase, you remarkably simplify your problem. Well, thank you very much, sir. My pleasure. Ted, as always.

Jim Cardoso: 24:42

Thank you again to GNSI Executive Director, retired general, Frank McKenzie, and GNSI strategy and research manager Dr Tad schnaufer for an excellent discussion on Golden Dome. This timely, Critical Conversation is a great lead in for our next GNSI Tampa summit at. Which will be held March 24 to the 25th 2026 at the USF Tampa campus. We'll spend two days diving into the RE emergence of nuclear weapons in Modern Warfare, nuclear defense, slash golden dome and the use of small nuclear reactors for national security purposes. The summit will feature keynotes and panels from experts across government, academia and industry, and provide smaller Working Group opportunities for participants to really contribute to the dialog. GNSI s mission is to inform policy makers to enable actionable, well informed decisions, and you can be part of that input. Go to our website for more information and to pre register to receive further updates on the summit. Thanks for spending some time with us today, next week on the podcast, we'll turn our attention back to critical minerals. Recall that six months ago, the Trump administration released an executive order on unleashing America's offshore critical minerals and resources. Since then, there's been no shortage of developments associated with China's near monopoly of the global supply chain for critical minerals in both mining and even more importantly, in processing. We'll sit down with GNSI resident fellow, Dr Linda known who is finalizing a decision brief on critical minerals, with focus on cobalt, which is crucial for smartphones, jet engines and other national security applications, that's next week on at the boundary. If you don't want to miss that episode or any other Be sure to rate, subscribe and let your friends and colleagues know if you're watching on YouTube, hit that like button, subscribe and turn on alerts. Follow along the GNSI on our LinkedIn and X accounts at USF, underscore GNSI And check out our website as well at usf.edu/gnsi, that's going to wrap up this episode of at the boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, maybe controversial, but overall, just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you at the boundary. You you.