President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Monday that would initiate the development of a U.S. version of the “Iron Dome” missile defense system, according to a report from CNN, which cited a document it claimed to have obtained.
“The threat of attack by ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles remains a catastrophic threat facing the United States,” the order reportedly states, according to Bloomberg News.
Trump has previously committed to establishing a missile defense system similar to Israel’s Iron Dome, which was created in partnership with the United States and bears the same name. This initiative is part of his broader efforts to strengthen U.S. military defense.
According to Bloomberg News, a U.S. version of the system would need to be more advanced and capable than the Israeli model.
Raytheon Co., which collaborates with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to produce the Iron Dome, notes that the Israeli system can intercept threats launched from distances between 4 to 7 kilometers. However, a U.S. system would need to cover a significantly larger area than Israel’s, as reported by Bloomberg.
{Matzav.com}
The USA already in theory has Patriot, THAAD, and Aegis as a multilayered defense protecting the coasts, borders, and skies.
The issue is that it is too costly (even with a nearly trillion dollar defense budget) to maintain enough of these systems to have comprehensive overlapping defense zones for the entire country with enough munitions to stay in the fight for a protracted missile war.
These systems are mostly aimed at making a meaningfully successful missile attack on US soil very costly and easy for ISR to observe, allowing for a premature attack.
The likelihood of needing an extremely short defense system on US shores is low. Iron Dome could be useful in forward operating bases or on the seas, but will likely be a waste on American soil.
Very simplistically, the strategy of the plan our nation has had to prevent us from, Rachmana Litzlan, being hit by a nuclear attack is that of “deterrence.” This means that a wicked enemy will be “deterred,” from shooting a nuclear bomb at us because he knows that we would immediately retaliate by shooting (quite a lot of) nuclear bombs back at him. Understandably, plan is a not for sure (that it will always work) plan, for there is always a danger that there may be an exceedingly wicked enemy who does not care about the retaliation that will come back at him and will anyway still shoot a bomb at us. An investigative journalist, Annie Jacobsen, did very extensive research into this subject, including interviews with numerous top government & military officials. She wrote a number of books, with probably her masterpiece being: “Nuclear War: A Scenario.” Available on Amazon, it comes in three formats, a regular book, a Kindle book, and an online Audio-Book (with her as the script reader).
I listened to the over 6 hour narration of the audio book, and I most certainly suggest for everyone else to listen to it too. That it is extremely frightening & chilling, puts it very, very, very, extremely, extremely, extremely, “mildly”!! For she relates that “all that it takes” is for JUST ONE hyper-evil enemy to shoot JUST ONE nuclear-bomb-carrying-rocket toward us, and, Rachmana Litzlan, that would immediately kick off the complex chain of required procedures & actions & counter-actions & counter-counter-actions that — with all previously assumed “safeguards” & “protections” rapidly completely disintegrating — would EXTREMELY RAPIDLY ESCALATE into the most horrific annihilation of full total world wide nuclear conflagration.
In this very possible scenario of total nuclear calamity that she relates, she points out that, despite the endless massive nuclear onslaught that would, C’V, be hitting us, there is still some thing that could still greatly LESSEN the onslaught and greatly lessen the numbers of people being killed — in other words SAVE THE LIVES of countless millions of people. It is a setup of good weapons that would knock out & destroy the enemy nuclear-bomb-carrying-rockets coming in to us.
Mrs. Jacobsen very sadly relates though, that very, very tragically, such a setup, which is called “missile defense” is an item that our country is very severely lacking. There is one extremely tiny military base that has a small number of missile interceptor rockets, which had performed poorly in their production test runs. Needless to say, in the massive onslaught scenario that she is afraid of occurring, that miniscule base’s few feeble interceptors would be quickly used up without stopping even one enemy rocket.
So, we especially see from Israel’s efforts at making its “Iron Dome,” that it is absolutely very urgently imperative for our country to, B’Ezras Hashem, develop whatever super-super-high-tech-technology will be necessary to construct its own “Iron Dome” that, Im Yirtza Hashem, will effectively ward off all threatening rockets. Our very lives depend on it.