Defense leaders intervene in the needs of Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ project

Forty years after President Ronald Reagan first conceived the idea, the leaders of the defense industry say that technology is finally advanced enough to build an invisible protective dome of space radars, missile interceptors and laser weapons over the United States.

President Donald TrumpIn love with the Iron Dome Missile Defense System about Israel, he ordered the Department of Defense to start preparing plans for an American version, the “Golden Dome”, in January.

But Israel It is approximately the size of New Jersey, so a protection dome could be much more discouraging for the much larger land mass in the United States and threats to Israel generally come from their neighbors, which use short -range weapons. The enemies of the United States, North Korea, Iran, Russia and China, are half a world of distance and are armed with intercontinental ballistics (ICBMS) and hypersonics missiles, all the factors that make the project more challenging for a nation in the size and scale of the United States.

Then there are questions. Will the golden dome cover the entire country, including Hawaii, Alaska and US military bases in places like Guam? Would you be able to protect against short -range missiles, long -range missiles, unmanned and manned aircraft?

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The answers can reach at least partly at the end of the month, when the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget present a financing plan for the project to the White House. But the leaders of the defense industry say that technology exists to make a gold dome come true.

“In our opinion, it has to be a layer system. Because, you know, shoot a UAV, for example, it is very different from shooting a hypersonic vehicle or a hypersonic weapon,” said Raytheon’s CEO, Phil Jasper, Fox News Digital. Its aerospace company, an important American defense contractor, manufactures the patriot missile system, javelin anti -tank missiles and a variety of air and radar defense systems.

The United States already uses an antimile defense system in layers known as the command, control, battle management and communications system (C2BMC) that uses radar to detect incoming missiles and shoot the interceptors.

It has technology such as the Thaad battery (high -terminal high altitude area) to intercept ballistic missiles and the patriot to intercept cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and airplanes. But the country only has seven active Thaad batteries deployed worldwide, and an eighth is expected to become operational this year.

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The general of the space force, Michael Guetlein, said weeks ago to build a golden dome will require an approach of the entire government at the Manhattan project level of the missile defense agency, the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the Space Force, the Coast Guard and more.

Defense contractors, some of whom have believed that a Golden Dome project was on the horizon for years, say that the protection zone can start around the main cities such as New York and Washington, DC, or sensitive military sites before expanding to protect the entire homeland.

“What I am understanding (the goal) is really to protect all the US. It is to place a dome around the homeland,” said Edward Zoiss, president of Space and Airborne for L3harris Technologies.

Jasper predicted that some of these defensive measures could be installed rapidly, as soon as 2026.

“What the administration has established is that construction block approach that can begin to protect certain areas, sometimes certain regions, and build it as these systems continue to produce. And they can continue to leave the production lines,” he said.

The Bluehalo CEO, Jonathan Moneymaker, said the dome would be “less a technological problem” and more a challenge of the organizational structure.

“The maximum potential of all those capabilities that work together with each other, on that scale, there are definitely some new elements there,” said Moneymaker.

John Clark, Vice President of Technology and Strategic Innovation of Lockheed, said the plan will require the Pentagon “to think about what it has on the shelf.”

“There are systems that sit today at the National Air Guard or in our current local defense infrastructure nationwide. In reality, they could be deployed within the United States,” he said.

Clark said that deploying the defense infrastructure at home “would reduce our current inventory for conflicts in the world in general.” But he suggested that anything taken from an army base today could be filled at a later date for global use.

Zoiss, whose company, L3harris Technologies, has already built satellites for the antimile defense agency that could be used for space based on space for a golden dome, said that the biggest challenge is the missiles that no longer follow predictable paths.

“If you return to its physics class of the high school, if you understand the angle and trajectory of a bullet, it includes exactly where it will land because it follows a parable,” he said.

“ICBMS followed the parable trajectories for decades. But a new class of highly maneuverable cruise weapons and hypersonic weapons now not,” he explained. “Its end point is uncertain. And our defensive systems in the United States now have to change to be more robust to track that weapon throughout their career.”

The space radar will be the critical element of the threats for the country in the future, according to Zoiss.

“Our challenge is long -range weapons. You know, it is the weapons that progress great distances that maneuver around our current terrestrial radar systems and based on the sea. Therefore, if weapons maneuver around those systems, that means that our current architecture cannot provide fire control artillery. And, therefore, it must move to space.”

The Golden Dome could resort to antimisile defense missions that are already in process, such as the integrated air defense system of the national region of the capital, which is designed to protect Washington, DC, of ​​incoming threats and uses systems such as the National Surface-Air Missile System Norwegian Advanced (Nasams).

And I could look at other systems that are already in a smaller scale. The Army is working on a new Iron Dome Air Defense System in Guam known as the Increase 2 system of indirect fire protection capacity (IFPC). And is developing high -power microwave systems that could hit whole Drone gets out of the sky.

The Marine Corps plans to present three mobile air defense systems this year, including a modified iron dome pitcher.

Other needs could be the radar on the horizon, including the filling of blinded points in the Arctic region for low flight missiles that embrace the curvature of the Earth to avoid detection.

Guetlein said that the nation would have to “break down the barriers” between title 10 and title 50 of the United States Code, federal laws that govern the defense and clandestine operations of the nation.

“Without a doubt, our biggest challenge will be organizational behavior and culture to unite all the pieces,” said Guetlein.

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It is expected that much of the financing will be submitted in the request for fiscal budget of Trump’s fiscal year 2026 to Congress, in which the White House is working. Even with the initial financing, the project could take years to complete, and it will not be cheap.

Steven Morani, Undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and support, said Wednesday that he was working with the private sector to address the “formidable” challenges of the project.

“According to the protection of the homeland and according to the executive order of President Trump, we are working with the industrial base and the challenges of the supply chain associated with the foot of the golden dome,” he said.