Lockheed Martin has built a prototyping environment that supports the collaborative development of a Golden Dome for America Command and Control (C2) capability. Leveraging its Center for Innovation facility in Suffolk, Virginia, better known as The Lighthouse, Lockheed Martin is bringing in a range of existing, combat-proven C2 systems designed to connect sensors, shooters, and platforms across all domains, from seabed to space.
C2 capabilities are important to Golden Dome for America as they perform the crucial task of integrating data from various sensors and coordinating direct actions, such as interceptor launches, while also enabling cyber-resilient communications and synchronized decision-making across domains through the fusion of trusted, multi-source data. This is key to enabling fast, more confident responses to threats.
“This rapid C2 prototyping effort is one among many within Lockheed Martin demonstrating how we can support the US Government as a Golden Dome for America mission partner,” said Daniel Nimblett, Vice President of Layered Homeland Defense at Lockheed Martin.
“Through a series of demonstrations, we’ll fuse existing C2 capabilities from across industry and government into a scalable baseline that delivers real-time situational awareness and enables informed decision-making to defend the nation. This phased approach reduces risk and delivers capabilities early by accelerating integration, reducing redesigns, and lowering lifecycle costs,” he added.
Pressure Tests for Future Threats
Prototyping is already underway at the Lighthouse, where real capabilities are being tested against current and future threat scenarios, from ground to space.
These capabilities include: threat evaluation, battle management, mission planning tools, sensor tasking, AI/ML integration and optimization, joint planning, robust data link sharing and more. These are deliberate technological actions to enable integrated domain awareness, extend decision timelines, and optimize engagements.
“Golden Dome for America is a challenge unlike anything attempted at this scale or on this timeline, and we’re moving fast to bring together connected C2 capabilities that work now,” said Thad Beckert, Golden Dome C2 director at Lockheed Martin.
“This prototyping approach is a novel method to provide evolutionary capability for an unprecedented effort. This environment offers the government the ability to experiment and exercise with technologies that weren’t originally built to work together and make them operate cohesively,” he explained.
The Lighthouse’s unique infrastructure is optimized for collaborative experimentation and analysis and has supported numerous experiments and analytical efforts with government, academic and industry partners.
The Lighthouse capabilities include:
- The ability to perform realistic exercises at multiple classification levels
- Modeling and Simulation
- Wargaming
- Live, Virtual, Constructive (LVC) Experimentation
- Complex, Tailored Demonstrations
- Tabletop Exercises
- Analytical Workshops
Next, Lockheed Martin intends to work with government and industry partners to pull in technologies from across the defense space to facilitate delivery of the overarching C2 layers for Golden Dome for America ahead of 2028.
Golden Dome for America is the U.S. government’s effort to build a layered, Integrated Air and Missile Defense architecture to protect the homeland from evolving threats.
