Defense Intelligence Agency publishes ‘Golden Dome’ missile threat assessment

The Defense Intelligence Agency has released an unclassified assessment titled “Golden Dome for America: Current and Future Missile Threats to the U.S. Homeland,” outlining how missile threats to the United States are expected to evolve and what a sophisticated homeland defense would need to counter.

Published from Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, the assessment compiles the agency’s unclassified intelligence on adversary missile capabilities and inventories. It organizes the threat into six categories: intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, two classes of hypersonic weapons, land-attack cruise missiles, and fractional orbital bombardment systems.

According to the agency, the danger to the U.S. homeland from both conventional- and nuclear-capable delivery systems is projected to grow over the next decade, with advances in scale and sophistication. The assessment is intended to depict the kinds of threats a robust missile defense architecture would be designed to defeat, reflecting the expanding range, speed, maneuverability, and deployment methods of modern systems.

While the document focuses on capabilities rather than specific countries, the categories it highlights mirror areas of rapid development worldwide, including long-range ballistic arsenals, sea-based ballistic platforms, hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles, and novel orbital approaches intended to complicate early warning and interception. By setting out the landscape in an unclassified format, the assessment provides policymakers, lawmakers, and the public a baseline view of the evolving challenge and the potential requirements for detection, tracking, and interception across multiple domains.

The report underscores DIA’s role in supplying defense intelligence on foreign militaries and operating environments to inform decisions from the battlefield to the national level. It also reflects the agency’s continuing efforts to publish unclassified materials that translate complex technical developments into accessible insights for non-specialist audiences.