Trump’s Golden Dome plan threatens to fuel a new arms race

Thursday 29 May 2025 @ 12:20
Chatham House

EXPERT COMMENT

The plan for an advanced missile defence shield over the US offers no guarantee of success and risks undermining global security.

Last week, US President Donald Trump unveiled his $175 billion plan to build the ‘Golden Dome’: a coast-to-coast missile defence shield designed to protect the US against hypersonic, ballistic, and space-based weapons. But far from enhancing US national security, the initiative risks exacerbating global instability and accelerating strategic competition.

The concept for the Golden Dome is ambitious. The proposal envisions a multi-layered defence architecture involving hundreds or even thousands of satellites in orbit, equipped with advanced sensors and interceptors, including space-based lasers. These would detect, track, and neutralize incoming missiles and other threats at various stages of flight.

In both vision and rhetoric, the plans echo Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defence Initiative, often referred to as ‘Star Wars.’ Like the Golden Dome, the SDI proposed a layered defence system that would rely on cutting-edge, and largely untested, technologies to intercept incoming missiles before they could reach US territory. But despite years of investment, the SDI never produced a workable system and was eventually cancelled, exposing the gap between ambition and capability that still exists today.

The plan also draws inspiration from Israel’s Iron Dome system. But this comparison is misleading. Israel is much smaller than the US, and its Iron Dome protects the country from short-range, unguided rockets – threats that are limited in number, speed, and direction. Trump’s plan, by contrast, seeks to defend the entire US homeland from far more advanced and numerous threats, including long-range ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles and orbital delivery systems. The scale, complexity, and technical sophistication required are of a completely different order.

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Original article link: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/05/trumps-golden-dome-plan-threatens-fuel-new-arms-race

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