Former President Trump has repeatedly promised an Iron Dome missile defense system to protect the United States if he returns to the presidency. Experts say it would be a far cry from what is used in Israel.
In his pledge, first made in December and repeated at least twice at campaign stops since then, Trump said he would work to build “the biggest dome ever” due to “a lot of hostile people out there.”
But experts say a promise to build something similar to the Israeli defense system, but better and across the entire continental United States, would have an exorbitant price tag and little use in stopping the short-range missiles it is intended to protect against. .
A more sensible goal would be an improved missile shield, made up of multiple layered systems, working with various protections the country already has in place, they say.
“Iron Dome was a system tailor-made for Israel,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Placing an Iron Dome on every corner is neither affordable nor sensible.”
Trump’s promise should be taken as a metaphor, Karako said, because “in the popular consciousness, Iron Dome equals missile defense. So he’s using it as a rhetorical device to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do lots of different kinds of things.'”
Israel’s Iron Dome stands firm in public view as a system that, night after night, shoots down Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza Strip in the seven-month war with the militant group.
The missile defense system, largely funded by the United States, was designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery fired at a distance of no more than 70 kilometers. Such a weapon would be of little use to the continental US, which sees its potential threats coming from intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from countries like Russia or China, rather than from short-range projectiles fired across the border in Canada or Mexico. .
Still, Trump clung to the idea of a similar system for the US territory, announcing for the first time in December his intentions to build one if he won a second term.
“It’s something that’s really important to me,” he said in Iowa. “We are giving billions of dollars to other countries so they can build a dome. But we ourselves do not have a dome. We will have the biggest dome ever.”
And at a rally in New Hampshire in January, he declared that he would “build an Iron Dome over our country, a state-of-the-art missile defense shield, and it’s all made in the USA.”
This was followed by his final remarks during a campaign speech in Michigan on May 1, when he said in a second term: “We will build a great Iron Dome much like the one Israel did, but even better.
“I’m saying, ‘Why don’t we have this?’” he continued. “We should have that too. We have a lot of hostile people out there. We have a lot of bad actors out there. Let’s build the biggest dome of all.”
In recent years, the US has sought to compete with Russia and China in developing faster, longer-range missiles, while also preparing for future nuclear threats from countries such as North Korea and Iran.
The former president, who on many occasions promised massive defensive infrastructure projects for national security — including a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — offered no specific details for his vision of an American Iron Dome. .
“Trump will often speak in brand terms that are easy to understand for the average American, and so I wouldn’t necessarily interpret him as saying that he wants an Iron Dome for America to literally mean the same kind of system,” said Rebeccah Heinrichs. , senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank. “I think there are a lot of opportunities to build on the current systems we have in place.”
Trump is well known for trumpeting the promise of US military power, most notably in January 2019, when he announced at the Pentagon an ambitious goal “to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States, anytime, anywhere.” and anywhere. ”
Many of the initiatives presented at the time did not come to fruition because “the Trump administration’s actual programs and budgets were nothing like” what he proposed, according to Karako.
And in May 2020, he revealed offhand at the White House that the US was developing a new “super duper” hypersonic missile.
“We are currently building incredible military equipment at a level no one has ever seen before. We have no choice. We have to do this – with the opponents we have out there. We have a… I call it a ‘super-duper missile’. And I heard it the other night, 17 times faster than what they have now,” Trump said at the time.
Since leaving office, military competition between the United States, Russia and China remains high, with moves to militarize space seen as the next step.
The United States protects against any potential long-range missiles through a combination of ground-based interceptors located at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, as well as the associated radars that accompany this system.
Other defense elements protect against short-range missiles, such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which at one point was ready to be used to defend Hawaii when North Korea stepped up its missile testing several years ago.
And Washington, D.C., is protected by NASAMS, a short- and medium-range ground-based air defense system.
The US military has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in missile defense research and development over the decades.
Major upgrades to these systems would require Congressional buy-in and would come at a high price.
It is notorious that Trump was unable to woo Congress over the construction costs of his border wall and instead used various tactics to bolster funding, including taking money from military construction coffers, much to the ire of those responsible. of the defense.
Still, there are those in Congress who believe there is room to accelerate several efforts already underway at the Pentagon.
“President Trump is right to say that our homeland is not adequately protected from China and Russia,” said Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement to The Hill.
“We need to accelerate the modernization and expansion of our early warning and missile defense systems, invest in capabilities that help us track and counter high-altitude threats, and build a true counter-drone network for U.S. bases.”
To get lawmakers on board, Heinrich of the Hudson Institute said it would be wise for Trump to prioritize specific projects.
“If strengthening national missile defense is a priority for a second term in the Trump administration, we need to start early and make these big changes and see what technology we can invest in and have available to deploy things in a cost-effective way. way,” she said.
A national missile defense system is not a new concept. In 1983, in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, then President Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed the Star Wars program, a system designed to protect the homeland from intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But the program, created in 1984, did not go beyond research and development, as it was only several years later that it was concluded that the technologies considered for such a project were decades away from being ready for use.
What’s more, critics of SDI feared it could spark another arms race between the U.S. and the Kremlin, with then-Sen. Joe Biden, in 1986, stated that the program “constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern politics.”
SDI was closed in 1993, after the end of the Cold War.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
