Trump reveals ambitious and expensive plans for the “Golden Dome” rocket defense: NPR

President Trump presented an ambitious plan on Tuesday to protect America from rocket attacks by building what he calls “golden dome”.

“As soon as the golden dome has been completely built, you can intercept rockets, even if they are started from other sides of the world and even if they are started from space,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump's budget and timeline for the project are ambitious. He said reporters, he hoped to do it “before the end of my term”. With 25 billion US dollars, the system would cost around 175 billion US dollars to start building in the budget of the next year.

An essential part of the Trump Plan is to bring both rocket sensual and rocket destruction satellites into orbit above the earth. The constellation would probably include thousands of small satellites that can attack a rocket in the moments after the start of U -boot or Silo.

Such a satellite network would only have been unthinkable a few years ago, but now it seems to be at least theoretically within reach. The SpaceX company from Elon Musk uses inexpensive rockets to start a constellation of satellites that are known as Starlink on the Internet. According to SpaceX, the Starlink system currently has around 7,000 satellites in orbit, a scale that is comparable to most estimates, which would be necessary for limited rooms-based rocket defense capacity.

“The general efforts of the golden dome are long overdue,” says Tom Karako, director of the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Karako admits that the room -based intercepting incoming rockets is a “bad hard problem”, but he says that the reality is that the next big war is probably partly over the earth's atmosphere. In view of this reality, he believes that Golden Cathedral's capabilities will offer the United States a robust defense, which could also be used for antitellite warfare if necessary.

“There is a need to fight with many things that are in space and go through the room,” he says.

The room -based rocket defense has been a dream of politicians for decades. In 1983 Ronald Reagan announced plans for a system to intercept missiles from the then Soviet Union.

“I know that this is an impressive task that may not be achieved before the end of this century,” said Reagan at the time. “It will take decades of effort on many fronts.”

In the end, the Soviet Union collapsed before something that Reagan's vision approached could be realized, but rocket defenses have made progress. US patriot rockets have been working for decades to intercept shorter rockets, and the United States now have several systems that are able to intercept medium and medium-sized and medium-sized range. It also has a small number of interceptors that can meet in the middle of their flight ICBMS. This ability is precisely on the nuclear start North Korea.

Other countries, namely Israel and Ukraine, have used rocket defenses to protect themselves from attack in recent years.

The US military has soil and sea-based rocket defense systems. The golden dome would extend its range into space.

Leah Garton/US rocket defense agency

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Leah Garton/US rocket defense agency

However, the intercontinental ballistic rockets in large numbers have a much more difficult problem. ICBMS start deeply enemy territory and shout back to earth at hyperschally speeds, which makes it almost impossible to hit at the end of your flight. You can also use decoys that interceptors can deceive. The best time to meet them is that you are just starting from your silos, but this requires an extremely fast reaction from room -based interceptors. Thousands of interceptors have to be started to ensure that a rocket lies over a rocket.

Whether the technology has actually arrived is anything but clear.

An orbital system would be complex, expensive and ultimately susceptible to counterattacks. Grego says that a network like Golden Dome could be defeated by clustering starts to overwhelm the system or attack the satellites itself. The United States recently accused Russia of examining how nuclear warheads can be brought into orbit. Such an explosive head could switch off large sections of a golden dome system in space.

And the US threats are more diverse than ever. A report recently reported by the defense service agency showed that Golden Dome would also have to fight over the earth with new and emerging threats such as cruise tractets, hyper -sound missiles, which are the edge of the room and weapons, which are known as fractional orbital bombing systems, through part of an orbit around the earth and then attack from any direction.

The total price for Golden Dome is anything but safe. While the president could take over three years for $ 175 billion, a recent estimate by the Congress budget office set up the costs between $ 161 and $ 542 billion over two decades. Senator Tim Shehy, R-Mont., Senator Tim Shehy, who leads a “Golden Dome Caucus” Space News.

In view of the potential high costs, Grego hopes that the congress will look careful before it gives the Trump management money to pursue the system. The path to rocket defense “is littered with programs that were started and abandoned after a few years,” says Grego. “I would say that at the beginning, ask the hard questions before going down this street.”