Trump Wants Iron Dome For USA (Worthy News Focus)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Inspired by Israel’s ability to protect itself against thousands of missiles and drones fired by enemies, preparations were underway Thursday to develop a new air defense system for the United States.
Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to start building a so-called “Iron Dome” defense for the United States.
“We need to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be able to protect Americans,” Trump told a Republican congressional retreat in Miami.
Trump stressed that the multi-billion dollar system “will be made right here in the USA.”
During last year’s election campaign, Trump promised to build a version of Israel’s Iron Dome system for the U.S.
However, critics said he ignored that the system was designed for short-range threats, making it “ill-suited” to defending against intercontinental missiles, which they argue are the main danger to the United States.
Israel also has systems to protect against medium—and long-range projectiles as part of its multi-layer air defense capabilities.
DEVELOPING AIR DEFENSE
While titled “the Iron Dome for America,” Trump’s calls for the development of air defense systems to protect Americans against long-range threats such as “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.”
The New York Times newspaper cynically commented that “Star Wars is back” but added that the executive order was “a vaguely worded set of instructions.”
It noted that the order aimed more to accelerate “current programs or explore new approaches to defending the continental United States than a blueprint for arming the heavens with thousands of antimissile weapons, sensors, and tracking devices.”
Back in Jerusalem, The Times of Israel online newspaper noted that in his remarks Monday, “Trump again sang the praises of the Israeli system.” It noted that “Israel has used [the Iron Dome] “to shoot down rockets fired by its regional foes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon during the war sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.”
Trump has noticed the system’s trumpeted success. “They knock down just about every one of them,” he said. “So I think the United States is entitled to that.”
Missile defense has long been Trump’s favorite topic. He has also envisioned the project as the next step for the Space Force, which he created in his first term.
Yet experts cautioned that any system that will cover the United States will have to cope with a Russian arsenal of 1,250 deployed weapons and a fast-growing Chinese arsenal that the Pentagon believes will be of similar size within a decade.
NORTH KOREA THREAT
Additionally, “North Korea’s threat had “only grown larger since Mr. Trump’s diplomacy with [its leader] Kim Jong-un collapsed,” commenting The New York Times, which Trump has often called “a failing” newspaper.
Yet experts agree that Russia and China have been experimenting with hypersonic weapons that weave an unpredictable path within the atmosphere, making their trajectory far more complicated to anticipate.
And Moscow boasts of an undersea autonomous nuclear torpedo that can cross oceans to hit the West Coast.
Still, supporters of Trump’s Iron Dome plan hope it will jump-start crucial defense programs. Thomas Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, embraces Trump’s defense plans.
He stressed that the order “would accelerate” work on space-based sensors to detect hypersonic missiles like the ones launched last year by the administration of previous President Joe Biden.
Yet critics fear the initiative could trigger a new arms race. It also remained unclear how Trump’s latest initiative would tackle the threat of nuclear terrorism and blackmail with an atomic bomb, which experts say might be smuggled into the United States on a truck or a boat.
That “terrorism threat” may be “far bigger than an enemy firing a single missile or a swarm,” The New York Times argued.
However, Trump suggested that boosting border security and deporting “convicted terrorists” are part of a solution to combat these threats.
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