Kristen Smith
Shubhi Mishra, founder and CEO of Raft and a two-time Wash100 award recipient, said investing in data fusion capabilities is the key to building the Golden Dome, a system of space and ground technology President Donald Trump plans to build to defend against ballistic, hypersonic and advanced cruise missiles.
In an opinion piece published on Tuesday, Mishra called the existing U.S. military system a fractured infrastructure, citing aging sensors, software and networks that were not developed to be interoperable with each other since they were built by different defense contractors.
Israel and China’s Missile Defense Models
Looking at Israel’s Iron Dome, the Raft executive said the missile defense system’s components speak the same language since it was built by a single contractor, resulting in a clear and rapid flow of detection and interception data that enables quick responses and precision targeting.
China implements a similar model, with its sensors, ships, missiles and satellites designed to be integrated and controlled under the umbrella of the Chinese Communist Party for faster coordination and more effective operations.
Despite the advantages of Israel and China’s defense models, the executive did not recommend imitating them. The U.S. defense ecosystem is too large, diverse and decentralized to rely on a single contractor and having defense companies use the same language, framework and tools would kill competition – “the very thing that makes American defense innovation so powerful,” explained Mishra.
Golden Dome Requires System Interoperability
According to the Raft CEO, fusing data to make systems interoperable is the real solution to making the Golden Dome an effective missile defense system. Data fusion can be done using “software that can translate between platforms, agentic AI that can process data from different sources, and cloud infrastructure that can unify streams of information in real time,” she added.
