Will Trump’s ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense make Americans safer? It’s complicated
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders to kick off his second term seeks to transform the United States – and to shield it from nuclear attacks.
Although the U.S. has developed “limited” defenses designed to stop a small missile attack from the likes of North Korea, the Jan. 27 order – “The Iron Dome for America” – directs the Pentagon to plan a “next generation missile defense shield” to guard against any threat from any foe. Trump’s order invokes former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which detractors labeled “Star Wars.”
But much like Reagan’s push for total nuclear defense, major technological and budgetary hurdles exist for Trump’s vision, and policymakers and experts disagree on its feasibility and whether investing in homeland missile defense makes Americans safer at all.
Today's U.S. missile defenses are “neither intended for (nor) capable of defending the homeland against the ballistic missiles of … Russia and China,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a report Dec. 30.
The country instead “deters” large nuclear strikes by maintaining a nuclear arsenal powerful enough and resilient enough to destroy any foe that attacks. During the Cold War, that uneven balance of power and shared vulnerability between the U.S. and Soviet Union was coined “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD.
An ‘aspirational’ plan
Trump‘s plan, which explicitly aims to expand missile defense to cover the U.S. homeland against all attacks, is “aspirational,” said Jon Ludwigson, director of the Government Accountability Office’s contracting and national security acquisitions team.
He and other experts said meeting the order’s goals may take a push, because current missile defense efforts struggle to meet targets less ambitious than Trump's.
The Missile Defense Agency, tasked with developing and maintaining U.S. air defense, has spent more than $194 billion, including $10.4 billion in the 2022 fiscal year. But the agency’s approach to testing has faced criticism, and the Defense Department "lacks comprehensive guidance for sustaining" key parts of the system, like missile interceptors and sensors, according to a GAO report in 2023.
Despite a "considerable amount of testing" that indicated success in knocking missiles out of the sky, "we've had concerns that deliveries have been below their plan and that they have not completed all the testing that they planned," Ludwigson said.
The U.S. now maintains 44 ground-based interceptors that work by physically striking an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile warhead – 40 at Alaska's Fort Greely and four at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Congress recently directed the construction of more for the East Coast.
The agency is at work on an $18 billion plan to replace 31 of those missiles with new and more advanced interceptors by 2028.
But that timeline is "optimistic," another GAO report found.
Ludwigson cited "interruptions in production" as well as "struggles with workforce and parts availability" in recent years and during the COVID-19 pandemic for the failure to meet goals. These consistent shortcomings pose a “challenge,” he said.
Doubling down
The order signals a significant expansion in U.S. missile defense goals, funding and strategy.
Trump directed the Pentagon to plan a multi-layer defense system against enemy ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, among other aerial threats. The order further calls for both increased deployment of existing tech and development of tools like space-based interceptors, new sensors and “non-kinetic” missile defense capabilities, such as particle beams.
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a top nuclear and missile defense expert at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank, described the push as “a monumental leap in U.S. policy.”
Robert Soofer, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy during Trump’s first term, characterized the order as “bold” and “broad.”
“This is even more bold, I would suggest, than Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative,” he told Paste BN.
Some parts of the plan appear straightforward and have the support of arms control advocates. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, described Trump’s call to expand proven short- and medium-range missile defenses as “prudent, even if it’s difficult to achieve.”
Higher-end technologies like space-based interceptors and “non-kinetic” weapons, by contrast, are in their infancy and will require significant investment and testing to determine their viability – and even supporters of expanded missile defense recognize the challenge.
Lawmakers, including House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., have signaled their willingness to invest in such development. A pair of Republican senators introduced a stand-alone bill Thursday that would pour $19.5 billion into missile defense efforts.
The Hudson Institute’s Heinrichs acknowledged the president’s order “requires initiating and accelerating technologies.” She argued that the benefits – which include increasing “the chances of maintaining peace between” the U.S., Russia and China – outweigh the costs.
The paradox of defense
Yet a hotly contested aspect of the “Iron Dome” plan is whether increased investment in nuclear missile defense makes the world – or America – a safer or a more dangerous place.
Many – if not all – conservative officials believe that the country must bolster its defenses against all nuclear threats, even large-scale ones traditionally deterred by mutual vulnerability.
Arms control advocates, as well as a significant portion of liberal policymakers, fear doing so undermines the uneasy trust of mutual vulnerability and encourages nuclear foes to develop dangerous new technologies to defeat defense systems.
Kimball, the Arms Control Association head, said Trump’s plan could “encourage our adversaries to build up their offensive forces and to do so in a way that our defenses can never catch up.” He argued that “trying to pursue a so-called ‘dome’ (to) protect the United States, in the long run, is unaffordable, technologically infeasible and counterproductive.”
Another arms control advocate, Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the idea of missile defense “sounds really good” but isn’t moored in reality.
“Who wouldn’t want to be defended?” Grego said. “But when you … think about how realistic it is, what kind of protection you would get, how expensive it is, and how easy it is to defeat, you end up … thinking it’s really not worthwhile, especially not against large adversaries like Russia or China.”
Right-leaning experts disagree.
Heinrichs said limiting the aims of U.S. missile defense programs to date “has not encouraged (our) adversaries to take a more benign approach.” She criticized “decades-old views that missile defense is provocative or technically infeasible,” claiming that better defenses will “help restore stability.”
Kyle Balzer, a historian who studies nuclear strategy at the American Enterprise Institute, pointed to Israel’s largely successful multinational defense against a 2023 ballistic missile attack from Iran. He argued Israel’s defenses (which inspired the executive order’s “Iron Dome” moniker) allowed regional tensions to ease.
“Israel was able to defend itself, and then think about (retaliating), and then think about it some more … and then eventually respond with a calibrated, selective attack of its own,” Balzer said.
Ultimately, he argued, the U.S. cementing its ability to defeat “a limited coercive (nuclear) missile attack gives the president one more reason why he doesn’t have to immediately respond … in kind.”
Davis Winkie's role covering nuclear threats and national security at Paste BN is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. If you wish to share a news tip, please contact Davis via email at dwinkie@usatoday.com or via the Signal encrypted messaging app at 770-539-3257.