A US Golden Dome would be a geopolitical game changer
In May, President Trump announced plans for a Golden Dome missile defense system, a multi-layered system designed to ward off ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles launched against North America.
It is estimated to cost $175 billion and will take three years to deploy, according to Trump. The cost and schedule, as with all such projects, is subject to change.
The name Golden Dome is inspired by the Israeli Iron Dome, part of the Jewish state's anti-missile defense system that has blunted, though not entirely stopped, attacks from its various enemies, most recently Iran. But the idea of a space-based missile defense system has its roots in the Strategic Defense Initiative, proposed over 40 years ago by then-President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was controversial. Some opponents derided it by calling it 'Star Wars.' The project never evolved beyond a technological development program for two reasons. First, the technology to launch and coordinate satellites that could track and destroy incoming nuclear-tipped missiles did not exist and was too hard to develop in the 1980s. Second, the Cold War ended, and so did the immediate threat of global thermonuclear war. The need for the Strategic Defense Initiative simply evaporated.
Fast forward more than 30 years. Although some ground-based and sea-based missile defense systems have been deployed to ward off attacks by rogue states such as North Korea, defense against attacks by near-peer nations such as Russia and China is woefully inadequate.
This has complicated efforts to restrain Russia's efforts to annex Ukraine and China's wish to invade Taiwan. Both conflicts have the potential to spiral out of control into a nuclear exchange, impeding American foreign policy choices.
Golden Dome, like the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative and the Israeli missile defense system, will be a multi-layered system that will cover boost phase, mid-range and then terminal phase. The idea is that it will stop a nuclear strike by shooting down missiles in each phase so that nothing reaches its intended target.
Will the Golden Dome work? Some have raised doubts. The American Physical Society has released a study listing what it feels are the problems facing a space-based missile defense system. Many of the objections are the same that were raised during the Strategic Defense Initiative era — the problem with decoys, for example. The study falls short of concluding that missile defense is impossible.
On the other hand, technology related to missile defense has greatly advanced since the 1980s. Launching payloads into space, thanks to Elon Musk's SpaceX, is far cheaper and more reliable now than when the space shuttle was state of the art.
Artificial intelligence, battlespace awareness, communications and even beam weapons (i.e., lasers) are at levels that would have seemed like science fiction during the Strategic Defense Initiative era.
Evidence that the Golden Dome will be a game changer is that the Chinese don't like it.
Fox News quotes Chinese Foreign Minister Mao Ning as saying, 'The project will heighten the risk of turning space into a war zone and creating a space arms race, and shake the international security and arms control system. We urge the U.S. to give up developing and deploying global anti-missile system.'
The Chinese are suggesting, perhaps inadvertently, that they are afraid of the Golden Dome. Any attempt to overcome it would complicate its grand strategy of supplanting the U.S. as the supreme superpower on the planet.
The flaw in the analysis that purports to attack the idea of missile defense is economic. One can talk about decoys, stealth technology and maneuverable launch vehicles as ways to penetrate a missile defense system like Golden Dome. But developing and deploying such technologies costs money.
Russia, the other near-peer nuclear power, is already stretched to the limit because of Putin's adventure in Ukraine. China, because of its fragile, export-based economy, the cost of its military buildup and declining population, also faces economic limitations.
The U.S., on the other hand, has potential for enough economic growth to not only engage in an arms race in space but to prevail.
Israel's missile defense system has allowed between 5 percent and 10 percent of Iranian missiles to get through. Israel has absorbed the damage from high-explosive-tipped missiles. In a nuclear exchange, Golden Dome must stop 100 percent of an attack. Nevertheless, Israel's recent experience is a strong argument for the Golden Dome.
The fulfillment of Reagan's dream of a world in which nuclear weapons have become 'impotent and obsolete' will be a formidable task.
Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled 'Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?' as well as 'The Moon, Mars and Beyond' and, most recently, 'Why is America Going Back to the Moon?' He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
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