To Protect the Nation, the Golden Dome Must Be Capable of Protecting Itself

Though rarely featured in public demonstrations of military capability, satellites are indispensable to the defense of America and its allies. They offer near-immediate warning of missile launches, enable strategic communications, and provide precise positioning and timing information for navigation and weapon guidance, to name just a few examples.

The Golden Dome for America—a multi-domain, layered missile and air defense architecture that includes satellites for sensing, tracking and countering advanced missile threats—will deepen America’s dependence on space assets for security. Our adversaries, fully aware of the asymmetrical advantages provided by superior space capabilities, have been demonstrating the ability to put critical U.S. assets at risk for the last two decades.

“The visibility, predictability and reconstitution timelines associated with current military space architectures favor the actor that goes on the offense first,” U.S. Space Force Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said in March 2023. “This is an unstable condition that works against deterring attacks on space assets. We can’t have that.”

Gen. Saltzman has proposed a space deterrence theory called “Competitive Endurance,” which he describes as the ability to protect U.S. space assets while denying an adversary’s hostile use of its space assets. He listed several features of an architecture capable of achieving Competitive Endurance, including disaggregation, diversification, proliferation and maneuverability.

Spacecraft maneuverability allows individual satellites to deviate from predictable orbital paths to avoid detection, perform up-close inspections to identify potential in-orbit threats and take evasive maneuvers if an attack is imminent or underway. The enabler, of course, is onboard propulsion, an area where L3Harris has unmatched experience and capabilities to cover any scenario, spanning high-thrust chemical propulsion systems for speed, highly efficient electric thrusters for endurance and restartable rocket engines in support of more unpredictable orbits. The majority of these propulsion technologies are flight proven and ready to support Golden Dome immediately.

Chemical propulsion systems offer high acceleration rates, allowing satellites to react quickly to threats. L3Harris offers a range of proven chemical in-space propulsion systems, from relatively low-thrust monopropellant engines used for spacecraft orientation and planetary trajectory corrections to more powerful bi-propellant systems designed for maneuvering large assets such as NASA’s Orion spacecraft that carries astronauts to deep space.

Electric propulsion systems are ten times more fuel-efficient than chemical systems with low thrust. This makes them ideal for the continuous maneuvers required for many resiliency operations, including chaotic orbits which make it difficult for an adversary to predict an asset’s orbital position. They can also provide continuous thrust to maneuver in shadow orbits and perform close satellite inspection missions. Primarily, they are very useful for constellation management and versatility.

L3Harris’ flight-proven XR-5 Hall thruster is used for satellite orbit raising and station-keeping, while the company’s more powerful Advanced Electric Propulsion System will transfer NASA’s 20-metric-ton lunar-orbiting Gateway station from Earth orbit to lunar orbit and insert it into a near rectilinear halo orbit, where it will be used to stage astronaut missions to and from the moon’s surface. Such large-scale maneuvering across the whole domain of cislunar space provides a huge advantage over adversarial peer nations.

On the larger end of the scale, long-duration upper stage rocket engines are used to maneuver satellites in an unpredictable manner, making it difficult for adversaries to locate our national space assets. L3Harris’ RL10 upper stage engine, capable of multiple restarts in space, is an excellent tool to place satellites in very high orbits that are difficult to track and then relocate them as the mission requires.

Innovations in nuclear propulsion make satellites highly agile and fuel-efficient. L3Harris is a longtime leader in space nuclear power and propulsion, with experience in high-thrust nuclear thermal propulsion systems as well as nuclear electric systems that leverage existing electric propulsion technology.

Our propulsion solutions protect key Golden Dome space assets to ensure that both sensor and shooter missile shield satellites are difficult to track, target and attack. With proven in-space propulsion systems for any scenario and robust research and development of promising new technologies, L3Harris stands ready to help the Golden Dome protect itself while it protects the nation.