What Is Trump's Iron Dome For America? A Next-generation Missile Shield And A Return To Reagan's 'star Wars' Program

President Trump ordered a plan to build a missile shield capable of protecting the US. Here, the US launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile, part of its offensive nuclear force.

U.S. Space Force photo by Airman 1st Class Olga Houtsma

• President Trump has proposed a next-gen missile shield, reviving Reagan's SDI vision.
• The plan, "Iron Dome for America," appears to emphasize countering high-end threats.
• Industry partners like RTX and Lockheed Martin have shown an interest in the project.

President Donald Trump wants a next-generation missile shield with space-based interceptors. The project will pick up where former President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" project left off.

He's calling the new effort "Iron Dome for America," drawing on a name for an Israeli system that protects the country from rockets and artillery. Trump is worried about far more severe threats, though, specifically ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles.

An executive order signed by the president this week essentially revives Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, often referred to as "Star Wars. " The new project reflects growing concerns over efforts by major military rivals to develop and field advanced missiles, weapons that demand more from defensive systems.

Missile and weapons experts say space-based capabilities are essential to countering these threats. Some, however, have shared concerns that the proposed shield required to defeat them may be too expensive, technically unworkable, or destabilizing to the fragile nuclear balance.

Threats have evolved. Russia is developing a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, hypersonic missiles, and nuclear-powered cruise missiles. China has also developed new hypersonic weapons, and even North Korea is building modern ICBMs and advanced missiles.

Vehicles carrying DF-17 missiles participate in a military parade.

GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images

Intercepting new hypersonic missiles with traditional missile defense systems is difficult due to their high speeds, irregular flight paths, and maneuverability.

But even the more traditional threats pose significant challenges that can exceed US defensive capabilities. Modern missiles are often equipped with countermeasures to defeat interceptors, and the sheer size of certain adversary arsenals exceeds what current American defenses can handle. Russia, for example, has roughly 1,700 deployed nuclear weapons. Any one could destroy an American city.

A 2023 report from a congressional commission on US strategic posture said the Department of Defense "should focus on sensor architectures, integrated command and control, interceptors, cruise and hypersonic missile defenses, and area or point defenses." It added that "the DOD should urgently pursue deployment of any capabilities that prove feasible."

Experts have long said additional space-based assets would be needed to defeat evolving missile threats. Trump's plan emphasizes both space sensors and space interceptors for detecting launches immediately and attacking missiles outside the atmosphere.

Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider that space-based interceptors are essential "because of where things are going in terms of space becoming a warfighting domain."

"I think that this year, we're going to see a different national conversation about space," he said.

Trump's executive order has the potential to create big opportunities for leading air defense manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX.

When asked about the new Iron Dome for America on a recent earnings call, Lockheed's CFO said that "we can shoot down cruise missiles with lasers now, and that could be part of the solution." And RTX's chief financial officer recently told Bloomberg, "We are fully prepared to support the president's ambitions."

The order gives Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth 60 days to deliver a plan for constructing a next-generation shield.

From 'Star Wars' to 'Iron Dome for America'

Former President Ronald Reagan had a vision for a missile shield that would change the deterrence model. It would feature ground-based capabilities, sensor systems, directed-energy weapons like lasers, space-based interceptors, and more to revolutionize defense in the nuclear age.

"What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant US retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?" Reagan said in 1983 as he announced the SDI.

Reagan called on the scientific community that created nuclear weapons to develop the capability to make them obsolete and end the principle of mutually assured destruction.

Critics of the ambitious defense program derisively called it "Star Wars" and said it risked destabilizing the traditional deterrence approach and igniting a new arms race. The program was scrapped in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War, but elements of it live on in today's Missile Defense Agency, which oversees the ground-based midcourse defense system.

The GMD system, part of a layered defense, has a less than astounding intercept success rate. The MDA, in partnership with firms like Boeing, Northrup Grumman, and Lockheed, has worked to improve it through new systems and next-generation interceptors, but for now, it remains limited.

The GMD system is aimed at combating lower-level threats, like those posed by North Korea's relatively young ICBM program. For Russia and China, the US relies on the threat of instant nuclear retaliation as a deterrent.

An interceptor missile takes flight in pursuit of an ICBM during a test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.

US Air Force

Trump signaled dissatisfaction with current capabilities and invoked Reagan when signing the order for a next-generation shield.

"President Ronald Reagan endeavored to build an effective defense against nuclear attacks, and while this program resulted in many technological advances, it was canceled before its goal could be realized," Trump said.

Trump's proposal calls for the development and deployment of space-based sensors and interceptors, options to defeat missile salvos before launch and disrupt missiles without destroying them, and underlayer and terminal defense systems. The details are few for now, but the idea appears to rely heavily on space, left-of-launch, and directed-energy capabilities. The US is much further on these technologies today than it was in the 1980s.

A space-based interceptor is essentially an orbital missile launcher with the speed and range to strike an ICBM outside the atmosphere. Reagan's version was called the Brilliant Pebbles program.

The move to boost defenses comes amid increased focus on the threats posed by near-peer challengers. China has rapidly expanded its nuclear arsenal in recent years.

"Ostensibly, the [executive order] is saying we need to be more attentive to Russia and China," Karako said, "and I would think that's the right answer." As for whether this plan will sufficiently address the challenges the US faces, he said we'll have to wait and see.

Reignited classic debates

The aim of the "Iron Dome for America" program is to shield the US from attack while preserving its second-strike capability, where the US preserves enough nuclear force after an attack to deter an enemy from striking in the first place. In that sense, the shield and traditional deterrence would theoretically work together.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, called Trump's plan "SDI v2," characterizing the vision as "a mix of existing capabilities, emerging ones, and pipe dreams."

Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the goal of making the continental US invulnerable to missile attacks "remains a mirage and a path to endless spending and arms racing." He added that "cheaper launch costs and new interceptor tech won't change this."

An A-10 ground-attack aircraft flies over the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Nebraska.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gwendelyn Ohrazda/Released

This is why the US relies on diplomacy and deterrence to ensure security, he said. Arms control is a much cheaper route to safety, with rigorous verification processes in place. Trump recently said that he would like to see the mutual reduction and even elimination of nuclear weapons through negotiations.

Nuclear missile defense is exceptionally difficult and will likely remain so, even with a working missile shield. CSIS's Karako said that if Russia woke up and chose to lob 1,000 warheads at the US, the shield would be insufficient. But, he argued, stronger defenses raise the threshold for an attack, boosting deterrence against the possibility of a limited or coercive strike.

Other experts, such as Hudson Institute's Rebeccah Heinrichs and retired Gen. John Hyten, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar points, suggesting that the US should "deploy additional missile defense capabilities" to "deter both Russia and China from considering such an attack, by increasing their uncertainty over whether it would succeed."

The arms control community holds the view that better shields only drive adversaries to build better spears. To that point, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly highlighted the ability of his newest weapons to evade existing missile-defense systems, suggesting that may have been a motivation. Others, however, argue that US rivals and foes will build the tools to challenge US power regardless of what defenses America fields.