US warns of missile threats that Donald Trump's Golden Dome may face

The DIA released a chart as a prelude to a White House announcement regarding threats to the US that the Golden Dome missile defense umbrella, a priority of President Donald Trump, would counter

By Tony Capaccio 

China may within a decade possess scores of orbiting missiles with nuclear payloads capable of reaching the US with much shorter flight times than traditional intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Defense Intelligence Agency said Tuesday. 

The agency released a chart as a prelude to a White House announcement regarding threats to the US that the Golden Dome missile defense umbrella, a priority of President Donald Trump, would counter.   

 

The chart depicted potential advancements in increased traditional intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities among adversaries, including China, Iran and Russia. China, according to the chart, could field as many as 700 nuclear-tipped ICBMs by 2035 up from 400 today; Iran 60, up from none today. Russia’s inventory could grow to 400 from 350 now. 

 

 

More significantly, the chart showed the potential growth in China and less in Russia of orbiting, nuclear-armed space-based missiles in a “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System,” or FOBS. 

 

The weapon enters “a low-altitude orbit before reentering to strike its target, with much shorter flight times if flying the same direction as traditional ICBMs, or can travel over the South Pole to avoid early warning systems and missile defenses,” the agency said. “It releases its payload before completing a full orbit.”

 

DIA projected China could possess 60 of these weapons by 2035 from none today, and Russia 12 from zero today. 

 

The disclosure in 2021 that China executed a FOBS test flight set off alarms within the US military.

 

“What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a weapon system. And it is very concerning,” Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an October 2021 interview on Bloomberg Television. “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that. It has all of our attention.” 

 

Separately, the DIA chart forecast that China might field by 2035 as many as 4,000 “Hypersonic Glide Vehicles,” up from 600 today. The vehicles are launched by ballistic missiles and glide for at least half of their flight to targets. They can be armed with a nuclear warhead, but China may already “have deployed a conventional” weapon “with sufficient range to strike Alaska,” according to the chart.

 

As of now, the Defense Department and White House have offered few specifics regarding the Golden Dome’s architecture, timelines and cost.

 

“No one has really defined what the Golden Dome is,” Representative Ken Calvert, chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said in an interview last week. “Is it defending the entire Lower 48 and Alaska? What are we doing and how are we doing it? I’ve heard from every consultant in town that’s trying to get in the middle of this thing.”  

 

The US may have to spend as much as $542 billion over 20 years to develop and launch the least proven and likely most contentious segment of the system — the network of space-based interceptors, the Congressional Budget Office said last week.

 

That network could cost $161 billion even at the low end, the office said in an assessment prepared for a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The price tag will depend on launch costs and the number of weapons put into orbit, it said.

 

Trump’s plan harkens back to former President Ronald Reagan’s unfulfilled quest for a space-based missile defense system that was widely known as “Star Wars.”