In October 2023, the skies lit up over Tel Aviv as Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted a barrage of rockets. The system, hailed as one of the most effective short-range missile defenses ever deployed, worked as intended; tracking, targeting, and destroying incoming threats in real-time. But for all its precision and success, Iron Dome offered a sobering reminder: What works against crude rockets may not be adequate against the next generation of guided missiles.

Enter hypersonic weapons.

Not just fast, capable of traveling at up to 10 times the speed of sound, these glide-vehicles and cruise missiles can also maneuver mid-flight, dodging conventional radar systems and outrunning interceptors. Just as ballistic missiles fly on comparatively predictable trajectories, these weapons hug the terrain and zig-zag at lower altitudes, making them far harder to stop.

No Iron Dome, THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Aerial Defense) battery, or Aegis system – no matter how advanced – is fast or flexible enough to reliably counter such a strike once it's been launched. Meanwhile, countries such as Russia have already used them on the battlefields of Ukraine, with plans to deploy them in Belarus later this year; Iran claims to have them in its arsenal; and China has fast emerged as a clear leader in the field. 

That means the old playbook is increasingly obsolete, which also means its replacement requires a full-on reimagining of how we detect, track and counter such threats.

To figure that out, let’s begin with a quick review of the old approach. 

Traditional defense systems such as the Iron Dome, generally rely on ground-based radar and data centers to detect, analyze, and respond to incoming threats. But in this new era, seconds — sometimes milliseconds — of data latency can actually be catastrophic. A weapon traveling 7,000 mph can cover 1,000 miles in under 9 minutes. That’s less time than it takes to load the dishwasher, let alone coordinate a national defense. 

At the core of the problem are two bottlenecks: Horizon (line-of-sight) and information latency.

First, let’s consider those line-of-sight limitations. Ground-based radar can only see so far. The curvature of the Earth restricts early detection of low-flying, terrain-hugging weapons until they’re already well along their trajectory. By the time a land-based sensor network picks up the signal, precious seconds have already been lost. Worse still, these detection systems are often located in fixed, known positions, making them especially vulnerable to preemptive strikes.

Now, let’s get to that latency question; and this one’s an Achilles’ heel.

The time it takes to transmit raw sensor data from airborne or satellite systems down to Earth-based processing centers, run threat analyses, and relay targeting instructions back up to intercept platforms is far too long. Even in ideal scenarios, this round-trip introduces delay on the order of hundreds of milliseconds to many seconds. That’s enough time for a hypersonic missile traveling at Mach 10 to cross 15 to 20 miles; which is more than the entire range of some short-range defense interceptors; like many of those employed with Iron Dome. 

That said, when advanced compute power moves into orbit, the math starts to change. 

A distributed network of AI-enabled satellites operating in low-Earth orbit, coupled with direct to user high-bandwidth optical communications, can detect launch signatures, classify threats, predict maneuver paths, and coordinate defensive actions, all autonomously, and at machine speeds, potentially before the missile even crosses national borders, transforming space from a passive sensing layer into an active decision-making environment. Think of it kind of like a neural network stretched across the night’s sky coupled with a laser pointer, that enables those old bottlenecks to simply go away.

Of course, there has been progress.

The Pentagon has already taken initial steps with the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tracking Layer, a growing web of low-Earth orbit satellites designed to detect and track hypersonic weapons. But without more fully integrating high-performance real-time processing and decision-making into those layers, coupled with high-bandwidth communications, the full potential is undermined.

Older systems like Iron Dome are, in other words, a reflex. What we need now is a brain that sees and thinks about the entire battlespace, and then coordinates defenses accordingly across continents at the speed of light. Human operators will need to stay in the loop as backstops to the system, but if they don’t increasingly rely on orbital AI systems, these weapons will almost certainly emerge as not just a military challenge, but a powerful geopolitical equalizer. Rogue states or peer competitors could launch first-strikes with virtually no warning, and long before human decision-makers have the time they need to respond.

We’ve already gotten a glimpse of some real-world implications. 

In March 2022, a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile struck an underground weapons depot in western Ukraine; not because it was necessary from a tactical standpoint, but because it served as a proof of concept. A year earlier, a Chinese hypersonic glide vehicle demonstrated capabilities in exercises over the South China Sea, weaving around simulated interceptor zones. 

These are operational demonstrations.

Still, it can get more complicated. Imagine a swarm of multiple hypersonic missiles launched simultaneously from submarines, aircraft, or mobile land platforms, each on unpredictable vectors, or an attack timed to coincide with a cyber barrage that blinds ground-based radars just long enough to let the strike slip through. 

In short, this isn’t just about speed. It’s about the need to outthink adversaries in real-time, at orbital altitudes, and, yes, far faster than humans are capable. 

As with Iron Dome, defense success will still depend on how quickly we can recognize and neutralize threats. But unlike it, the next layers of defense must live where the threat does: in space, and thinking in microseconds.

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