To defend the United States from aerial attacks, President Donald Trump has directed the development of a cutting-edge, next-generation missile defense shield.
The president issued an executive order on Monday assigning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the responsibility of creating plans to construct a “Iron Dome for America” that will shield Americans from the threat of missiles fired by an adversary from abroad. Trump fulfilled a campaign pledge to give missile defense first priority by doing this.
“By next term we will build a great Iron Dome over our country,” Trump declared on June 14 at a gathering in West Palm Beach. “We deserve a dome…it’s a missile defense shield, and it’ll all be made in America.”
However, what precisely are Trump’s intentions regarding a “Iron Dome”? What you should know is as follows:
1. Israel’s first defense
Trump’s proposed Iron Dome missile defense system is comparable to an Israeli system designed to intercept thousands of rockets.
The Iron Dome is a missile defense system created by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems that serves as Israel’s first line of defense. Since its initial deployment in 2011, it has repelled and destroyed rockets fired by Iranian drones and missiles, Hezbollah soldiers, and Hamas militants.
The land-based Iron Dome was constructed to protect Israeli people against rocket barrages, which are often launched by Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli officials, the Iron Dome has intercepted thousands of missiles fired into Israel with 90% success.
Since 2011, the United States has made at least $2.6 billion in contributions to the construction of Israel’s Iron Dome system.
2. The threats facing the U.S.
Importantly, the Iron Dome is a short-range defense system that can intercept missiles that are between 2.5 to roughly 43 miles away. Because long-range ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile attacks are listed in Trump’s executive order as “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,” his suggested defense system will need to be modified and redesigned to fend off intercontinental missiles.
The New York Times claims that Russia currently possesses 1,250 deployed weapons in its arsenal. Under both Trump and President Joe Biden’s leadership, North Korea has continued to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Pentagon analysts predict that China will have a comparable weapons inventory in ten years, if not sooner.
Hypersonic missiles, which are intended to travel faster than Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, have been the subject of recent experiments by China and Russia. According to the Associated Press, the United States and Japan have teamed together to tackle the problem of intercepting missiles at such high speeds, which is expected to cost $3 billion.
3. Reagan tried it first
The first American president to advocate for a national defense system that would fight the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, including warheads mounted on ballistic missiles, was Ronald Reagan.
Reagan put forth “a vision for the future that offers hope” on March 30, 1983, which he named the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The goal was to create a missile defense mechanism based in space that would shield the nation from a massive nuclear assault. Reagan suggested creating technology that would enable the US to recognize and automatically eliminate a large number of incoming ballistic missiles before they could reach their intended objectives.
Regan called on the scientific community to collaborate with the defense sector and strive toward a time when Americans would not have to worry about nuclear attacks, even though he acknowledged that the technology needed to achieve his vision was not yet available.
“I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete,” Reagan stated.
The concept was mocked by the president’s detractors, who called it “Star Wars,” and asked why his government would embark on an expensive defense project with no assurance that it would succeed. A 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that committed both nations to forgoing the development of missile defense systems was allegedly broken by Reagan, according to the Soviet Union. Reagan’s refusal to abandon the initiative caused arms control measures to stagnate during his presidency.
Interest in SDI declined when Regan left office, and the program was terminated before the United States could create a workable missile defense system. But the development of the Iron Dome was aided by studies carried out during SDI’s existence. Trump is now able to continue where Reagan left off because the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.
4. Hegseth’s to-do list
Newly appointed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is required by Trump’s directive to present to the president “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield.”
Defending against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries” is a fundamental component of the strategy.
Additionally, Hegseth is directed to expedite the implementation of a Missile Defense Agency-developed satellite-based sensor system that is presently in the prototype stage. According to the Defense Department, the device, known as the Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, tracks missile threats from launch to interception using “birth-to-death” tracking.
Trump’s order also calls for the creation and implementation of a “secure supply chain” to guarantee that the ordered missile defense equipment is produced in the United States and a number of space-based missile interception technologies, such as systems that could disable a missile before it is launched.
Before the president creates his budget for fiscal year 2026, Hegseth must also present a plan for funding these complex systems.
5. Cooperating with U.S. allies
The directive issued by Trump called for “increase bilateral and multilateral cooperation on missile defense technology development, capabilities, and operations,” as well as to “increase and accelerate the provision of the United States missile defense capabilities to allies and partners.”
Hegseth is also tasked with reviewing the U.S. military’s missile defense posture in several global battlefields and pinpointing areas where partners may collaborate.
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