U.S. Department of Defense
The Department of Defense (DoD) welcomes President Trump’s announcement regarding the Golden Dome for America, a next-generation missile defense shield. This bold initiative, formalized in Executive Order (EO) 14186 on January 27, 2025, represents a historic investment in American security and fulfills our duty to protect the homeland first and foremost.
The Golden Dome will progressively protect our nation from aerial attacks from any foe. Within the last four decades, our adversaries have developed more advanced and lethal long-range weapons than ever before, including ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles capable of striking the homeland with either conventional or nuclear warheads. Golden Dome is designed to leverage some past investments but will also use next-generation technology to defend against the evolving, and complex threat landscape. More
I think mobile domes would be good as well. A mobile dome over every Navy ship at sea or in port. Permanent domes over most if not all military bases overseas.
The next thing after the US Golden Dome would be to make them mobile – maybe they have that capability now. Israel already has an “Iron Dome” over their territory, although some missiles launched by the Paleos got through.
If This Were possible we would have one already. This is an announcement to help justify the one trillion dollar defense budget.
This is an awesome move. Just from the benefits of technology and manufacturing. Yuge.
Jason
I think you might have forgotten who’s been in charge for the last four years. Reagan pushed for something similar back in the day. But computer clocking speeds were not there yet. They are now.
Reagan did it to bankrupt the Soviets. There’s no one to bankrupt now. It’s a distraction and our country is too vast anyway. If Trump is going to play his 4D chess then he needs to be a little more clever.
All well and good, but how are we going to test it? We are nowhere near fielding any hypersonic missile, and I don’t think Russia, Iran or China will loan us a few to take target practice. And don’t try to tell me, DOD, that our ballistic missiles will do for testing. You know that’s bullshit and cope. Until we have tested and field hypersonic missiles comparable to those of our potential opponents, we will have no way of knowing how to defend agains them.
Thirdtwin
We have a pretty decent intercept system now. Raytheon builds it. Standard Missile 6. They test them all the time.
https://www.navy.mil/DesktopModules/ArticleCS/Print.aspx?PortalId=1&ModuleId=2892&Article=3349208
“We are nowhere near fielding any hypersonic missile,”
That’s not true either, we have one. Actually two.
Bad_Brad, I’ll let Andrei Martyanov explain:
“1.United States DOES NOT have real simulator of hypersonic weapon. What is “sold” to the bunch of morons with journo degrees from Ivy League about “simulation” is a horseshit about classic ballistic somehow “emulating” hypersonic weapons merely on the fact that all Intercontinental, Intermediate or even most operational-tactical ballistic missiles reach speeds above M=5 on their boost phase. US has nothing, not even close, similar to Avangard, Kinzhal, let alone 3M22.
2. The US doesn’t have and will not have any kinetic means to hit hypersonic weapon any time soon. Bringing up in the conversation lame Iron Dome, not to speak of ALL Raytheon’s (and Boeing’s) “Israeled” products which failed miserably in Israel, is a first sign of not only of BS being sold yet again, but a dead-end of development of real hypersonic weapons, not to speak about real anti-hypersonic interceptors.
3. And here is a give away: Regarding its hypersonic defense capability, Norman claimed that the upgraded radar can now detect what he called “very small targets” when a missile’s booster separates from its warhead after launch. “We can hit it before it starts maneuvering,” he told Breaking Defense. (c) This is a tacit admission of what I speak about ad nauseam–they cannot detect, track and develop firing solution for their arquebuses and can only “detect” separation of the booster. LOL. “
Andrei knows that of which he speaks, and he’s written the book(s) on it. He came from Soviet Union, became an American citizen and worked for our defense industry. He lives here and has a bested interest in the well-being of America, and he’s been sounding the alarm for years on how badly we’ve fallen behind.
Don’t confuse this with the Golden Shower which the Biden administration gave America.
A big beautiful dome as part of the big beautiful bill. What a coincidence.
And the Americans will be stuck with the big beautiful check.
I suspect it’s going to be just a smidge over 170 billion, too.
Brad, we do not have a tested working hypersonic. If we did we’d have it mount on the deck of the Zumwalt or racked under the wings of an F-35. Unless you are speaking of the Mach 5 speed of our ancient ballistic missiles, which fall on a predictable and solvable trajectory., and which are being used to make the claim that we have the ability now to hit maneuverable hypersonic missiles before they start maneuvering. I’m not buying it. Well, actually I am buying it, if the MIC gets their budget.
I think Andrel needs to stay off the Vodka.
https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/glide-phase-interceptor
The second one is a joint venture between Lockheed and of all peeps General Dynamics. In fact apparently General Dynamics has been working on an intercept on their own. That story broke a couple months ago when they scare the shit out of a couple commercial airline pilots up in the North West.
I use to deal a LOT with the primes. Not so much anymore. We have a lot of impressive sonsabitches working in our defense markets.
And here I thought lasers were faster than hypersonic.
Because a nation can NEVER flush enough of its wealth down the rathole of the criminal “defense” industry.
This is an excellent idea. An additional defense project that is definitely worth the expense.
The Israeli government has plenty of expertise with Missile Defense Shield technology aka “Iron Dome” which seems to be very successful. This may be the inspiration for using it in the United States given Iran, China etc. have the US in their cross hairs. Another great perceptive, strategic plan by President Trump.
Bad_Brad, Andrei prefers bourbon. And last time we went around about this stuff, you said the defense experts had all decided that there was nothing to hypersonics, and that “low & slow” was the way to go. Now they’re all puffed up about hypersonic missile defense. What happened?
Thirdtwin
That’s true. The guys that study this stuff have always said low and slow is much better than high and really fast. I think their thoughts were sooner or later the Hypersonic Missile will be easily defeated and detected. While the low and slow ones will always be tough to detect.
And yes lasers are faster. We have those too. But those damn batteries are freaken heavy.
Thirdtwin
Another thing is just because our military is not buying new cool weapons doesn’t mean guys like Raytheon aren’t working on them. I’ve been involved in the prototype stage of lots of weapons systems. Very few of them actually end up being used.
“I think their thoughts were sooner or later the Hypersonic Missile will be easily defeated and detected.”
That sounds like magical thinking and somewhat of a cope. Especially the “easily” part. And in a way they are right: Russians have already figured out how to defeat them. Because they use theirs for target practice. But there’s nothing easy about it, as our MIC is finding out.