Golden Dome: The Star Wars Reboot No One Asked For

May the 4th be with you!

The idea of defending the US against our adversaries’ nuclear weapons has long been enticing, leading the US to develop anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. And despite the shortcomings of several programs and the prohibitive costs of deployment, the Reagan administration launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—popularly known as “Star Wars”—in the 1980s. This sweeping plan to build ground- and space-based systems to intercept incoming ballistic missiles from the Soviet Union relied on dozens of exotic technologies such as space-based x-ray pumped lasers, plasma weapons, and a globe covering constellation of microsatellites designed to intercept enemy missiles as they reached the height of their ballistic arc in space.  

Despite lofty ambitions and astronomical R&D costs, Star Wars’ fate was to remain forever earthbound, and the project was largely canceled at the end of the Cold War. Only the ground-based “hit-to-kill” ABMs—which use a collision rather than an explosion to destroy an incoming reentry vehicle (RV)—survived. It evolved into today’s vastly expensive and less-than-reliable Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system that defends the US against the arsenals of “rogue states” such as North Korea, rather than the hundreds of missiles that could be sent from Russia.  

Fast forward to today. President Donald Trump recently called for a nationwide strategic missile defense system—a so-called “American Golden Dome.” Framed as a “breakthrough” in protecting the US from nuclear threats, the plan is inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and echoes decades of failed efforts to build a reliable shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). For nearly 70 years, the US has pursued national strategic missile defense with enormous investments and very little return. This latest plan looks more like a rerun than a revelation.  

With this plan, we’re rewinding the tape, watching a remake of “Star Wars”—retro, expensive, and no more realistic than it was the first time around. As described by Ploughshares grantee Professor Jeffrey Lewis in a recent NPR article, Israel’s Iron Dome defends an area roughly the size of New Hampshire. The US system would need to protect an area roughly 400 times that size. 

Further, ICBMs are much faster than the medium range ballistic missiles Iron Dome would contend with. A US ABM system must intercept an object the size of a dorm room refrigerator plummeting out of the sky at speeds exceeding 15,000 miles per hour. Meanwhile, it must distinguish the real RVs from decoys and other devices meant to confuse the ABM system. And if the Golden Dome intends to rely on space-based systems to destroy missiles at even the slowest part of their flight, it would need a constellation of tens of thousands of satellites to be able to cope with a large attack from Russia or China according to Laura Grego, research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in this article from Reuters.  

Golden Dome May Make us Less Safe in the End  

Even if the Trump administration were able to pull off the impossible and build the Golden Dome, it could possibly threaten America’s security. The Golden Dome, or even a serious attempt to build it, could drive US adversaries to build more missiles to counter it, noted by Celia McDowall and Ankit Panda in a recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. We cannot continue to let the bone chilling logic that drove the Cold War arms race—that the best way to counter missile defense is to simply build more missiles—apply to today. 

Strategic missile defense isn’t new. And it still doesn’t work. 

President Trump’s Golden Dome is not a bold new security innovation. It’s a revival of failed Cold War ideas repackaged with gilt branding. Building it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and strain the federal budget. And it will never actually work.