Trump Wants A Missile Defense System Like Israel's

Summary

Short Wave: Trump Wants A Missile Defense System Like Israel's
Released on June 17, 2025

In this episode of NPR’s Short Wave, hosts Emily Kwong and science correspondent Jeff Brumfiel delve into the complexities surrounding missile defense systems, sparked by recent military actions in the Middle East and a bold proposal from former President Donald Trump. The discussion intricately weaves through the current state of missile defenses, the technical and financial challenges of implementing a similar system in the United States, and the broader geopolitical implications.

---

1. Israel’s Recent Military Actions and Missile Defense

The episode opens with a briefing on the escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. Following a series of attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities by Israel, Iran retaliated by launching hundreds of missiles targeting central Israel. This ongoing conflict has brought Israel’s sophisticated missile defense systems under the spotlight.

Jeff Brumfiel explains:

“[...] Iron Dome has been very busy intercepting rockets from Gaza, intercepting rockets from Lebanon.”
(00:34)

Emily Kwong adds context by connecting these events to the U.S. interest in missile defense systems, particularly highlighting Israel's Iron Dome.

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2. Understanding Israel’s Missile Defense Systems

The conversation transitions to the mechanics of Israel's missile defense network, emphasizing its layered approach:

• Iron Dome: Primarily intercepts short-range rockets and artillery shells.
• Arrow and David’s Sling: Designed to counter medium to long-range ballistic missiles.

Jeff Brumfiel details:

“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.”
(04:39)

This system allows Israel to protect populated areas by intercepting threats mid-air, showcasing a model of advanced defensive technology.

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3. Trump's "Golden Dome" Proposal

Former President Donald Trump has expressed strong interest in developing a similar missile defense system for the United States, dubbed the Golden Dome. During a congressional speech, Trump emphasized the need for a state-of-the-art defense shield:

Donald Trump states:

“I am asking Congress to fund a state of the art Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland, all made in the USA.”
(01:25)

The Golden Dome aims to protect the U.S. from sophisticated missile threats posed by major adversaries such as Russia and China, who possess more advanced and numerous missile capabilities compared to Iran.

---

4. Technical Challenges of Building Golden Dome

Creating an effective missile defense system akin to Iron Dome on a national scale presents significant technical hurdles:

• Intercepting ICBMs: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are launched from distant locations, travel through space, and re-enter the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, making interception extremely challenging.

Jeff Brumfiel highlights the magnitude of this task:

“Defending against an ICBM that is burning out at 7km a second [...] is a completely different problem.”
(06:43)

Experts like Laura Grego, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, emphasize the narrow window—only three to five minutes—available to intercept such missiles during their launch phase.

Jeffrey Lewis, a missile defense expert, underscores the difficulties:

“We will end up spending tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars to be in, at best the same place we are today. And most likely a much worse place.”
(13:46)

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5. Financial Implications and Feasibility

The financial aspect of deploying Golden Dome is daunting. While the Trump administration estimates the cost at around $175 billion, the Congressional Budget Office projects it could be closer to half a trillion dollars.

Jeff Brumfiel remarks on the scope:

“It's a very expensive project.”
(12:39)

The comparison to existing large-scale satellite constellations, such as Starlink, offered by SpaceX, serves as a proof of concept for mass-producing and deploying thousands of satellites necessary for a space-based defense system.

---

6. Expert Opinions and Geopolitical Consequences

Several experts weighed in on the potential impact and strategic implications of Golden Dome:

• Tom Carico, Director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, supports the initiative, emphasizing the increasing reliance on missile technology in modern warfare.

“Missiles have become weapons of choice. [...] It's what everybody reaches for to be able to strike from a standoff position.”
(11:03)

However, Jeffrey Lewis and others caution that an effective missile defense system might provoke adversaries to escalate their own missile arsenals, potentially leading to an arms race.

“Golden Dome could ultimately end up making things worse.”
(13:46)

The episode underscores a critical debate: while missile defenses like Golden Dome could enhance national security, they might also destabilize global military balances by encouraging rival nations to develop more advanced offensive capabilities.

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7. Conclusion: The Future of Missile Defense

Emily Kwong and Jeff Brumfiel wrap up the discussion by acknowledging the dual-edged nature of advanced missile defense systems. While they offer protection against emerging threats, they also pose significant technical, financial, and geopolitical challenges that need thorough consideration.

Jeff Brumfiel concludes:

“No one who really understands these systems thinks it could happen in the remaining three years of Trump's [...] term, to be honest with you.”
(12:47)

The episode leaves listeners contemplating the delicate balance between advancing national defense technologies and maintaining global security stability.

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Notable Quotes:

• Donald Trump: “I am asking Congress to fund a state of the art Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland, all made in the USA.”
  (01:25)

• Jeffrey Lewis: “We will end up spending tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars to be in, at best the same place we are today. And most likely a much worse place.”
  (13:46)

• Tom Carico: “Missiles have become weapons of choice. [...] It's what everybody reaches for to be able to strike from a standoff position.”
  (11:03)

---

This episode of Short Wave provides a comprehensive exploration of the aspirations and obstacles associated with developing a national missile defense system akin to Israel's Iron Dome. By integrating expert insights and current geopolitical developments, Emily Kwong and Jeff Brumfiel offer listeners a nuanced understanding of one of today's most pressing defense challenges.

Transcript

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[Emily Kwong]

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, Shortwavers. I'm here with NPR science correspondent Jeff Brumfiel.

[Unknown Speaker]

So.

[Emily Kwong]

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?

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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 Netanyahu basically said that this was a preemptive attack to stop Iran's nuclear program.

[Emily Kwong]

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?

[Jeff Brumfiel]

Yeah, that's right. Israel's missile defense system colloquially is 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.

[Donald Trump]

I am asking Congress to fund a state of the art Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland, all made in the usa.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Donald Trump]

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.

[Emily Kwong]

So today on the show, we'll talk about Israel's missile defense system and what a similar system could look like in.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

The US can it be done? And how much will it cost?

[Emily Kwong]

I'm Emily Kwong.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

And I'm Jeff Brumfield.

[Emily Kwong]

And you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from npr.

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[Emily Kwong]

Okay, Jeff, let's start by talking a little bit about what we're seeing in Israel right now.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

Yeah, so I actually want to back up a second, just briefly, to talk about the events after October 7, 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, 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.

[Emily Kwong]

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.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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 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, these missiles are coming in from much further away. And so they're actually intermediate range, medium range ballistic missiles that go up into space and then actually come down on Israel at very, very high speeds. And that is something that is much more difficult to intercept than say, a rocket fired from Lebanon or Gaza or near the Israeli border. 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.

[Emily Kwong]

Okay, so whatever Golden Dome Trump wants to build would have to stand up to this kind of missile technology.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

That's right. You know, the US'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 complications, 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.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Defending against an ICBM that is burning out at 7km 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.

[Emily Kwong]

Set.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

So when Jeffrey looks at what it took to build Iron Dome and then imagines building Golden Dome, it's the difference.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Between a kayak and a battleship.

[Emily Kwong]

Where would the US Even start with building a battle battleship Golden Dome?

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Unknown Speaker]

The launch phase of those missiles 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.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, so Golden Dome would have to respond within that three to five minute window.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

That's right. But remember, these missiles are being fired from half a world away.

[Emily Kwong]

So how do you catch a missile being launched from, say, the middle of Russia just minutes after it lifts off?

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Donald Trump]

I know this is a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort.

[Emily Kwong]

Huh. Though clearly the dream of it is still alive. So what would be involved in such a project today?

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Unknown Speaker]

So you need a lot of things in space in order to have them in the right place at the right time.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Unknown Speaker]

16,000 interceptors would be needed to attempt to counter a rapid salvo of 10 solid propellant ICBMs.

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Wait, wait, wait.

[Emily Kwong]

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. That's a huge system you'd need to defend against, like, just that.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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. But now we actually do have a constellation of thousands of satellites in orbit called Starlink.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, this giant constellation that provides Internet via satellite. Starlink. We use it here on Earth right now.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Emily Kwong]

Okay, so what once seemed like an impossible problem is now starting to feel more possible. Is Golden Dome actually going to work, Jeff?

[Jeff Brumfiel]

Well, some people think it's at least worth a serious look.

[Tom Carico]

It's a welcome development, and it's in some respects, overdue.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

That's one of them. A guy named Tom Carico. He's director of the Missile Defense Project at the center for Strategic and International Studies. 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.

[Tom Carico]

Missiles have become weapons of choice. They are what folks reach for, what we reach for. To strike deep into our enemy's territory. It's what everybody reaches for to be able to strike from a standoff position.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

And he really worries that if the US 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.

[Tom Carico]

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.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Emily Kwong]

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?

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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 that could use directed energy to, to blow up missiles, whatever. The approach is going to take a lot of work to design, test, and then use 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.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, that's a lot of money. Cuz the government annually spends in the trillions.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

That's right.

[Emily Kwong]

This is a very expensive project.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

It probably is. You know, no one who really understands these systems thinks it could happen in the remaining three years of Trump's first, second term, to be honest with you. 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.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah, I suppose US nuclear adversaries are not just going to sit around watching Golden Dome get built and do nothing.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

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 sci fi weapons. In short, we will end up spending tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars to be in, at best the same place we are today. And most likely a much worse place.

[Jeff Brumfiel]

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. At the same time, you know, there's evidence that Russia and China are preparing for Golden Dome before it's even been built.

[Emily Kwong]

Jeff Brumfiel thank you for bringing all this on. You're welcome, Emily Shortwavers 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 Short Wave from N.

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