Matthew Smokovitz
If the United States fights China on China’s terms, it may risk collapse in the opening hours. Such a war would not begin with a slow exchange of fire—it would be a race between the two sides to sever the other’s ability to think and act as a single, coordinated force. Beijing has spent decades forging its warfighting system into a tightly integrated brain and nervous system. Theater commanders fuse data from satellites, over-the-horizon radars, airborne sensors, and undersea arrays into a shared real-time picture. From this picture, precisely timed orders flow to air, sea, and missile forces. That operational coherence—seeing, deciding, and striking as one—is what turns scattered operational assets into a lethal, synchronized kill web.
That coherence is China’s greatest strength and its most brittle hinge. When missile salvos arrive just as bombers spring in from their launch points, when submarines maneuver without orders because their neural network tells them the enemy’s retreat path—this is operational synchronization in action. But when data flows stall, when timing errors creep in, that neural network misfires. Missiles still launch, radars still receive—but the system fights as a collection of disjointed parts. Strikes fizzle. Orders lag. Reflexes fail.
Traditionally, the United States has attacked such integrated systems by methodically rolling them back—destroying radars, missile batteries, and command centers one by one. In Desert Storm, in the Balkans, that worked. But against China’s kill web? It is a slow, costly path to disaster. Mobile launchers reposition before they are struck. Redundant sensors light back up. Alternate comms routes reroute data. The brain and nervous system remain intact even as its limbs are wounded.
This is where Golden Dome enters the discussion. Conceived as a homeland missile shield, Golden Dome envisions a multilayered architecture—with one layer even space-based—using both sensors and interceptors in orbit. This space layer is vital for defense—it is a vantage point above the battlefield no terrestrial platform can match. But as the concept takes shape, it makes clear that such a layer will possibly be necessary to countering China’s kill web. Space-based interceptors are not just tools to strike incoming missiles targeting the US homeland and its interests; they can also hold the enemy’s neural infrastructure at risk.
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