Building the Golden Dome: Bypassing Bureaucracy for High-Tech Solutions
Special Contributor
Tuesday, September 16th, 2025
By Joe Kochan, CEO, National Spectrum Consortium
The proposed Golden Dome isn’t just a new missile defense system; it’s a massive feat of engineering. Building it will require integrating radars, satellites, and missile interceptors into a complex network of systems at a scale not seen before. And there is an additional challenge: this network must operate in an already congested electromagnetic spectrum, or it risks catastrophic failure.
The fight over who gets to use our airwaves isn’t new. For years, we have argued over this finite resource. Radio waves power everything from our daily 5G service to the GPS satellites we rely on for weather and navigation. They also fuel the critical military and intelligence operations that a system like the Golden Dome requires.
We need to help our warfighters build this system and meet this Administration’s ambitious three-year deadline. The Department of Defense and the private sector must join forces to create new wireless solutions — and they must do it quickly.
The government has two powerful tools at its disposal. Public-private research partnerships can accelerate wireless innovation, and a contracting vehicle called an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) can help break through bureaucratic red tape that sometimes mires the DoD procurement process.
https://www.defensedaily.com/commentary/building-the-golden-dome-bypassing-bureaucracy-for-high-tech-solutions/
