Trump Wants A Missile Defense System Like Israel's
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Hi, Short Wavers. I'm here with NPR science correspondent Jeff Brumfield. So, Jeff, since last week, Israel has been attacking Iran's nuclear facilities along with many other targets around the country. What's happening there? That's right. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he took this action because Iran has been stockpiling enriched uranium, by some estimates enough to produce about 10 nuclear weapons if they chose to do so. And he's also said that Iran has been stockpiling enriched uranium

And Netanyahu basically said that this was a preemptive attack to stop Iran's nuclear program. And in response, Iran has fired hundreds of missiles, many of which have struck targets in central Israel. And the Trump administration has been following this closely in part because Israel has a pretty sophisticated missile defense system, right, Jeff? Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Israel's missile defense system, colloquially as known as Iron Dome. And President Trump is fascinated by it. Earlier this year, he made a speech to Congress, and in it, there was a big request. I'm asking Congress to fund a state-of-the-art Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland, all made in the USA. Thank you.

Golden Dome. Trump is sort of riffing off the Iron Dome name there. And Trump has talked about Golden Dome quite a bit during his campaign. He wants to see it built during his second term. This is a very dangerous world. We should have it. We want to be protected and we're going to protect our citizens like never before. So today on the show, we'll talk about Israel's missile defense system and what a similar system could look like in the U.S.,

Can it be done? And how much would it cost? I'm Emily Kwong. And I'm Jeff Brumfield. And you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

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Yeah. So I actually want to back up a second just briefly to talk about the events after October 7th, 2023. That was, of course, when Hamas militants attacked Israeli civilians along the Gaza border.

Along with that attack, there were thousands of rockets fired out of Gaza, and the Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted many of those rockets. And actually, since the start of the conflict, Iron Dome has been very busy intercepting rockets from Gaza, intercepting rockets from Lebanon.

And the way it works is really interesting. Basically, it is a network system of missile launchers that are tied to radars and computers. And so when they see incoming missiles, they make a decision if the missile or rocket's going to fall in a populated area, Iron Dome will fire an interceptor to knock it out of the sky. I was picturing something a little like this.

kind of shield over an area, but it's not a dome at all. It sounds more like a system. That's right, it is. And it's actually part of an even larger Israeli network of missile defenses. There are two other systems called Arrow and David's Sling. And those systems have been front and center more recently with this attack from Iran because Iran is using much larger missiles to attack Israel.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think turning back to the Golden Dome now, that what we're seeing coming out of Iran is actually a more sort of characteristic type of threat that America might face. So whatever Golden Dome Trump wants to build would have to stand up to this kind of missile technology. That's right. You know,

The U.S.'s main adversaries that could hit it with missiles are major superpowers, you know, Russia and China. And the types of missiles they have are even bigger and more sophisticated than the ones held by Iran. So now we're talking about intercontinental ballistic missiles. These missiles don't launch near our borders. They launch from halfway around the world.

They go way up into space, and when they come down, they are fast. They are coming down to Earth at hypersonic speeds. That makes them virtually impossible to intercept. And of course, the final complication is many of them are armed with nuclear weapons. I spoke to Jeffrey Lewis. He's a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who tracks missile programs, and he put it this way.

defending against an ICBM that is burning out at seven kilometers a second where you can't make any mistakes, you can't miss any, or it's still the worst day in American history, that is a completely

different problem set. So when Jeffrey looks at what it took to build Iron Dome and then imagines building Golden Dome... It's the difference between a kayak and a battleship. Where would the U.S. even start with building a battleship Golden Dome?

It really goes back to this question of how do you defend against these big intercontinental missiles? You know, basically, the best time to go after them is right when they've launched. At that point, they're slow moving and big and full of fuel. Laura Grego is a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. She says there's just one problem. The launch phase of those missiles was...

really only lasts three to five minutes. So you only have, you know, some hundreds of seconds that you have available to catch them as they're launching. Oh, so Golden Dome would have to respond within that three to five minute window? That's right. But remember, these missiles are being fired from...

from half a world away. So how do you catch a missile being launched from, say, the middle of Russia just minutes after it lifts off? There's really only one way to do it, and that's from space. The idea is you have some sort of satellite in orbit that can knock out the rocket on its way up.

Now, this idea may sound familiar to you, Emily, because the sort of concept of having space-based interceptors is almost as old as the space age itself. And I'm not sure if you remember, but Republican President Ronald Reagan famously tried to do this in the 1980s. I know this is a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century.

Though clearly the dream of it is still alive. So what would be involved in such a project today? There's a number of concepts, but one way to do it would be to have a little interceptor satellite that could drop down on the missile and strike it as it's launching.

The problem is the globe is really, really big and satellites zip around it really quickly. So you need a lot of things in space in order to have them in the right place at the right time. Laura Grego was part of a panel formed by the American Physical Society that looked at missile defense recently, and they concluded...

A constellation of about 16,000 interceptors would be needed to attempt to counter a rapid salvo of 10 solid propellant ICBMs. Wait, wait, wait. Okay, let me slow this down for my math brain. You would need 16,000 of these interceptors to properly take down 10 missiles. That's a huge number.

Yeah. And I should say it could be even more. There's a lot of different things that factor into how many interceptors you need. These numbers can slide around, but we're talking many thousands, possibly tens of thousands. Until recently, that felt like it was impossible. And I think that's why we're talking about this.

But now we actually do have a constellation of thousands of satellites in orbit called Starlink. Oh, this giant constellation that provides internet via satellite?

Starlink, we use it here on Earth right now. Yeah, that's right. And I should say Starlink is not a missile defense system, but it is a proof of principle that it's possible to mass produce satellites and put them in orbit and have them communicate with each other and form a network. Okay. So while one seemed like an impossible problem is now starting to feel more possible, what

Is Golden Dome actually going to work, Jeff? Well, some people think it's at least worth a serious look. It's a welcome development, and it's in some respects overdue. That's one of them, a guy named Tom Carrico. He's director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He

He notes that missiles are just becoming a bigger and bigger part of warfare. I mean, we've really seen that just in the last few days in Israel. Missiles have become weapons of choice. They are what folks reach for. It's what we reach for to strike deep into our enemy's territory. It's what

And he really worries that if the U.S. got into a large conflict with Russia or China, it needs to be ready to defend against missiles, which may or may not have nuclear weapons. I don't want to just deter a nuclear exchange. I want to deter a conventional war.

with China and Russia. And we do that by raising the threshold. The threshold to attack, of course. But I think Tom and everyone I interviewed agreed that there's still a huge amount of work that would have to be done before Golden Dome could become a reality. Okay, so lay it out for me. Like,

We can launch a lot of satellites, but then what else do we need to really make Golden Dome? Well, I mean, we would still need to develop satellites that can actually hit missiles. That's technology that we don't have right now. And so, you know, there's a couple of ways to do that. As I mentioned, the sort of simplest architecture in some ways is to make microsats that could just slam into the missiles, drop on top of them as they launch.

Some other people I've spoken to are big fans of satellites with lasers. They could use directed energy to blow up missiles. Whatever the approach, it's going to take a lot of work to design, test, and then mass produce these satellites.

And they're not going to be cheap. You know, the Trump administration is estimating Golden Dome could cost around $175 billion. But the Congressional Budget Office recently said it would be closer to half a trillion dollars. Oh, that's a lot of money because the government annually spends in the trillions. That's right.

This is a very expensive project. It probably is. You know, no one who really understands these systems thinks it could happen in the remaining three years of Trump's second term, to be honest with you. Mm-hmm.

And then there's one more thing to think about, Emily, and that's the old military saying that the enemy also gets a vote. Yeah, I suppose U.S. nuclear adversaries are not just going to sit around watching Golden Dome get built and do nothing. That's right. And, you know, I think, again, there's a lesson here in what we're seeing in Israel right now. Iran has actually been probing Israel's air defenses, trying to find ways to slip through. And

You know, Iran's ability to do this is somewhat limited, but China and Russia are major players, and they do not like America's missile defense system. Jeffrey Lewis, the missile defense expert we heard from right at the start, he thinks that Russia and China may find ways to outfox Golden Dome, and it may ultimately end up making things worse. We will end up with vastly larger Russian and Chinese nuclear forces. We will end up with the Russians and the Chinese having all kinds of crazy problems

And, you know, again, looking to Israel as an example, I don't know what the final answer really is. Clearly, missile defenses are important and they protect populations from harm. But I don't know what the final answer really is.

At the same time, you know, there's evidence that Russia and China are preparing for Golden Dome before it's even been built. Jeff Brumfield, thank you for bringing all this on. You're welcome, Emily. Short Wavers, if you found this episode interesting or informative, follow Short Wave right now on the NPR app or your favorite podcasting platform, or just text it to a friend this episode, which was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez.

Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director. And Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.

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