HASC strategic forces hearing underscores Golden Dome intelligence-sensor architecture as FY27 commits $38.9B
At an April 17 House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee hearing, Assistant Secretary of War for Space Policy
Berkowitz's HASC testimony treats Golden Dome as a program of record, but the FY27 cost curve is already running 10% above the March official estimate and the program has no integrated command-and-control construct capable of absorbing the $1.48B Space Data Network as its nervous system. The battle-management layer very likely becomes the critical failure mode over the next 12-18 months as RDT&E dollars flow into sensors before integration architecture stabilizes, consistent with converging open-source critiques from CSIS and industry. The invisible requirement driving this gap is finished-intelligence inputs into target discrimination: NGA multi-INT fused products and NSA signals-based launch confirmation have not been publicly scoped by congressional oversight and almost certainly force a classified annex debate in the FY27 markup. Should Congress trim the reconciliation-funded portion, the administration may re-scope toward a focused missile-warning upgrade, collapsing the architecture into an NGA- and NRO-centric construct while the Space Force-led battle-management piece contracts sharply.