President Donald Trump is set to unveil at the White House Tuesday afternoon his plans to build a massive missile shield system to protect the United States against threats from North Korea and elsewhere, according to three U.S. officials.
Trump will be joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Pentagon’s vice chief of space operations.
Guetlein is being asked to lead the “Golden Dome” project, according to one official.
Trump began calling for a U.S. missile defense shield similar to Israel’s Iron Dome after watching Israel deflect missiles and drones amid Iran’s attacks in 2024.
Military officials said at the time that they hadn’t expressed a need for such a shield to defend the U.S., citing existing missile defense systems already in use.
In order to defend the United States from threats from North Korea and other countries, President Donald Trump is scheduled to unveil his plans to construct a massive missile shield system at the White House Tuesday afternoon, according to three U.S. S. officials. . Experts estimate that the project, which is reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful “Star Wars” program, could cost anywhere from tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars, depending on how it is set up.
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and Gen. Vice Chief of Space Operations at the Pentagon, Michael Guetlein. An official claims that Guetlein is being asked to oversee the “Golden Dome” project.
Trump started demanding a U. S. . after witnessing Israel fend off missiles and drones during Iran’s 2024 attacks, a missile defense shield resembling Israel’s Iron Dome. At the time, military officials stated that they had not indicated a need for such a shield in order to protect the U.S. S. mentioning the missile defense systems that are currently in operation. Critics, meanwhile, laughed at the notion of a nation such as the U.S. S. . which requires such a system because it is protected by two oceans and is not threatened by missiles from its neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
But Trump’s talk of building “the greatest dome of them all” was met with cheers from crowds at his rallies so much that Republicans included the construction of a U. A. missile shield in its party platform prior to the elections in 2024. Hegseth was urged to make it happen by an executive order signed by Trump in January.
Trump stated in the January statement that “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States is still the threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, as well as other advanced aerial attacks.”. order number 27.
Since then, “the Defense Department has assembled the most talented technical personnel and the most brilliant minds to examine a wide range of options that take into account current U.S. S. . Hegseth’s senior adviser and chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, stated earlier this week that the Defense Department has been working on the proposal, adding, “Missile defense technology and cutting-edge innovation to rapidly develop and field a dependable umbrella of protection for our homeland.”.
How extensive and large the system would be is still unknown.
The question is whether Trump’s “Golden Dome” would be built to cover every square inch of the United States. S. . Even with technological advancements like remote sensing, image processing, and uncrewed aerial systems, congressional researchers say the initiative could take years to develop and build, depending on scale, or would the focus be on major cities?
Another concern is whether funding for such a large-scale program could divert funds from other important initiatives. For example, the Air Force is currently replacing 400 of its intercontinental ballistic missiles, which were constructed in the 1970s, with new models.
The Congressional Budget Office made an estimate earlier this month of the U.S. S. . may require a 20-year investment of $161 billion to $542 billion to build and deploy a network of interceptors in space.
The CBO says that because launch services have become less expensive, these estimates are lower than they would have been years ago. However, the office pointed to the breadth of Trump’s declared objectives and North Korea’s increasingly advanced technology as reasons why the price would continue to be high.
Israel created the Iron Dome system to zap rockets and mortar fire out of the sky, serving as a sort of shield over a nation that was constantly in danger of short- and medium-range missile attacks. In response to an Israeli airstrike that killed a senior Iranian commander, Iran launched about 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state in April of last year, and the multibillion-dollar system was instrumental in successfully defending Israel.
The U. A. presently depends in part on the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense program, which is intended to destroy rogue long-range missiles from nations such as North Korea. However, if a nation with a sizable arsenal like Russia were to launch a large-scale attack, its usefulness would be severely limited.
extending that framework to encompass the entire U.S. S. . However, it would probably cost billions of dollars at a time when the nation is also attempting to defend against cyber and space attacks. Russia’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities in space was acknowledged by administration officials this spring, and China and Russia are currently pursuing hypersonic weapons, making it extremely difficult for any one system to maintain the U.S. S. protected.
Trump frequently mentioned last year that the U.S. S. . had invested about $3 billion to support Israel’s system’s production and upkeep.
As the crowd cheered, Trump declared at a rally in Wisconsin in June, “In my next term, we will build a great Iron Dome over our country, a dome like has never been seen before, a state-of-the-art missile defense shield that will be entirely built in America.”.
His promise was to “build the greatest dome of them all.”.
Nathan Luna from ABC helped with this report.
