According to an Associated Press story, Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground-based and space-based capabilities that are able to detect and stop missiles at all four major stages of a potential attack: detecting and destroying them before a launch, intercepting them in their earliest stage of flight, stopping them midcourse in the air, or halting them in the final minutes as they descend toward a target.
President Trump announced May 20 he expects the Golden Dome missile defense program to be “fully operational” before his term ends in 2029.
A nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland harkens back to the Cold War, when it was feared Soviet ICBMs would turn the U.S. into an apocalyptic wasteland.
Even though the Cold War is long over, U.S. adversaries China and Russia have developed advanced nuclear missiles that current U.S. countermeasures are unable to stop.
Gordon Klingenschmitt, a former Air Force officer, is watching the Golden Dome news with interest. That’s because he served as a missile launch officer with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which became famous during the Cold War for its job of tracking inbound nukes.
“We really need a defensive system that President Ronald Reagan envisioned when he talked about Strategic Defense Initiative, or ‘Star Wars,” Klingenschmitt tells AFN.
That advanced technology was much too expensive to build and deploy at the time, he recalls, but it’s now possible – and less expensive – thanks to GPS technology.
The plans for SDI were estimated to cost as much as $60 billion in the 1980s, but some estimates jumped as high as $170 billion to get the space-based program operational 40 years ago.
A related article about the Golden Dome, by Bob Maginnis, also compared President Trump’s plans to President Reagan’s plans for SDI. Maginnis cautions, however, Golden Dome faces several “steep obstacles” to become operational, such as the current lack of technology for a boost-phase interception. A second obstacle is the technology for a “seamless, real-time network” of missile defense, he also warns.
