The Trump administration's Iron Dome for America executive order is causing political ripples, but with the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) soliciting industry input on the concept, how would such a comprehensive missile defense system work?
Since the mid-1960s, the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) has been the centerpiece of strategic thinking. The idea is that no country would dare to launch a massive or even limited nuclear strike against an adversary because the result would be a massive counter strike that would turn any nuclear exchange into an apocalyptic scenario where neither side survives.
The problem with MAD, aside from the world living constantly under a sword of Damocles, which makes it difficult to get a good night's sleep, is that it was never a thought out strategy. Instead, it was little more than resignation to an intolerable yet unsolvable situation where the only action possible was to reduce the danger of triggering Armageddon by accident or because some insane general is worrying about the purity of his precious bodily fluids.
Since the Dr. Strangelove days, things have become more complicated. The five official nuclear powers of the United States, Britain, France, Russian, and China have been joined by India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, though only Israel is thought likely to have hydrogen bombs in its arsenal. Added to this, weapon systems have evolved to include space-based weapons, advanced cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles, long-range drones capable of carrying strategic payloads, and whole new families of nuclear missiles.
Throw in variables like the collapse of the Soviet Union, its successor state Russia trying to remain a top-tier nuclear power with an economy the size of Canada's while fighting a conventional war in Ukraine, a resurgent China striving to become a world power or at least a dominant regional hegemony, a nuclear-ambitious Iran, plus some nasty non-state actors, and global security becomes a rather hairy proposition.
For the United States, this boils down to two fundamental problems. First, how to deal with the threat of nuclear war even in a world that has seen a drastic reduction of weapon stockpiles and second, how to protect the American homeland against both rogue strikes and all-out nuclear attacks.
It's not a novel dilemma any more than MAD is a modern idea, since it dates back to the ancient Greeks, who understood that city states attacking one another's olive groves could eventually lead to the destruction of both sides. Nations have long sought ways to protect against attack and invasion, whether that meant fortresses, shore batteries, early warning systems, radar, or massive standing armies and navies.
Effectively, what the Trump administration wants is right there on the tin. It wants something along the lines of Israel's Iron Dome, which has proven so dramatically effective against rocket attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Of course, the Americans don't want to literally adopt Iron Dome. That's a short-range missile interceptor system, in conjunction with other missile defense systems, designed to protect a small area against short range rockets. To use the Iron Dome to protect the fourth largest nation on Earth would be like trying to cut down a redwood with a penknife.
From the Request For Information (RFI) issued by the MDA, we can get a much better idea what is wanted – not only from the parameters outlined for the system, but by making deductions based on the timeframe for the enterprise.
What Iron Dome for America effectively means is an expansion of current missile defense technologies, with markedly increased capabilities. Though many people might not be aware of it, the US already has a missile defense network of over 40 interceptors based at Fort Greeley outside of Fairbanks, Alaska and at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. These are missiles topped with what are called kinetic kill vehicles, which are able to zero in on attacking missiles and destroy them by sheer force of impact.
Of course, these interceptors couldn't handle a full-scale nuclear attack, but they can check small strikes by rogue states like North Korea or Iran, and can deal with accidental launches by some other power. In addition, the Pentagon is already aggressively developing orbital sensor networks and AI systems for detecting and identifying not only intercontinental ballistic missiles, but cruise and hypersonic missiles as well.
According to the RFI, the new system is intended to counter ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.
The purpose is to deter attacks against and defend not only people, but also protect infrastructure and the country's second strike capabilities. This will require speeding up development of existing hypersonic and ballistic space sensor networks that can track missiles from orbit. These would be used to help a fleet of orbiting interceptors target and destroy enemy missiles while they're still in the boost phase after launching. In addition, there would be another layer of defense to intercept missiles as they approach their targets in US territory. This would not only involve interceptors, but "non-kinetic" countermeasures, which is an obtuse way of describing jammers, lasers, and other directed energy weapons. The requirements also include the ability to take out missiles before they've even launched.
None of these goals is outside of current technology, though they do require a highly intelligent system that can coordinate on a vast scale if it's to be implemented completely. Interception by ground-based missiles is already established and ship-based interceptors are now remarkably sophisticated, with the US Aegis system demonstrating that it can even take out orbital satellites, if required. In addition, laser weapons are increasing in power, range, and precision. Even if they can't destroy targets, they can dazzle them or disrupt delicate electronics and control mechanisms.
A more problematic area is space-based interceptors. The technical barriers of missiles waiting in orbit to take out threats aren't very great. However, there is the problem of orbital mechanics, which will, at the very least, require a very large number of interceptors to deal with a potential threat. Then there is the problem of protecting these interceptors, sensors, and communications satellites from enemy anti-satellite weapons – not to mention how to deal with decoys and other deception devices.
Orbital sensors have their own limitations. Hypersonic missiles and cruise missiles have too faint a signature to be picked up easily from geosynchronous orbit, which means that any future sensor network will require constellations of low-Earth orbit satellites. Another problem is building a command and control network, which would be far more complex than anything to date and would probably have to rely heavily on AI to handle the massive data load.
One obvious factor is the timeline, which sees the first demonstration of the Dome by the end of 2026. Even by the end of the second Trump term, it wouldn't be possible to build a fraction of the required defense system or its infrastructure, though it may be possible to deploy it in increments with a limited shield in place by 2029 that could cover the Pacific coast and focus on specific threats.
At the very least, it would be possible to create a robust shield that could handle small-scale threats or terrorist attacks.
All of the above is being considered in isolation without the bewildering problems of domestic politics and foreign policy. For example, an American Iron Dome, if proven successful, could be seen as a threat by some and result in an arms race to overwhelm it. There have already been hints of such a thing from Russian officials. However, this is one of those instances where action and reaction results in more reaction, since a determination to counter a defense can be seen as a confirmation of its necessity.
There is also the question of how well such a system would work, with some critics pointing out that most interceptor systems have only a 50% success rate. The counter is that 50% is a very high level of success and that the purpose of such a defense isn't necessarily to completely foil an attack so much as to place a high degree of uncertainty in the adversary's mind. That is the whole point of deterrence.
Another factor is why the Trump administration is seeking such a shield. One point that has been made is that President Trump, like President Reagan before him, has an abhorrence of nuclear weapons and would like to pursue a policy of denuclearization. If this is the case, one possible answer to the question of how others would react to the American shield would be to take the Reagan approach and offer the technology to other nations on the rationale that by making nuclear weapons obsolete, their reason for existing would disappear and there would be no incentive to counter the system.
Whatever the future of the initiative, it certainly won't be a simple job. It will require multiple approaches to multiple threats on an intercontinental scale. It also won't be a panacea, since there will always be other ways to attack or threaten that no single defense can deal with.
At any rate, with the crash nature of the program, we should have a much clearer idea of what's on the drawing board in a matter of months.
Source: The White House
