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This transcript is from a CSIS podcast published on May 16, 2025. Listen to the full podcast here.
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Andrew Schwartz: I’m Andrew Schwartz, and you’re listening to The Truth of the Matter, a podcast by CSIS where we break down the top policy issues of the day and talk with the people that can help us best understand what’s really going on.
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To get to the truth of the matter about the development of Golden Dome plus the 10th anniversary of the founding of the CSIS Missile Defense Project, we have with us none other than my good friend Tom Karako, who’s the director of our Missile Defense Project and a senior fellow in our Defense and Security Department. Welcome to the podcast, my friend.
Tom Karako: Great to – great to see you again, Andrew.
Mr. Schwartz: So before we get into the Golden Dome, which is, you know, quite in the news today and it’s fascinating, I want to ask you about what the mission of the Missile Defense Project that you direct was at its inception and how that’s evolved over the past decade.
Dr. Karako: Yeah. No, I appreciate that. We’re excited about marking 10 years. You know, this was – it was this month when we kicked it off. We had over the vice chairman, Admiral Winnefeld, and this was back in 2015. And I think, you know, what we’re trying to do – and Kath Hicks and John Hamre took a bet on us to get this thing off the ground, and as it turns out it’s become considerably more important over the past 10 years, considerably more in demand, which is great – I guess great in some ways, bad in others just in terms of how the world has shaped up.
But I think the vision from the beginning was to get greater attention to what has, you know, to some extent has always been a big piece of the defense budget. Back in 2015 it was about $12.8 billion, or 7.6 percent of DOD’s modernization, went to missile defense of some kind. Today it’s up to 25 ½ billion (dollars) and 8.2 percent of DOD’s modernization budget, big numbers in both cases. But I think the vision was greater attention, greater analytical rigor, you know, to a(n) area, a topic that had been somewhat polarized and somewhat kind of thin in terms of the public analysis – as I like to say as a recovering college professor, to bring kind of a graduate-level rigor to the policy conversation about missile defense.
Mr. Schwartz: We’re both recovering college professors, but I still may throw in my hat for a couple more adjunct classes.
What events over the past decade have really reinforced the necessity for having a Missile Defense Project here at CSIS? Because there’s a considerable amount of them.
Dr. Karako: No, there’s been a lot of them. You know, we’ve had over our Israeli friends, our European friends, from Japan and South Korea. All of these countries, of course, are – (laughs) – high demand for this – for this capability because of the neighborhoods they live in, because of the threat. As our now-nonresident CSIS fellow John Plumb – he was in the Biden administration – he testified that missiles have become weapons of choice, and that kind of just captures what the issue is and why this is so important.
You know, we’ve had a lot of events about hypersonic defense, cruise missile defense, countering UAVs. And I think – as I think about kind of the characteristics of the Missile Defense Project, a couple come to mind.
One is, as I’ve been told, we have a fairly operational flavor, which is to say we’re really attentive and we listen to and talk to the military a lot to kind of deal with not really, you know, visions about capability or visions about technology but the no-kidding DOTMLPF [Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, and Facilities] – the logistics and the doctrine and all these kinds of concerns that actually matter to making this thing a – to making missile defense real.
A couple other characteristics, I would say, include from the very beginning we’ve been focused on that full spectrum of threats from mud to space – UAVs and cruise and hypersonic, not just the ICBM stuff.
And then, finally, from the beginning I would say we’ve been pounding our spoon on the highchair about the need to reorient missile defense to Russia and China. You know, remember, in 2015, that was just a year after the invasion and occupation of Crimea. And it’s taken a long time – the 2025 executive order kind of acknowledged that this reorientation on missile defense was still in need of being done, and that’s been a constant refrain, I would say, of our project.
Mr. Schwartz: And, Tom, let’s talk about Golden Dome. How is the Missile Defense Project going to become even more relevant with this development of a Golden Dome? First, let’s tell us: What is the Golden Dome?
Dr. Karako: Yeah. Well, we’re going to find out, I think, a lot more details here soon, when the 2026 PB budget – president’s budget request is released. That should have some more detail. I’m not sure that all the decisions have yet been made. The president has to have a bit more direction relative to today in terms of where he wants to prioritize this. But I think a couple things clearly stand out.
One, it’s not just going to be about the rogue state ballistic missiles anymore. It has to be, and rightly should be, about that full spectrum, to include air and cruise missile defense. We’ve known intellectually that this is a problem for the defense of the homeland, a strategic problem, and I think – I’m hopeful that that will be gone after.
And then, likewise, I think a – you see bits of this in the reconciliation bill, by the way. You see big chunks of money going to hypersonic defense over and above our current programs, to directed energy, these kinds of things. So I think you’re going to see an emphasis on next-generation capability in the main, but also more procurement in the near term of stuff that we can turn the procurement volume dial up on.
So it’s going to be a mix of those things. It’s going to be heavy on space – space interceptors and perhaps some space-based interceptors if that R&D work goes well.
So I think it’s a – it’s a very good moment for missile defense. It’s been a – frankly, it’s been a great couple years for missile defense. As you and I have talked, it’s a miracle that more missiles did not get through on April 14 of last year. It’s a miracle that so many of those Iranian ballistic missiles in October of last year were taken out.
Mr. Schwartz: You’re talking about when Iran fired on Israel.
Dr. Karako: Yeah. There was a couple of – several different attacks.
Mr. Schwartz: Yeah.
Dr. Karako: And you know, every single U.S. and Israeli missile defense system has been actively and successfully engaging missile threats fired in anger, and have done a pretty, pretty dang good job in the process.
Mr. Schwartz: And so, Tom, Israel’s system is called Iron Dome. We’re calling it Golden Dome here in the United States. Can you explain to, you know, us lay-folks, like, what is a – what do these domes of missile defense actually do? I know they shoot, you know, incoming missiles out of the sky, but it’s bigger than that. It’s a – it’s a real fabric that’s being created. Can you get into that a little bit?
Dr. Karako: That’s a good way to put it, Andrew. You know, I think, first of all, you’re right; let’s not get hung up on the name. You know, for Israel, Iron Dome is actually just one layer. It’s their lowest layer of their multitiered system. Golden Dome is a riff on that, of course. But what you’re going to see is you’re going to see a number of different systems.
Golden Dome is not a system. It’s not an “it” in that sense. It’s going to be an initiative, I would say an umbrella concept, for putting a lot of these things together – for stitching together the fabric, the data fabric, that needs to be brought together as the integration of all these different sensors and the different – the integration of all these different capabilities into something coherent and something operational. And so there’s a – there’s a lot of goodness that we’ve called for, for instance, in our past reports on cruise missile defense in 2022 about the need to stitch together all of the DOD and commercial sensors, for instance, in the continental United States that are doing weather or air traffic control or all these kinds of things. There’s tons of data that can be brought together and, using kind of fancy machine learning and all this other stuff, brought together to help the NORTHCOM commander to help NORAD better be able to track things. Our 2022 report basically predicted the Chinese spy balloon before it happened because it pointed out that our algorithms were tuning out things that weren’t moving like a bomber or moving like a ballistic missile.
Mr. Schwartz: Tom, how do you expect this technology to change over the next couple of years? And how do you expect your program to change with it?
Dr. Karako: (Laughs.) The team is going to be busy, and I do want to absolutely just give a shout-out to all the teammates that have put out just some amazing work over the last years. Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, Shaan Shaikh, Masao Dahlgren, Pat Bazylczyk, Matt Strohmeyer, lots of others just put out some really quality work, and I encourage folks to take a look at what they’ve done.
I think the short answer, Andrew, is we’re going to be busy because this is in demand. I think a lot of the things that we’ve been predicting about the need for these other kinds of capabilities and the need for reorientation, they would seem to be coming into view, and that’s a – that’s a good thing. I think we’re probably going to see increased attention to – again, more to space, more to directed energy, more to advanced – and I would say innovative, appropriately innovative – ways to getting after this problem.
It’s a wicked-hard problem. This is – yes, it’s rocket science. Yes, it’s bleeding-edge emerging technology. And by the way, missile defense has always been there at the bleeding edge of emerging and disruptive technology going back to the 1950s. you know, they invented the supercomputer for NORAD kind of a – kind of a thing. So – and advanced computing generally. So we’ll be busy.
I think we’re going to also see a lot of attention to the defense industrial base, whether it’s for focal plane arrays, for sensors, or solid rocket motors, or for all the other things in between that make this stuff work.
Mr. Schwartz: Tom, you know, so this begs the question, you know, how well-positioned do you consider the U.S. to be in the race for aerial and space superiority?
Dr. Karako: I’d say we’re, in some respects, playing catchup. The Chinese and the Russians have had a bit of an advance while we’ve been occupied on CT and a handful of other distractions from strategic competitors. But we are catching up. And, you know, we have a commercial and an innovative base in the United States, an economic base second to none. And so I think you’re going to see some unleashing of that. And that’s promising for this – for this area. Again, missile defense and emerging technology kind of go hand in hand. And I think the future is bright for this, in terms of the Golden Dome Initiative.
Mr. Schwartz: And do you think the United States is really positioned to be at the peak of innovation on this? Or who’s our main competition right now?
Dr. Karako: That’s a good question in terms of who’s buying and selling, right? And the case study that’s illustrative about this is that of Turkey. When a handful of years ago Turkey was kind of thinking about Patriot, and then they were thinking about a Chinese system, and they ended up with the Russian S-400 which, maybe for political reasons, domestic and foreign reasons, they might have gone with. But as a result, the consequences were very severe. So we had to kick a NATO ally off the F-35 program.
Mr. Schwartz: Yeah, I was going to say, this is – this is a NATO ally that bought a weapon system for Russia.
Dr. Karako: Right. Strange bedfellows at the fault lines of regional geopolitics. But you can’t have the F-35, our single-biggest major defense acquisition program – you can’t have the F-35 flying back and forth in front of a Russian radar and our adversaries basically figuring out what it looks like as it does so. So those were the consequences. It’s a reflection, as well as the global demand signal for this stuff.
You’ve seen, I would say, also in the last couple of years the European Sky Shield Initiative, led by the Germans but a lot of other European countries kind of getting on board for that. And that’s, I would say, a function of the overall global demand for this as well. I don’t think anybody’s really got the exquisite, eye-watering, Seeker capabilities, frankly, for hit to kill that we do – that the United States does. That’s why we need to expand our Seeker production capacity for the PAC-3 and for lots of other things, because of the 18 countries in the world that operate Patriot, they all want more of it. They want a lot more of it.
But nevertheless, there’s a lot of other ways to skin a cat or to kill a missile. And it doesn’t necessarily just come down to hit to kill. There’s all kinds of – blast frag. A lot of the missiles in the Middle East that have been shut down have been blast frag, for instance, as opposed to hit to kill. So let a thousand flowers bloom, and heavy supply-side increases in Europe, South Korea and Japan as well. But the U.S. exquisite – the crown jewels of missile defense are American made.
Mr. Schwartz: Absolutely. I wanted to shift to Russia and Ukraine for a minute. How is technology in the Russia-Ukraine conflict shaping modern warfare? And what role has your project played in understanding the changes there, and the latest?
Dr. Karako: Yeah. Well, look, if I can again tout the work of the Missile Defense Project team over the past few years, I would say a lot of the predictions that we made about complex and integrated attack, which is to say different types of missiles coming in at the same time and structured attacks to make it really hard for Ukraine to do everything – you saw that on April 14 in Israel as well. You know, Ian Williams put out a report on the – Putin’s Missile War, kind of chronicling all the different – analyzing in every way possible how these attacks have been going, what they’ve meant.
You know, one of the lessons is in a world where the battlefield is transparent, you got to move around. You got to move around quickly. You got to shoot and scoot. And that’s been true of artillery for a long time, but it’s – you got to shoot and scoot more on the missile defense side as well. And so I’m going to predict that we see more in the future of today’s trailer-based Patriots, for instance, becoming more mobile, being on trucks, as the Germans have Patriots on trucks, for instance.
So I think lots more mobility because the enemy can kind of see you everywhere. We have to contend with – contend with the proliferation of precision guidance and the proliferation of surveillance globally. That makes it hard to survive, but it’s just the reality of war.
Mr. Schwartz: How do you think the Ukrainians are holding up right now against the Russians?
Dr. Karako: Well, look, I would say, especially considering that the United States has not shipped any more stuff to Ukraine since January of this year, I think they’re holding up pretty well. It’s good to see the Europeans doing a bit more. I’d like to see them doing more. And I certainly do hope that the United States begins to resume some of the shipments of things that Congress, frankly, already appropriated, but that have been held up, reportedly, in recent months. So it’s been remarkable that, again, a country the size of Texas has held off the Russian hoard for these – for over three years now. So we’ll see. We’ll see how it holds up over time.
But, you know, I also kind of just want to draw attention to the most bleedingly obvious fact, that the Ukraine conflict has shown the salience, the demand signal for offensive and defensive fires generally. As I like to say, long live the king of battle, which is how artillery and missiles have been called for hundreds of years. The salience of offensive and defensive fires is not going anywhere.
Mr. Schwartz: Tom, let me ask you about drones. How do they figure into this equation? Drones have been used extensively by both Russia and Ukraine. And we’re seeing the proliferation of drones throughout the world into other conflicts. How do you view drone warfare as you’re studying missiles?
Dr. Karako: Yeah. I think – and I’ve been saying this for at least six, eight years – that the UAVs and drones generally – you know, putting aside the super small stuff – they’re really an adjunct to the missile war problem. And really, when you think about the Shaheds that fly from Iran to UAE, or from Iran to Israel, or, you know, long distances in Ukraine, these are, these are cruise missiles, OK? The V-1s of today – simple, basic, not very sophisticated, but good enough. And they’re cruise missiles.
And I think beginning to understand that, and to kind of demystifying all this vocabulary about loitering munitions, and UAV’s, and – look, it’s just something which is sent. That’s what a missile is. And that was kind of doctrinally – I think, consistent with my urging for the past number of years – doctrinally, was put into the last Missile Defense Review, that UAV’s need to be thought of as part of the air and missile threat challenge. It’s just a species of air defense.
It’s just a really, really prolific air defense problem. Everybody has to look up now. Everybody has to worry about it. Counter-UAS is now part of Army basic training because everybody has to be concerned about it. And so understanding it as an adjunct to the air defense problem I think is the beginning of wisdom here.
Mr. Schwartz: Tom, finally, I want to ask you about the shrinking of the American nuclear umbrella. How has it impacted your work?
Dr. Karako: Well, I would say actually that the – and I want to – the Project on Nuclear Issues, directed by Heather Williams here at CSIS, has done tons of great work on this. I actually think that, notwithstanding the shrinking size in terms of real numbers of warheads for the United States, nevertheless the salience of nuclear weapons is going up, and going up massively. That the modernization of our nuclear programs – Sentinel, sea launch cruise missile, all these kinds of things – the importance of that, yes, we’re hitting some challenges programmatically because, you know, we’re replacing systems that have been around for decades and decades, and we’ve taken our time. And we’ve taken too long to replace them.
But nevertheless, the importance of that is going to go up massively. Why? Because the world has changed, because Russia and China are back, and history is back. And if you think conventional deterrence is expensive – if you think nuclear deterrence is expensive, conventional deterrence is even more expensive. And unfortunately, while we diagnosed the problem of great-power competition, you know, way back in 2018, and you might even say in the 2014 timeframe, that we took time to take our medicine, and to take the prescription of what we need to do. And just take a look at the DOD budgets that are relatively flat, adjusted for inflation, as opposed to a spike.
So I think – I think the salience of nuclear weapons, it’s a new missile age but it’s also a new nuclear age. And sometimes I irritate people when I say this, but I’m a missile defense guy. But Ronald Reagan’s prediction that missile defense was going to make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete, we got to get over that. That’s not going to happen. Nuclear deterrence is not going away. The utility of ours and theirs, that’s not going away. It’s just so happens that missile defense is dang important to contribute to deterrence, to contribute to conventional deterrence and deterrence by denial. All those things are true at once.
Mr. Schwartz: Tom, I can’t thank you enough. And we’ll be talking a lot about these issues real soon. Really appreciate it.
Dr. Karako: Thanks, Andrew.
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Narrator: If you enjoyed this podcast, check out our larger suite of CSIS podcasts from Into Africa; The Asia Chessboard; China Power; AIDS 2020; The Trade Guys; Smart Women, Smart Power; and more. You can listen to them all on major streaming platforms like iTunes and Spotify. Visit CSIS.org/Podcasts to see our full catalog.
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