President Trump on Monday night signed an executive order to create a next-generation missile defense shield, which the White House referred to as the “Iron Dome for America” after Israel’s missile defense system.
The plan faces questions, including the cost and feasibility of deploying a shield across the entire continental United States. But there are also hopes it could help the nation address long-standing concerns about homeland security.
Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gave a nod to the Trump proposal on several fronts: its prioritization of speed, focus on adversaries like Russia and its potential to address a multiplicity of missile threats.
“The end here is that there is [a] gratifying prioritization of the problem. So that’s good,” he said. “It deserves to be a White House priority.”
It’s unclear how expensive the plan will be, or how long it will take to put it together.
Trump’s order calls for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to submit an implementation plan within 60 days.
Karako said missile defense may take years to upgrade because it involves a range of systems. But he insisted the technology can be rolled out to meet demand.
“A lot of technology has now been improved operationally,” he said.
Republicans praised the plan.
“I’m thrilled to see President Trump prioritize the modernization and expansion of U.S. missile defense,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, in a statement. “President Trump’s order makes it clear our missile defenses will be oriented to defend against all threats from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.”
Trump asked Hegseth to review ways to increase missile defense technology development with other countries, boost theater missile defenses of forward-deployed U.S. troops and increase American provisions of missile defense capabilities to allies.
Trump wants an assessment of the strategic missile threat to the U.S. and a specific set of locations to defend against an attack from nuclear adversaries, and he called for a funding plan before finalization of the fiscal 2026 budget proposal.
In the executive order, Trump lamented that the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative to protect against intercontinental ballistic missiles ended up being shuttered.
“The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,” the order reads. “Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities.”
Trump said the shield will defend against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries,” and that he wants to take out targets “prior to launch and in the boost phase,” while increasing the development or deployment of interceptors and sensors.
He also called for the exploration of nonkinetic capabilities to defend against threats and to increase supply chains to procure needed materials.
“We protect other countries, but we don’t protect ourself,” Trump said at the House GOP retreat on Monday. “The United States is entitled to that.”
Trump also said the technology was now there to meet the requirements for a large missile defense shield.
There are technologies that the U.S. has yet to field that could greatly expand defense capabilities: interceptors to take out targets in space or within the boost phase of flight, along with nonkinetic options like directed energy, or lasers, and high-power microwaves.
Karako said space-based interceptors were a crucial component for the future and not “as wild as it may sound.”
“I think we are going to get there as a country,” he said. “There’s a logical necessity, almost as an implication of space becoming a warfighting domain.”
Still, the U.S. has yet to field such technologies, which could take years to develop.
Trump promised an Iron Dome system during his campaign, saying he would make “the greatest dome of them all” to defend against foreign threats.
Israel’s Iron Dome is meant to take out short-range rockets and artillery fired from up to 43 miles away, but the U.S. does not face threats across the border like Israel, a small country in the Middle East.
The U.S. has invested in Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI), which are designed to take out long-range threats like ballistic missiles. Today, there are 44 GBIs, with 40 at Fort Greely, Ala., and four at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
It’s unclear how Trump plans to upgrade the GBI system, and whether he plans to add other defense architectures to them.
Robert Soofer, who leads the nuclear strategy project at the Atlantic Council, wrote in a report earlier this month that an updated shield was needed because threats are growing against the U.S. from hostile, nuclear-armed adversaries such as North Korea, China and Russia.
“The missile threat to the homeland is real and growing and, if left unaddressed, could seriously undermine U.S. grand strategy and the very basis of national defense strategy,” Soofer wrote.
Soofer argued that the objective was not to create an “impregnable missile defense shield” but to establish “sufficient defenses to counter adversary missile threats of coercion” and protect nuclear retaliatory forces.
Soofer recommended a layered missile defense system across land, sea and space, in which there would be multiple integrated systems that can take out targets. He said GBIs were never meant to stand alone and called for the inclusion of SM-3 block IIA missiles and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system.
“When viewed from the attacker’s perspective, a layered missile defense system presents a very difficult challenge that cannot be solved simply with increased numbers,” he wrote.
But some critics of boosting homeland defense have raised concerns before about fueling an arms race, as it remains unclear how adversaries will respond to Trump’s defense buildup.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said “having a robust, layered missile defense system makes me feel more safe and secure today, and buying a few more interceptors would probably make me feel a little bit more comfortable tomorrow.”
“But when I think about the world we will leave to my 2- and 4-year-old daughters, I am less sure,” he said in a 2023 hearing. “How will expanding U.S. missile defense today impact strategic stability tomorrow? We are already in an arms race. Will it make our world more safe?”
