Trump’s new missile shield for the US – challenges and dangers

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, made a surprise announcement to the world and many of his policymakers a week after taking office by calling it the “Iron Dome for America.”
At first, the name evoked Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system, which is designed to intercept and destroy low-level targets, rockets, mortar shells and cruise missiles over a short range. It is tailored to Israel’s defence needs and size.
However, the continental United States is vast, spanning four time zones, and has an extensive coastline.
It soon became apparent that what Trump was advocating on January 27 was the creation of a “new-generation missile defence shield for the United States, against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks”. Essentially, it is an updated version of former US President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative, or “Star Wars” programme.
The phrase “Iron Dome” is now a synonym for “missile defence shield”.
This new multilayered defense system is intended to protect both US and US-based combatants.
Reagan’s dream of a missile defence shield remained mostly that, a dream, although billions of dollars were poured into the programme.
The issues were raised by the cost of a comprehensive missile defense, which was both then and now, which were both prohibitive financially and practically impossible due to the readily available technologies’ ability to spoof or overshadow the most recent missile defense system.
However, missile defense science has advanced significantly in the past 40 years, and missile defenses have recently been tested in Israeli and Ukrainian combat.
Missile defence – the art of the possible
An early warning and interceptor system is already in place in the US, but it has limited capabilities and would only stop attacks launched by small nuclear powers like North Korea.
A large-scale attack by a steadfast and capable adversary like Russia or China would not be possible. Over the past ten years, the advancements in missile guidance and detection have made a significant improvement in missile defense.
The difficulty of developing a missile defense system, where missiles can travel at speeds up to 20 times those of the analogy, gives an idea of how challenging they are to develop. Incoming missiles must be quickly detected and tracked for a missile defense shield to be effective, and all relevant information must be relayed to interceptor batteries. The target must then be guided to the interceptor, destroying any incoming enemy missile.
This, preferably, should be as far away from one’s territory as possible, especially when considering these missiles could very well be nuclear armed.
The US and Israel have poured billions of dollars into research, often cooperating, and the results are evident.
Incoming missiles have been detected and detonated more frequently in Ukraine and Israel’s airspace conflicts.
Developers have benefited greatly from the information gained during actual combat. A next-generation missile shield, according to the White House, would have to defend itself against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries”.
This is a colossal task. Decoys and other penetration devices are included in contemporary long-range missiles. Their speed is tremendous at 25, 000 kilometres per hour (15, 500 miles per hour) or faster.

Missile defences work, in part, by predictability. Because they are aware of how balls move through the air in a predetermined arc, they can catch them.
This is a trick of hypersonic missiles because they can intercept intercept them much more easily by following a predetermined path to their targets. Cruise missiles, first developed as offensive first-strike weapons, fly below radar cover and arrive at their targets with little to no warning.
The challenges these types of missiles create are enormous, and stopping them would require new networks, capabilities and weapons to be effective.
Enter the US Space Force
Trump’s first-term administration and establishment of the US Space Force, along with the US Strategic and Northern commands, would make up this new missile shield.
Emphasis has been placed on intercepting any missile attack as early as possible, ideally in the first phase, or “boost phase”, of a missile’s flight.
A network of space-based radar systems would be required to spot the heat plumes of newly launched missiles.
A number of space-based interceptors are also suggested in the plan’s early stages to deter missiles.
It’s still unclear whether this will result in space-based laser batteries being launched into orbit or interceptor missiles.
Since the introduction of space-based laser technology in the 1980s, such a weaponry, has significantly advanced. It still needs to be more financially viable before it can become a weapons system, though.
What would propel a laser so fast that its target moves at an increase in speed that it could strike a missile from hundreds of kilometers away?
Tactical, short-range laser technology has been used to , intercept targets in Ukraine, but the power needed to destroy incoming missiles would be a magnitude greater. Additionally, “kinetic kill” missiles from the space program could be used to hit and essentially toss incoming missiles.
All these weapons would be in orbit, covering a huge area, as they watch for missile launches and attacks.
The placement, coordination and control of this vast network of interceptors and detectors would be controlled by the Space Force, now given an increasing “warfighter” role, using active weapons systems against an adversary.
Move and countermove
How would adversaries react? presumably by boosting their own nuclear-capable powers’ weapons programs and significantly accelerating the arms race that is already underway. The capability of a missile defense shield to detect and intercept every launch is already easily overstated by the technology.
No system can be 100 percent effective – so success, or failure, would be a matter of degree. The measures employed by US adversaries determine how much of a degree.
Apart from decoys, basic countermeasures already exist. Any laser beam directed at damaged or distorted surfaces would lose power. In order to prevent early warning infrared detectors from seeing them, warhead shrouds with liquid nitrogen coolant can mask the temperature of incoming warheads.
The technologies to trick a system, still in the embryonic stages of development, are much cheaper than the missile defence shield itself.
Every development that the US has hampered for a fraction of the cost will increase the tens of billions of dollars spent on research, increasing the likelihood that it will reach the hundreds of billions.
Increased danger
Aside from the enormous costs and technical difficulties, there is another significant issue. Embedded in Trump’s executive order is a request to pursue capabilities to “defeat missile attacks prior to launch” – in other words, attack first. What was once billed as a defensive weapons system but now has an offensive component is put in a completely different way thanks to this.
The order also calls for the technology to “guarantee its secure second-strike capability”. With their firepower, the US already has a very strong second strike capability, which would allow it to shell the planet several times.
Existing land-based missiles, air-launched missiles from airborne bombers, and a variety of other delivery systems would provide additional defenses against an enemy that has attacked the US.
The US’s second-strike capability is guaranteed, so why is there a need for a shield?
An effective shield breaks down the decades-old balance of terror on which mutually assured destruction, or MAD, is based: We all can destroy each other, even if attacked first, so let’s not start a nuclear war that would result in everyone’s destruction.
If one party can hide behind a reliable missile defense system in the knowledge that the newly developed, much improved missile shield could stop the weakening retaliatory response if it attacks first, the newly developed and much improved missile shield can do so significantly.
This balance shift is particularly dangerous because it signals to rival nations who are close to one another and causes them to take own countermeasures.
Source: Aljazeera
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