At his final pre-inauguration rally on Sunday night, President Trump promised to order the military to begin construction on a nationwide “Iron Dome” missile defense system, modeled after the system that defends Israel from attacks.
“I will direct our military to begin construction of the great Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will all be made in the U.S.A,” said President Trump.
The promise did not include any details, other than that the system would be manufactured in the U.S., and did not mention a timeframe or potential cost for the project.
Israel’s Iron Dome, funded in part by U.S. taxpayers, is allegedly 90 percent effective at shooting down the rockets of its radical Islamist neighbors, though it can be overwhelmed by large enough barrages of projectiles.
Despite the effectiveness of Israel’s system, it is unclear whether a U.S. system would prove to be as successful.
The U.S. system would need to operate under dramatically different conditions, given the vastly greater size of the U.S. compared to Israel.
An American system would also need to defend against nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, rather than terrorist rockets.
It is unclear whether any missile defense system using current technology would be able to counteract the hypersonic missiles developed by Russia and China.
Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that no existing air defense technology is capable of stopping his recently unveiled Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
In December, President Putin proposed a duel between Western air defense systems and his new missile, suggesting that all the air defense systems the West can muster would do nothing to stop the Oreshnik.
For Trump’s proposed Iron Dome to be effective against U.S. adversaries like Russia and China, it would need to be capable of shooting down nuclear-armed hypersonic missiles before they can strike the U.S.
At the same rally, Trump reaffirmed his promise to “get wokeness the hell out of our military immediately.”
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Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, has long opposed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices in the military, which he believes weaken the nation’s fighters.
Hegseth has promised to remove forced diversity and restore lethality to the U.S. armed forces.
The Houthi freedom fighters penetrate the mass murdering jews iron dome with IED rockets daily.
Frankly the iron dome is designed for small/medium sized short ranged rockets. The ones that would attack the US are ICBMs or long range cruise missiles. What we would need is THADDS along the coast.
FYI Maine Wire, get rid of the captcha that requires you to select more than half or the whole freaking image to post.