Jeff Cole Addresses Golden Dome and Integrated Air Defense at Tectonic Defense Summit

AUSTIN, Texas – (March 12,2026) – Hidden Level CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Cole discussed the future of the Golden Dome initiative and the evolving air and missile threat environment at the Tectonic Defense Summit in Austin, Texas.

“The threat environment is evolving rapidly, and traditional active radar systems are becoming easier targets,” said Cole. “Today, a low-cost drone equipped with an RF seeker can smoke multimillion-dollar radar systems. That’s why the future of layered defense will rely more heavily on passive sensing technologies that can detect threats without giving away their position.”

The “Golden Era: Missile and Drone Defense” panel, highlighted perspectives from defense tech leaders on how emerging missile, drone, and hybrid aerial threats arereshaping requirements for airspace awareness, early warning, and layered defense. Cole shared expert perspectives on the evolution of airspace conflicts, current threats in the homeland and abroad, and the role of RF‑based sensing and intelligence in supporting next‑generation defense architectures.

“The era of improvised explosive devices showed us that small, inexpensive threats can force major shifts in defense strategy,” said Cole. “Low-cost drones are creating that same inflection point in the skies. Technologies like passiver adar, combined with the layered defense vision behind Golden Dome, will help restore the advantage to defenders by making those hard-to-see threats visible again.”

The Tectonic Defense Summit, hosted by defense tech media brand Tectonic, convenes founders, military leaders, investors, and policy makers for candid discussions on the most difficult challenges facing the defense sector.