CBS News
China said Wednesday that the Trump administration’s plan to construct a so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense system to protect the U.S. from missile attacks carries “strong offensive implications” and will increase the risks of a global arms race and militarizing outer space. President Trump said Tuesday that his administration had “officially selected an architecture for this state-of-the-art system,” and that a budget package currently being deliberated by Congress would provide an initial $25 billion in funding for the project.
An unclassified assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency shows the military expects to be contending with missile threats that are greater in “scale and sophistication in the coming decade,” noting specifically that “China and Russia are developing an array of novel delivery systems to exploit gaps in the current U.S. ballistic missile defenses.”
“North Korea has successfully tested ballistic missiles with sufficient range to reach the entire homeland, and Iran has space launch vehicles it could use to develop a military-viable ICBM by 2035, should Tehran decide to pursue the capability,” the DIA assessment said, warning that already, “there is no part of the homeland which cannot be struck by existing ICBMs.”
