Golden Dome: Satellite tracking technology could help defend against growing hypersonic threats

President Trump’s call for a “Golden Dome for America” is already fueling efforts to expand satellite-based systems capable of improving U.S. defenses against cutting-edge hypersonic weapons, industry observers say.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order in January calling for a new missile shield and invoking former President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which worked to develop a space-based defense against ballistic missiles.

The order has sparked movement in the U.S. defense industry, including at Florida-based L3Harris Technologies, which made headlines last year when several satellites it had designed and built were launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as part of the U.S. military’s push to develop hypersonic tracking capabilities.

More recently, L3 Harris’ President of Space and Airborne Systems Ed Zoiss explained in an interview with The Washington Times’ Threat Status team that a global satellite tracking system would be critical for defending against hypersonic threats.

The accelerating development of hypersonic weapons by countries like China and Russia constitutes an existential threat to the U.S. military’s current missile defense architecture, according to Mr. Zoiss, who explained that hypersonic missiles are capable of evading detection of most current U.S. missile defense systems designed to defend against ballistic missiles.

“The challenge with the new class of weapons that we have is that these hypersonic weapons can now maneuver around our land-based and sea-based radar systems,” Mr. Zoiss said in an exclusive Threat Status Influencers series video interview that was sponsored by L3Harris.

“If they maneuver around our radar systems, our radar systems can’t provide the fire control coordinates for the interceptor,” he said. “So it’s a real challenge now, for us to defend against this new category of threat.”

U.S. defense officials are very aware of the threat posed by hypersonic weapons. 

Most notably, China tested a fractional orbital bombardment system in 2021 that featured hypersonic technology and displated a capability for circumventing some of the U.S.’s most advanced missile defense systems.

Mr. Zoiss called the Chinese test a “wake-up call.”

He added that defending against hypersonic threats is one of the goals of the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 0 Tracking Layer program. The program is part of the agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, designed to deploy satellites to help track emerging missile threats. In February 2024, the SDA successfully launched five L3Harris satellites to assist in hypersonic missile tracking.

Around the same time, L3Harris worked with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to launch a hypersonic ballistic tracking space sensor satellite, which the company described as “an on-orbit prototype demonstration that can track maneuvering hypersonic missiles flying beyond the range of today’s ballistic missile detection capabilities.”

Mr. Trump’s January executive order announced that the “acceleration of the deployment” of an HBTSS layer is now a U.S. policy priority.

The L3Harris constellation tracks missiles using infrared technology, a process Mr. Zoiss says can be tricky with hypersonic weapons.

“The Earth is rotating. It’s going from ocean to land. You see clouds. You see heat signatures that are all over the Earth,” he said. “There may be fires burning somewhere in California. All kinds of different heat signatures. And the goal of this satellite is to find that dim heat signature for that hypersonic weapon and then to track it. And we demonstrated that over the last thirteen months, that it can be done from space.”

Mr. Zoiss said L3Harris’s satellites provide essential tracking data to interceptors as they look to take down hypersonic missiles.  

“It’s the system that’ll provide fire control. So think of it as the satellite or satellite constellation now enveloping the Earth that provides the laser. It provides the dot on that hypersonic glide vehicle as it’s maneuvering,” Mr. Zoiss explained.