January 27, 2025 – US President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order for a “next-generation” defence shield to protect the US against ballistic missiles and other long-range attacks, taking on a goal that past administrations – including his own – struggled to reach.
“The threat of attack by ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles remains a catastrophic threat facing the United States,” according to a White House document on the upcoming executive order.
It says Mr Trump will order the construction of an “Iron Dome” shield, comparing it to Israel’s vaunted system, which was developed in coordination with the US and is designed to address threats including drones, rockets and cruise missiles. Any such system would have to go well beyond what Israel’s Iron Dome provides if it’s to cover all of the US.
RTX Corp’s Raytheon unit, which produces Iron Dome in coordination with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, says the system’s Tamir missile can down weapons launched from a range of 4km to 70km.
The president’s executive order seeks to accelerate production and delivery of new systems to track and intercept incoming missiles, as well as defeat them before launch.
The US already has a range of missile defence systems in place. There are Terminal High Altitude Air Defence systems, as well as Aegis systems on warships and Patriot batteries and ground-based interceptors.
But the Defence Department has struggled to develop a defence shield for all of the US. Unsuccessful efforts go back to President Ronald Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defence Initiative, a space-based system that became known as “Star Wars.”
Since 2002, the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency has spent more than US$194 billion (S$261.71 billion), including US$10.4 billion for fiscal year 2022, to equip operational commanders with a layered system of sensors, interceptors, and command and control capabilities to detect, track and destroy incoming missiles, the Government Accountability Office said in a 2023 report.
In 2019, during Mr Trump’s first term, the Pentagon cancelled a US$1 billion Boeing Co contract for a “kill vehicle” envisioned to shoot down missiles from North Korea or Iran.
Adversaries such as China and Russia have worked to develop hypersonic weapons in recent years, as Defence Department has struggled to keep pace.
According to the White House, even in the face of mounting threats, “United States homeland missile defence policy has been limited to staying ahead of rogue nation threats and accidental or unauthorised missile launches.”
The Missile Defence Agency oversees a system of 44 ground-based interceptors based in California and Alaska designed and intended to stop small numbers of ballistic missiles from North Korea, not waves of missiles from China or Russia.
Lockheed Martin Corp in 2024 won a US$17 billion contract to upgrade the interceptors.
According to the president, the new system “will be made all in the USA.”