President Trump calls for 'Iron Dome' for US homeland missile defence

By Courtney McBride and Myles Miller 

President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order for a “next-generation” defence shield to protect the US against ballistic missiles and other long-range attacks, taking on a goal that past administrations — including his own — struggled to reach. 

“The threat of attack by ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles remains a catastrophic threat facing the United States,” according to a White House document on the upcoming executive order.

 

It says Trump will order the construction of an “Iron Dome” shield, comparing it to Israel’s vaunted system, which was developed in coordination with the US and is designed to address threats including drones, rockets and cruise missiles.

 

Any such system would have to go well beyond what Israel’s Iron Dome provides if it’s to cover all of the US. RTX Corp.’s Raytheon unit, which produces Iron Dome in coordination with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, says the system’s Tamir missile can down weapons launched from a range of 4 to 70 km (44 miles). 

 

The president’s executive order seeks to accelerate production and delivery of new systems to track and intercept incoming missiles, as well as defeat them before launch. The White House document on the planned order was reported earlier by CNN.

 

The US already has a range of missile defence systems in place. There are Terminal High Altitude Air Defene systems, as well as Aegis systems on warships and Patriot batteries and ground-based interceptors. 

 

But the Defence Department has struggled to develop a defence shield for all of the US. Unsuccessful efforts go back to President Ronald Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, a space-based system that became known as “Star Wars.”

 

Since 2002, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has spent more than $194 billion, including $10.4 billion for fiscal year 2022, to equip operational commanders with a layered system of sensors, interceptors, and command and control capabilities to detect, track and destroy incoming missiles, the Government Accountability Office said in a 2023 report.

 

In 2019, during Trump’s first term, the Pentagon canceled a $1 billion Boeing Co. contract for a “kill vehicle” envisioned to shoot down missiles from North Korea or Iran. 

 

Adversaries such as China and Russia have worked to develop hypersonic weapons in recent years, as Defence Department has struggled to keep pace. According to the White House, even in the face of mounting threats, “United States homeland missile defence policy has been limited to staying ahead of rogue nation threats and accidental or unauthorised missile launches.”

 

The Missile Defense Agency oversees a system of 44 ground-based interceptors based in California and Alaska designed and intended to stop small numbers of ballistic missiles from North Korea, not waves of missiles from China or Russia. Last year, Lockheed Martin Corp. won a $17 billion contract to upgrade the interceptors. 

 

According to the president, the new system “will be made all in the USA.”