by
Austin BayJanuary 30, 2025
President Donald Trump's Jan. 27 strategic defense executive order includes this hard-nosed truth about current air and space weaponry and our enemies who possess them: "Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities."
Let's translate from the Pentagonese. Next generation: hypersonic missiles, advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles, thousands of aerial drones and much more! Adversaries: Communist China, Putin Russia, North Korea, Iran, Islamist fanatics, crime cartels with billions.
Trump described his program as an American Iron Dome. The name is a sly clue indicating his multi-faceted goal of deploying a "state of the art" missile defense covering the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii.
Aside: Add Guam.
Attention Mexico and Canada: Y'all could be covered by a Really Big Dome.
Iron Dome is the name of an Israeli missile defense system that has repeatedly demonstrated in combat that missile defense works. Focus on this phrase: demonstrated in combat. Iron Dome's success isn't theory or opinion.
Given current technology and political havoc, Trump knows America can protect itself with a 21st-century version of the anti-missile shield Ronald Reagan dubbed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
So let's examine America's challenge.
Israel's Iron Dome is a tactical (shorter range) system designed to protect a very small country that is 3.25% the size of Texas, or about the size of New Jersey.
The U.S. is 44,726% larger than Israel. The Lower 48, Hawaii and Alaska present a much bigger target. Canada and Mexico know they're also in the blast zone.
Obvious: America needs a Really Big Dome.
Tactical weapon example: a sniper with a rifle sees you at 200 meters and pulls the trigger. Strategic weapon: From a launch site in North Korea, Kim Jong Un fires a nuke-bearing ICBM at Washington.
Iran to Israel is considered an intermediate range engagement. However, Iran seeks strategic (big) objectives. Remember, the mullahs call Israel a "one bomb state."
So Israel integrates Iron Dome with several other weapon systems (Arrow 3, for example) that create a layered defense. Israel can destroy incoming projectiles several hundred kilometers away.
Layered -- incoming missile projectiles confront outer space (exo-atmospheric), very high altitude and final descent interception by various defensive systems. Defeating rockets and artillery rounds involves interception within 25 kilometers, or offensive counterfire by the Israeli Defense Forces.
Iran's failed April 13, 2024, air and space attack on Israel resulted in spectacular failure -- for the ayatollahs. Some 370 Iranian drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and what the military calls "other projectiles" did minimal damage.
Honest, brutal history, paraphrasing StrategyPage.com: Iron Dome's "sensor-shooter" system is a drastically scaled-down U.S. strategic anti-missile defense system, with a mini-ABM system in the mold of the Reagan administration's SDI.
Hence my essay's buried lede: Trump uses Iron Dome as a metaphor for fielding 21st-century layered air and space defense against what military analysts often label "projectiles." It's a dull word but actually a useful and descriptive term. ICBMs, other ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, various aerial drones, rockets, tube artillery shells, mortar shells and, when you think about it, even airplanes are all projectiles.
Ronald Reagan's critics dismissed his SDI as "Star Wars" -- suggesting a Hollywood fantasy. They also called SDI "destabilizing," meaning it would lead to war with the Soviet Union.
War? No, the USSR folded, ending the Cold War.
Century 21: Russia is back, with nukes, missiles, drones and mass murdering leadership. Satellite photos reveal Communist China is building a new fleet of ships and adding more nuclear-capable ICBMs each month.
Partial answer to Moscow and Beijing: Deploy more long-range Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) interceptor missiles. Currently, the U.S. has a paltry flock of approximately 44 GMDs in Alaska and California. How to fix the problem: 1) deploy 100 more in Alaska; 2) deploy 80 in Maine -- or in Labrador or Greenland. It'll vex Beijing, Moscow and Tehran.
In 2003, I wrote the following in a column on SDI: "The worldwide battleground in the 21st century is between the constructive and the destructive -- constructive nations versus destructive rogue states and transnational terror syndicates."
Unfortunately, in 2025, I think that assessment is a bitter reality.