United States President Donald J. Trump issued a January 2025 executive order mandating the construction of a Golden Dome missile defense system to combat next-generation weapons. This image shows a missile defense test executed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. U.S. ARMY
THE WATCH STAFF
Creating a Golden Dome of missile defense to protect the United States ranks as a high homeland defense priority for the U.S. government. The threat is real: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Russia and North Korea are all developing advanced missiles, including hypersonic missiles and Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGV). A multidomain missile defense system capable of protecting the U.S. homeland is a necessary solution.
A January 2025 executive order issued by U.S. President Donald Trump “accelerates the development and deployment of hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor layers, proliferated space-based interceptors, a proliferated warfighter space architecture, capabilities to defeat salvoes prior to launch, non-kinetic missile defense capabilities and underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities.” The order states that the missile defense system would address an increasing threat from U.S. adversaries’ next-generation missile delivery systems.
The January 27, 2025, order also mandates that the missile defense system be exclusively manufactured in the United States. In addition, the order directs the military to review its missile defense posture to protect U.S. troops abroad and to increase cooperation with allies and partners on missile defense technology development, capabilities and operations.
A U.S. Golden Dome system would address a wide array of missile threats. “The end here is that there is [a] gratifying prioritization of the problem. So that’s good. It deserves to be a White House priority,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, according to The Hill, a U.S. news website.
“Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons — including hypersonic — has become more complex with the development of next-generation delivery systems by our adversaries,” the order states.
Israel, with U.S. help, has created an Iron Dome missile defense system. Since 2011, the U.S. spent at least $1.7 billion in that effort. Israel’s Iron Dome has been effective in protecting Israeli citizens from missile attacks launched by its adversaries, including the terrorist organizations of Hamas and Hezbollah, and an October 2024 missile attack by Iran in which about 200 Iranian ballistic missiles were shot down. “The Iron Dome system has transformed the battlefield, protected critical infrastructure, and saved many civilian lives,” said the Director General of the Israel Ministry of Defense Maj. Gen. (Res.) Eyal Zamir, according to Israel National News, an Israeli media website.
But the Israeli model has limited applicability to the U.S., which is exponentially larger than its Middle Eastern ally. Israel has 9.4 million people and 21,937 square kilometers of land compared with 380 million people and more than 19 million square kilometers in Canada and the United States. A U.S. Golden Dome would need to protect approaches from across the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic domains and would likely involve space and land-based systems, according to analyses from Bloomberg News, a U.S. media company, and the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
Retired U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, lists three essential components to a successful Golden Dome system: space-based sensors and interceptors; artificial intelligence to fuse and analyze information; and the ability to design, build and implement a new method of destroying incoming missiles, including with lasers, according to his analysis in Bloomberg.
As the system is developed, the U.S. remains committed to defending North America. Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, in recent remarks to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, emphasized this role. “It is vital that the domain awareness network provide the ability to detect, discriminate, and deliver crucial real-time information and a single common operational picture to leaders at all appropriate levels. Command modernization initiatives, including the establishment of a layered system of sensors such as space-based Airborne Moving Target Indicator (AMTI), Over-the-Horizon Radar (OTHR), the E-7 Wedgetail, and Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS), remain critical to continental defense in order to detect, track, and prosecute adversary submarines, aircraft and surface vessels, as well as inbound missiles.”