President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders to kick off his second term sought to transform the United States – and also 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 labelled “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.
Currently, U.S. missile defenses are “neither intended for [nor] capable of defending the homeland against the ballistic missiles of … Russia and China,” the non-partisan Congressional Research Service said in a Dec. 30 report.
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, as 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 2023 GAO report.
