President Donald Trump presented at the White House on Tuesday afternoon to build a massive missile shield system to protect the United States against North Korea’s threats and elsewhere. The project echoes the “Star Wars” program by President Ronald Reagan, and experts say that it could cost tens of thousands of millions to hundreds of billions of dollars, depending on how it is established.
Three US officials confirmed the plans before the ad. Trump joined the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and General Michael Guetlein, the Vice President of Space Operations of the Pentagon. Guetlein is asked to lead the “Golden Dome” project, said one of the officials.
“This design for the Golden Dome will be integrated with our existing defense capabilities and should be completely operational before the end of my mandate,” Trump said when announcing the plan. “So we will do it in about three years. Once completely constructed, the Golden Dome will be able to intercept missiles even if they are thrown from other sides of the world and even if they are thrown from space.”
Trump began asking for an antimile defense shield of the US. Meanwhile, critics made fun of the idea of a country like the United States, which is not threatened by missiles from its neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and is cushioned by two oceans, what such a system needs.
But Trump’s talk to build “the greatest dominates of all” met the crowds in their demonstrations so much that the Republicans included the construction of an American missile shield on their party platform before the 2024 elections. In January, Trump signed an executive order that asked Hegseth to make this happen.
“The threat of attacks by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, and other advanced air attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,” Trump wrote in the order of January 27.
Since then, “the Department of Defense has gathered the brightest minds and the best technical talent available to review a full range of options that the current EE antimile defense technology considers. UU. And avant -garde innovation to quickly develop and present a reliable umbrella of protection for our homeland”, Sean Parnell, head of Pentagon of the Pentagon and Hegseth, the senior senior advisor, said this week, said this week, the senior advisor said in the Department of Defense that has worked on the proposal for the proposal to Propario de la Defense.
It is not yet clear how big and integral the system would be.
President Donald Trump makes an announcement about the Defense Shield of Golden Dome missiles with the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Pete Hegseth, at the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on May 20, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Among the questions is: Would the “golden dome” of Trump be designed to protect each centimeter from the territory of the United States, or the approach would focus on the main cities? Depending on the scale, the initiative could take years to develop and build, even with advances in technology such as remote sensing, image processing and non -improvised aerial systems, according to Congress researchers.
Also in doubt it is whether such an ambitious program could divert money from other vital programs. The Air Force, for example, is in the process of replacing 400 of its intercontinental ballistic missiles built in the 1970s with new ones.
Earlier this month, the Congress Budget Office estimated that the United States may need to spend between $ 161 billion to $ 542 billion in 20 years to develop and launch a network of space -based interceptors.
According to the CBO, these estimates are lower than they would have been for years due to a decrease in the cost of available launch services. But the office observed an increasingly sophisticated technology used by North Korea and the scope of Trump’s declared objectives as the reason why the cost would remain high.
Israel developed its “Iron Dome” system for Zap Rockets and mortar fire outside the sky, acting as a kind of shield on a country under the almost constant threat of short -range missile attacks and medium reach. The billionaire system played an important role in the defense of Israel successfully last April when Iran launched about 300 missiles and drones in the Jewish state in retaliation for an Israeli air attack that killed an Iranian commander.
Currently, the United States is based partly on the defense program of half of the course on land, which is designed to tear down long -range missiles of a country like North Korea. However, it would have a more limited utility if there were ever a large -scale attack of a country with a considerable arsenal as Russia.
However, expanding that system to cover every centimeter of the United States would probably cost billions of dollars at a time when the country is also trying to protect against cybernetic attacks and space. China and Russia are now looking for hypersonic weapons, while administration officials this spring recognized the search for Russia of nuclear capabilities in space, which complicates a lot what it means so that any system keeps the United States safe.
Last year, Trump often pointed out that the United States had spent about $ 3 billion to help Israel manufacture and maintain their system.
“In my next term, we will build a large iron dome over our country, a dome as I had never seen before, a defense shield of the latest generation missiles that will be built completely in the United States,” Trump said in a June rally in Wisconsin when the crowd applauded.
“We are going to build the largest dome of all,” he promised.
Nathan Luna de ABC contributed to this report.
