NBC News
The Defense Department will soon brief the president on possible options for a planned missile defense system that could cost up to hundreds of billions.
Defense Department officials will soon brief President Donald Trump on a variety of options for him to fulfill his pledge to protect the United States with something modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense, according to U.S. officials and experts familiar with the initiative.
Like former President Ronald Reagan’s push for the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was proposed to protect the U.S. from Soviet nuclear missiles, Trump’s call for an “Iron Dome for America,” more often referred to as Golden Dome, is a signature endeavor that could sew together multiple air defense systems with the idea of keeping the country and perhaps eventually American assets around the world safe.
The Strategic Defense Initiative, which has come to be known by its mocking nickname, “Star Wars,” was never operational, and it was all but canceled years after Reagan left office. Trump’s plan is seen as more realistic than SDI was, given technological advances since the 1980s, but the biggest vision the administration is contemplating — including stopping nuclear missiles fired from another continent — would most likely be extremely expensive and take years.
