President Donald Trump’s ambitious new missile defense plan — called “Golden Dome” — could set a dangerous precedent as the world’s first major arms deployment into space.

Washington

President Donald Trump has approved funding for the Golden Dome, a proposed missile defense system intended to shield the United States from nuclear threats using a network of space-based interceptors. Inspired by Israel's Iron Dome, the plan aims to protect the much larger U.S. territory from advanced weapons, including those from nuclear powers like China and Russia.

Experts have raised significant doubts about the system's effectiveness, noting that existing U.S. missile defenses have a mixed track record and that the scale and cost of Golden Dome would be unprecedented. The project could require tens of thousands of interceptors and cost trillions of dollars. Additionally, the deployment of such weapons in space could be perceived as threatening by other nations, potentially sparking a new arms race and increasing the risk of militarizing space.

Trump’s lofty plan to weaponize space

And now for the last look. As President Donald Trump signed his landmark, big, beautiful bill this month, one intriguing item was buried in there. Funding for a flashy new missile defense system called Golden Dome. In the Oval Office in May, he indicated it would shield America with a success rate very close to 100 percent and could be built by the end of his term. The truth is, this is a weapons system that experts say is unlikely to work and could easily backfire in a significant way. The inspiration has come from Israel's Iron Dome, part of a multi-pronged defense system that is largely successful at intercepting short-range rockets and longer-range missiles. But Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey, meaning America's Golden Dome would have to operate on a truly massive scale. It has to protect a country about 450 times the size of Israel and defend against the advanced weapons of nuclear powers like China and Russia. Let's start with how it is supposed to work. Although official details remain vague, experts say it would feature a network of missile-armed satellites in orbit to detect, track and destroy enemy missiles. Targets would include ballistic missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads and travel above the Earth's atmosphere, and hypersonics, which can change direction at very high speeds. The idea of destroying missiles has often been likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet. And for decades, the U.S. has spent tens of billions trying to do this against long-range missiles, with very little to show for it. The main existing defenses, stationed in Alaska and California, were deployed by President George W. Bush to guard against limited threats like Iran and North Korea. But tests have shown they fail roughly half the time. That is obviously not good enough when it only takes one nuclear warhead to get through and cause incalculable damage. If there's little faith in the current system, why would we suddenly believe a far bigger system would work? To defend against larger threats, America would need a vast fleet of space-based interceptors for maximum coverage. A recent study from the American Physical Society estimated that the U.S. would need between 16,000 and 36,000 space-based interceptors to destroy a swarm of 10 North Korean missiles. And then there's the extravagant cost. Trump says the price tag is around $175 billion. But Republican Senator Tim Sheehy recently admitted that it will likely cost in the trillions if and when Golden Dome is completed. That is a staggering sum for a concept with a shaky track record. The crucial point? Golden Dome would be the first large-scale deployment of weapons into space by any nation. Though the U.S. frames Golden Dome as a defensive system, other countries could easily regard it as threatening. The interceptors could be used as offensive weapons to hit Russian or Chinese satellites. The nuclear arms expert Tong Zhao notes to the Wall Street Journal that other powers could fear that, quote, a better protected United States might be emboldened to pursue more aggressive military actions, unquote. All of this could trigger an arms race by America's adversaries at a time when they are already working to develop advanced weapons like hypersonics and anti-satellite lasers. In 1983, President Reagan launched his own missile defense dream with the utopian goal of making nuclear weapons obsolete. It included proposals for things like space-based lasers and was dubbed by some as Star Wars. And in response, the USSR attempted to advance its own weapons development, which it could not do. After the Cold War, however, the U.S. program itself was eventually largely scaled down. For decades, peace between great powers has rested on the idea of nuclear deterrence, that the threat of mutually assured destruction would keep global conflict from breaking out. As the military historian Lawrence Friedman warns, the Golden Dome is likely to be only the latest expensive and futile attempt to escape the grim logic of the nuclear age. It is unlikely to achieve anything close to the 100 percent success rate needed for a nuclear shield. And the costs would be immense, wasted taxpayer dollars, and most worryingly, a move to militarized space, which could turn that final frontier into a no-holds-barred war zone.

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Breakdown