US President Donald Trump has unveiled plans for a missile-defence shield which he is calling a ‘Golden Dome for America’.
Trump said he expects it to be operational before the end of his administration.
The US Department of Defense has developed a draft architecture and implementation plan for the Golden Dome system which will include space-based sensors.
For years the Pentagon has cautioned that countermeasures are necessary because the most recent missiles produced by China and Russia are so advanced.
China and Russia have already launched offensive weapons into space, including satellites that may disable those of other nations.
What is Donald Trump’s Golden Dome?
The Golden Dome is an aerial missile defence shield which, according to Trump, would be “capable even of intercepting missiles launched from space, or launched from the other side of the world”.
According to the White House, aerial strikes are still “the most catastrophic threat” confronting the US. Just seven days into his second term, Trump directed the defence department to submit plans for a system that would protect and deter such attacks.
Israel has been intercepting rockets and missiles since 2011 using its Iron Dome, which served as some inspiration for the system.
The Golden Dome, however, would be many times larger and geared to handle a wider spectrum of threats, including hypersonic weapons able to move faster than the speed of sound and fractional orbital bombardment systems - often called Fobs - that could deliver warheads from space.
According to Trump, Canada has requested to join the system.
Former Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair admitted that Canada was interested in taking part in the dome project during a visit to Washington earlier this year, stating that it "makes sense" and was in the "national interest" of the nation.
Additionally, Trump has promised that the entire system would be developed in the US, adding that manufacturers from Georgia, Alaska, Florida, and Indiana would all play a significant role in the project.
The multiple parts of the system would fall under one centralised command, US defence officials have indicated, and the project will be supervised by Space Force General Michael Guetlein.
General Chance Saltzman, head of the US Space Force, said at a hearing on Tuesday that the space weapons “represent new and emerging requirements for missions that have never before been accomplished by military space organisations”.
How much will Trump’s dome cost?
A new budget measure has set aside $25 billion (£18.7 billion) as an initial investment towards the dome, however the US Government estimates that over decades the cost may be 20 times higher.
The US president stated that the entire cost will be “about $175bn” while the Congressional Budget Office has estimated a significantly higher amount.
Earlier this month, it calculated that the cost of the space-based components alone may reach $542 billion (£405 billion) over the next 20 years.
The project's announcement comes as recently confirmed US Air Force secretary stated that no funds have been set aside for the Golden Dome as of yet.
Troy Meink told senators on Tuesday that the programme is “still in the conceptual stage.”
Is it realistic?
The Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi told The Standard that Trump could deliver this project but maybe not at his “level of ambition and timeline.”
He said: “A space-based defence shield to track and intercept missiles is likely to be cheaper and more effective than when the idea was first proposed in the 1980s. Space launch costs have fallen dramatically - thanks largely to Elon Musk - and technology has improved greatly.
“But Trump is wrong that this can be done within 2-3 years, wrong that it will cost under $200bn and wrong that it will offer close to 100 per cent protection.”
One of the main concerns is the cost could swallow a significant portion of the US defence budget.
“To give you an example, protecting against a salvo of ten North Korean ICBMs with 30 seconds of decision time would require 36,000 interceptors in space. Protecting against the much larger Chinese or Russian arsenals would require building the largest constellations ever put into space, and replacing them regularly as they fell out of orbit.
“All of this has the potential to absorb a very significant proportion of the defence budget.”
