On January 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to build an “Iron Dome for America”: a next-generation missile defense shield for the United States homeland. This is a monumental leap in US policy and could strengthen American efforts to deter its adversaries in China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
Hudson research has recommended building up US missile defense capabilities and breaking from the decades-old views that missile defense is provocative or technically infeasible. Missile defense of the US and its troops and allies complicates an adversary’s calculations about whether to strike. If an adversary does decide to strike, active defenses can limit the damage and ensure Washington has credible options to respond and compel the adversary to cease its aggression.
Unlike during the Cold War, when President Ronald Reagan had to outsmart and out-innovate one peer nuclear adversary, President Trump faces two nuclear peers—Russia and China, which are increasingly collaborating. Missile defense critics have warned that if the United States breaks from its policy of remaining vulnerable to peer missile strikes, adversaries may also build missile defenses. But Russia and China are already doing this. As the first Trump administration’s Missile Defense Review states, “Russia has retained and upgraded its own missile defense system designed to protect Moscow against a US strike.”
Washington’s previous refusal to develop a robust missile defense has not encouraged its adversaries to take a more benign approach. Instead, adversaries have noted US vulnerabilities and have sought to develop military capabilities to increase their advantages at the expense of American security and sovereignty.
President Trump’s Iron Dome order also directs the US military to accelerate the development of cost-effective and timely solutions to defend the homeland against ballistic missile strikes, including:
- Hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor layers
- Proliferated space-based interceptors
- A proliferated warfighter space architecture
- Capabilities to defeat salvos prior to launch
- Non-kinetic missile defense capabilities
- Underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities
Space-located sensors and interceptors are the most effective means of neutralizing potential threats, and announcing that the United States is pursuing these capabilities signals to adversaries that Washington will no longer allow them to hold at risk the US homeland at a low cost. Additionally, adversaries will have to consider that the United States may have other technologies and capabilities they do not fully understand.
While President Trump’s executive order requires initiating and accelerating technologies that will take time to mature, moving quickly to develop them could bolster the credibility of US deterrence efforts, help restore stability, and increase the chances of maintaining peace between nuclear adversaries.