 "Why Trump’s Golden Dome defence system may never take off")
Donald Trump has repeatedly talked about his plans for a ‘Golden Dome’ defence system to protect America.
The plan is at least in part inspired by the ‘Iron Dome’ – Israel’s multi-layered defence which have played a key role in defending it from rocket and missile fire from Iran and allied militant groups in the conflict unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
However, the project faces myriad challenges.
This includes the cost, the technical know-how needed to get such a programme off the ground, the size of the United States.
Trump also wants the ‘Golden Dome’ ready by the end of his second term – which many consider an unfeasible deadline.
Let’s take a closer look at all the reasons why the system may never take off
Cost
The Golden Dome could be prohibitively expensive.
According to SAN.com, Trump has said the project would cost around $175 billion.
Republicans have already provisioned for 25 billion in funds in their spending bill.
However, experts say that the Golden Dome could cost considerably more than Trump estimates.
In fact, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office this month estimated that merely the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as $542 billion over the next 20 years.
A system such as that envisaged by Trump “could require a more expansive SBI (space-based interceptor) capability than the systems examined in the previous studies. Quantifying those recent changes will require further analysis,” the CBO said.
“If you want to seriously pursue this, it would be a multi-trillion dollar project,” Fabian Hoffmann, a missile technology researcher and non-resident fellow of the Centre for European Policy Analysis, told The Telegraph UK.
Thomas Roberts, assistant professor of international affairs and aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the price estimate was “not realistic.”
“The challenge with the statements from yesterday is that they lack the details needed to develop a model of what this constellation would really look like,” he said.
Technical knowledge
Trump on Tuesday said he expects the system will be “fully operational before the end of my term,” which ends in 2029, and have the capability of intercepting missiles “even if they are launched from space.”
Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground- and space-based capabilities that are able to detect and stop missiles at all four major stages of a potential attack: detecting and destroying them before a launch, intercepting them in their earliest stage of flight, stopping them midcourse in the air, or halting them in the final minutes as they descend toward a target.
But experts warn it isn’t going to be easy.
The physics of boost-phase interception are “wicked hard”, a Lockheed executive told online newsletter Defense One, as pe_r Times UK._
In short, the technical know-how to put together such a vast system may simply not exist yet.
The space-based weapons envisioned for Golden Dome “represent new and emerging requirements for missions that have never before been accomplished by military space organisations,” General Chance Saltzman, head of the US Space Force, told lawmakers recently.
“The main challenges will be cost, the defence industrial base, and political will. They can all be overcome, but it will take focus and prioritisation,” said Melanie Marlowe, a non-resident senior associate in the Missile Defense Project at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The White House and Congress are going to have to agree on how much to spend and where the money will come from,” Marlowe said.
Experts also say the United States’ missile threats differ significantly from the short-range weapons that Iron Dome is designed to counter.
Beijing is closing the gap with Washington when it comes to ballistic and hypersonic missile technology, while Moscow is modernizing its intercontinental-range missile systems and developing advanced precision strike missiles, according to the Pentagon’s 2022 Missile Defense Review.
The document also said the threat of drones – which have played a key role in the Ukraine war – is likely to grow, and warned of the danger of ballistic missiles from North Korea and Iran, as well as rocket and missile threats from non-state actors.
Size matters
There’s also the issue of size to consider.
Israel’s sophisticated ‘Iron Dome’, developed over decades with considerable US support, is capable of detecting incoming fire and deploying only if the projectile is headed toward a population center or sensitive military or civilian infrastructure.
Israeli leaders say the system isn’t 100 per cent guaranteed, but credit it with preventing serious damage and countless casualties.
However, the US is a vast nation.
Israel, by comparison, is tiny – around the size of New Jersey, the fifth smallest state in the US**.**
“To build a system over the entire country would be incredibly hard, and we’re not sure it’s going to work,” Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona said at _Politico’_s Security Summit.
The difference between Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ and Trump’s proposal is like that between “a kayak and a battleship,” Jeffrey Lewis, a missile expert at the Middlebury Institute, told The Telegraph UK.
Geopolitical tensions
The ‘Golden Dome’ may only further inflame geopolitical tensions.
Russia and China have already slammed the idea.
“The United States, in pursuing a ‘US-first’ policy, is obsessed with seeking absolute security for itself,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning was quoted as saying by SAN.com.
She urged Washington to give up the project and rather take steps to restore trust between the US and China.
In a joint statement earlier this month, China and Russia called the Golden Dome idea “deeply destabilising in nature,” warning it would turn “outer space into an environment for placing weapons and an arena for armed confrontation.”
Trump has said he had not yet spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Golden Dome program, “but at the right time, we will”.
Experts, in short, remain sceptical.
“There are a number of bureaucratic, political, science and technological milestones that will need to be achieved if Golden Dome is ever going to enter service in any meaningful capacity,” said Thomas Withington, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
“It is an incredibly expensive undertaking, even for the US defence budget. This is serious, serious money,” Withington added.
Withington wondered if Trump was trying to bankrupt the US’ adversaries – much like Reagan did the Soviet Union with his ‘Star Wars’ project.
“Maybe the Trump administration is embarking on a similar strategy, knowing full well that this will suddenly affect the military industrial complex of both China and Russia,” Whittington told the newspaper.
All this makes Trump’s 2029 deadline – the end of his 2nd term – largely unfeasible at best and a pipe dream at worst.
With inputs from agencies
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