President Trump has told the Pentagon to take another look at missile defense. Technology to shoot down missiles has existed for decades, but the kind of missile shield Trump is looking to build would be much more complex – and expensive.
A key part of the new missile defense system, which Trump described as “Golden Dome” in a speech earlier this year, will likely be space-based interceptors, according to experts and an executive order signed by the president.
A number of defense companies have expressed interest in trying to build the Golden Dome. Last week, Reuters reported that Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX had joined a bid for the project. Musk later refuted that claim in a post on X.
Here’s why a critical part of Golden Dome might be built on the final frontier, and what building such a system would involve.
The number of warheads each nation maintains is agreed on in the START treaties, and those levels are determined by stockpile effectiveness. The US is recognized to have superior targeting and guidance systems, so they need fewer warheads to maintain parity with Russia’s stockpile.
The best possible outcome is for SDI and it’s descendants to be a complete waste of taxpayer money. If some clever chap comes up with a practical missile defense system, Russia would immediately generate enough warheads to overwhelm such a system and maintain parity.
Each missile represents a potential fault path to WWIII. We’ve been lucky with at least a couple near misses in our history. I don’t look forward to a future with more.