Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ defence plan includes space missiles, lasers: Report

Plans shared with defence contractors besides amusement a caller rocket tract successful the American Midwest, according to report.

The medication of United States President Donald Trump has circulated plans for its $175bn “Golden Dome” rocket defence system, revealing a imaginable caller rocket tract successful the Midwest and details of the project’s plans to sprout down missiles successful space, the Reuters quality bureau reports.

According to a bid of slides, titled “Go Fast, Think Big!”, presented to immoderate 3,000 defence contractors successful Huntsville, Alabama, past week, Reuters says that plans for the Golden Dome see 3 layers of rocket interceptors, radar arrays and lasers, successful summation to its space-based defences.

While the presumption highlighted that the US “has built some interceptors and re-entry vehicles” for space-based rocket interception before, the plans besides acknowledged that the US has ne'er built a conveyance that tin grip the vigor of reentry portion targeting an force missile, according to Reuters.

Trump has estimated his Golden Dome could outgo $175bn.

So far, Congress has appropriated $25bn for the strategy successful the president’s tax and spending bill passed successful July. Another $45.3bn is earmarked for the Golden Dome successful Trump’s 2026 statesmanlike fund request.

“They person a batch of money, but they don’t person a people of what it costs yet,” a US authoritative cited by Reuters said.

Plans for the dome included a representation showing that a caller large-scale rocket field, with systems built by Lockheed Martin, could beryllium located successful the US Midwest, Reuters reported.

The tract would beryllium successful summation to 2 akin rocket fields that already beryllium in confederate California and Alaska.

Lockheed Martin has described the Gold Dome arsenic “a defence strategy that shields America from aerial threats, hypersonic missiles and drone swarms with unmatched velocity and accuracy”.

“Thanks to President Trump’s vision, Golden Dome volition marque this a reality, securing our future,” Lockheed Martin wrote successful a station connected societal media successful March.

Reuters said the slides did not see immoderate references to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which was portion of a bid for Golden Dome contracts, alongside the bundle shaper Palantir and defence systems shaper Anduril.

Trump campaigned connected gathering “a rocket defence shield astir our country,” successful the lead-up to the 2024 statesmanlike election. At an earlier run lawsuit successful July 2024, Trump compared his plans with Israel’s Iron Dome.

The Iron Dome is Israel’s rocket defence system, which detects an incoming rocket, determines its way and intercepts it. The strategy was developed with much than $1bn successful backing from the US.

Days aft taking bureau connected January 27, Trump signed an executive order to “immediately statesman the operation of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome rocket defence shield, which volition beryllium capable to support Americans”.

Although Trump secured $25bn for the strategy successful his taxation and spending bill, which besides included significant cuts to national backing for different programmes, including Medicaid, the task inactive faces a important backing shortfall.

Trump suggested successful May that the shortfall could beryllium partially made up by Canada paying $61bn towards the project.

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies