Possible Golden Dome Siren Systems

[CarolinaHurricane20]

With the upcoming deployment of the Golden Dome missile defense system, there's growing interest in what kind of siren infrastructure will accompany these new sites. Given the high-stakes nature of missile threats, the siren systems should ideally combine the reliability of mechanical units with the versatility of modern electronic systems. Voice-capable electronic sirens like the Whelen WPS or ATI HPSS series could offer real-time communication and distinct missile alert tones, setting them apart from standard civil defense warnings. Integration with early detection systems and ensuring wide-area coverage—especially in remote or rugged terrain—will be essential. Just as important will be public education on what these new tones mean to avoid confusion in high-stress moments.
Do y'all think there will be new systems for these missile silos?

[AcousticTheory]

What is being referred to as the "Golden Dome" is not the kind of missile defense systems used in Israel, where the threat comes mostly from small projectiles like rockets, mortars, and small guided missiles. (Also, I think the name "Golden Dome" will go away after 2028 because it's cartoonish.) The damage from these kinds of rockets is localized and the public can effectively seek shelter from them. In that case, it makes sense to have siren warning systems outdoors and also to use systems like THAAD and Patriot missile batteries (or the Israeli "David's Sling" system) to target the incoming projectiles, or perhaps a more close-in method of engaging them like the Phalanx CIWS guns used as part of C-RAM systems on U.S. military installations.

The real threat behind the development of the "Golden Dome" (Hemispheric Defense) is intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles, including those that can go up into space before coming back down. These are the big missiles that are the foundation of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, and it is believed that eventually, missiles will be created that are either targeted enough with small enough yield to avoid a credible MAD scenario, or else missiles will be created that cannot be intercepted by conventional means because they are too fast or numerous, and used by international actors who have discarded prior treaties, and the Golden Dome system is meant to provide a line of defense against those types of attacks that might threaten The Homeland.

Until now we in the United States have not lived in the type of threat environment the Golden Dome represents, and such an environment is not expected to fully materialize until some time in the future. We deal with slower moving threats like weather systems, nuclear power accidents, and chemical releases, where there is time to mount a defensive response by alerting the public through media and government alerting systems, including outdoor warning sirens and all-hazard weather radio. A missile attack on the United States would be somewhat different. Instead of hours of warning, there would be 30 minutes or less. Not all areas would be equally impacted. If you have ever played with the missile explosion simulator Nukemap, you'll see that it would take a lot of individual strikes to affect significant populated areas, not just one rogue missile, and the impact falls off rapidly outside those areas. So when designing a take-cover warning system for this type of attack, some considerations will be different from what we have known before.

1) Speed of Activation. The amount of lead time from warning to disaster may be less than 30 minutes for an international missile strike, so time is of the essence in any warning of an inbound strike. Wireless emergency alerts are one measure that addresses time sensitivity, but it is not as rapidly disseminated to "everyone" in an area because it depends on people paying attention to warnings from their phone. Outdoor warning sirens have a benefit in that they are quickly heard by a large number of people. They are not always acted upon in an appropriate and time-sensitive manner; sometimes people go outside and look up at the sky instead of turning on their TV and seeking shelter. The speed of outdoor warning systems will make them useful but if the public is not regularly and continuously educated about their meaning, they will quickly lose the mental muscle memory of what to do when the siren sounds.

2) Unified Messaging. If you are in Boston, you shouldn't hear a different warning tone or message than you would hear in St. Louis. In the years since the Civil Defense Administration became FEMA, the policies around use of outdoor warning sirens have become liberalized, and cities are allowed to come up with their own warning signal scheme. For instance, in Nashville TN, the sirens sound a wailing signal (the Attack signal) for tornado warnings, while in Detroit, the sirens sound a steady tone. This cannot be allowed for a missile strike public warning system. There must be one universal tone, and one universal message, enforced through standardization. The messaging scheme should be flexible enough that it also permits timely warnings for the existing hazards that an area already deploys outdoor warning systems for, such as weather, nuclear disaster, or chemical release.

3) Coverage of urban centers. Not all areas are going to be as susceptible to missile strikes, because adversaries won't waste extremely expensive weapons attacking rural areas. So it is not necessary to erect vast public warning systems for missile attacks everywhere, only in areas that are valuable as targets. This mainly includes urban centers and military installations, and industrial areas involved in defense production. The purpose of protecting the people in these high value target areas with an outdoor warning system for missile alerts is to reduce the number of casualties and enable the remaining people to quickly muster for disaster relief efforts following an attack. The goal of the system will be to cover the largest urban center with the minimum necessary density of sound emitters to assure the necessary level of warning with both voice and tone with minimization of garbling or multiple arrivals.

4) Voice. The attention signal for an outdoor warning system needs to be universally understood and recognized, but very often it will be necessary to deliver additional information, and this means that outdoor warning systems in these target areas will need to be voice-capable. The recommended configuration for an acoustic emitter will be a high-output loudspeaker with simultaneous 360-degree or part-angle coverage, not a rotating speaker head (which is useful in covering wider areas in suburbs and rural areas but introduces time delay in delivering voice messages). Voice messages take a long time to deliver, relative to the attention signal itself, so voice messages need to be formulated to give only the necessary amount of information. Most of the system's active time should be spent delivering the attention tone, instead of repeating a verbal message in multiple languages, because the attention tone will be the fastest thing to be heard and recognized by constituents of the warning system. But because of the nature of modern warnings seeking to reduce ambiguity while also notifying the public, the ability to deliver a pre-recorded or text-to-speech voice message with high intelligibility will be a key goal of the missile defense warning system.

5) Activation Method. An outdoor warning system for missile attack needs to be able to respond to an automatic activation resulting from a detected inbound strike. It needs to be able to play an attention signal and any following voice message, then repeat that tone and message, or else return to a ready state. System locations will need to be surveyed for readiness without broadcasting a warning message, and audible tests will also be needed as part of public education. SCADA systems already exist for issuing commands to devices within a map-drawn polygon and collecting system-wide status information, but these will need to be optimized for use of wide-area wireless communication. The SCADA system will need to be able to respond to an input from a central surveillance authority consisting of a polygon of affected areas and the type of warning issued, and then issue commands to the system locations in that polygon area only, without intervention by local authorities to confirm a warning, because there is not enough time for someone to "go down and push the button". Companies like Genasys (LRAD) already have much of this capability already built into software but it will need to be further enhanced and interconnected in such a way to respond automatically to a centrally issued warning.

Those are my thoughts on the subject.

[HDN]

[Lots of good stuff.]

I agree with this except the assessment of the threat environment. We lived in such an environment throughout the Cold War, and still do if we consider that the Cold War never actually ended and adversaries were merely replaced. As a response to that environment, the Reagan Administration had the Star Wars initiative - orbital lasers or other sorts of weapons deployed to prevent missile attacks from reaching the US. I see the Golden Dome as being that and probably more.

As for EOWS, I see existing systems being leveraged in addition to other modern communication methods as current emergencies are communicated now. I don't expect any major changes on our end, if any occur at all.

[Lycanroc76]

Since World War II and the cold war, missiles and bombers have gotten a lot faster. Making sirens less efficient At warning people earlier. What I’m saying is they might not install a siren system at all, and instead use phone alerts.

[Eclipse DDS]

Realistically (but unfortunately) yes, I believe that Lycanroc76 may be right. I'd imagine that the US would go more in the direction of phone alerts nowadays, but of course we cannot be sure. They could easily play the same excuse cards they did in the UK, that national systems are "too costly and overwhelming to install and maintain"...

Of course, sirens are often a more solid approach to national alerting systems than digital alerts, however nowadays they seem to have ironed out a lot of the initial problems with phone alerts, here in the UK at least, and seem to work when deployed in real emergency situations (such as severe weather warnings across coastal regions, which occurred earlier this year).

Therefore, although I think we'd all like to see a national siren system implemented, I don't believe that's what the US would be getting. Although this is just what I'm guessing, some news will probably soon come out proving me wrong XD

[Greenrid]

On the other side of things, many towns and cities in the country already have a siren system. Even just a single fire siren could work, all the towns would have to do is run them in attack, and tell people that this signal means to take cover.

[Andresplazm]

I say they might add some sirens but we got the EAS system all over the country.
But it’s just like the Cold War a way of getting the public’s attention. For example yk how Los Angeles has a siren system still there if they reactivated or removed and added new sirens that would be cool and good for the city because it’s a big target from ICBMs.
Am just saying for this lol
Edit: Ik that they have EAS but if people don’t have a reach to a phone or something that can come in handy

[thekek]

I too believe a siren system would be necessary to complement the Golden Dome, especially when digital alerts can be easily silenced or switched off by the user. But since money is not infinite, the system may have to be limited to specific regions of the country based on the assessment of where the warheads will fall. These shall include major cities that have significant economic and industrial capacity, as well as having a population greater than 400,000 people. All systems should implemented at the county level to cover smaller cities and towns next to the critical targets as well.