Latest news with #Reagan
Telegraph
24 minutes ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain should ditch ‘distorting' stamp duty, says Reagan's economic tsar
Britain should ditch 'distorting' stamp duty charges that 'lock people in their homes', Arthur Laffer has urged. The economist behind the Laffer curve said property transaction taxes are such a big problem in the national tax system that the UK would be better off with an American-style annual property wealth tax. Mr Laffer, who has served as adviser to both former president Ronald Reagan and president Donald Trump, told The Telegraph that the UK would be better off if homeowners paid annual property taxes as they do in the US instead of stamp duty. He said: 'The [annual] property taxes in Britain are low, but the transaction tax is very high. The US is the reverse. We have property taxes everywhere, which is a wealth tax, and we don't have transaction taxes on houses. 'All property taxes do in Britain is lock people into their homes that they can't get out. It just distorts the whole tax system in Britain, it's just awful. 'It is one of the very biggest problems in Britain's tax system.' Mr Laffer is most famous for conceiving the Laffer Curve, an illustration of the concept that increasing tax rates can eventually lead to lower revenue because the higher taxes trigger so much behavioural change. Stamp duty is widely hated by economists and consumers alike because it makes it increasingly difficult to move home and makes the housing market inefficient – which in turn takes a toll on productivity. In America, by contrast, homeowners do not pay large taxes when they purchase their homes but instead pay an annual tax based on a percentage of their property's value. Mr Laffer said: 'Income tax is a problem in Britain, but these transaction taxes are big stuff too.' Stamp duty is taxed in bands that are not adjusted to account for house price growth, meaning homeowners get dragged into higher tax brackets as house prices rise. Since the tax bands were last adjusted in 2014, the average London house price has climbed by 30pc. Over the same time period, the stamp duty bill on the average home in the capital has surged by 54pc. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast in March that the Treasury's tax take from property transactions will nearly double from £15bn in 2024-25 to £26.5bn in 2029-30. Trump's tax cuts will 'save us from a disaster' Mr Laffer was an adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and says he has met with the US president several times since he took office earlier this year. He said he has told the Mr Trump that he should scrap US corporation tax on profits and replace it with a value added tax on sales. Although Mr Laffer is i n favour of Mr Trump's tax bill, he said the president should go further with measures to boost the economy. The biggest measure in the bill will be an extension to the tax cuts that Mr Trump introduced in 2017 and are due to expire this year. Mr Laffer said: 'I know they talk about it as being a tax cut. It's not. It's just making Trump's tax cuts permanent. 'If it were not passed, there would be a huge increase in taxes across the board, which would be very detrimental. The bill going through the Senate right now does not create something wonderful but it saves us from a disaster.' Mr Laffer said that America should establish a free trade agreement with the UK, and that Ireland should leave the EU to become part of the trading bloc too. 'You're gonna hate me for this, but I think it should be with Ireland too. I think they should get out of the EU and should become part of the sort of the US/ UK/Ireland group. I think that would be a terrific free trade group.'
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Would Trump's Golden Dome keep the US safe – and do space lasers work?
It's 1983 and relations between the superpowers are close to an all-time low. Their arsenals of nuclear weapons are multiplying. The USSR alone is estimated to have more than 1000 missiles capable of crossing continents and more in submarines that could lie submerged off the coast of New York or Los Angeles, ready to sow Armageddon. The US, meanwhile, has provocatively stationed low-flying cruise missiles, seen as 'first strike' weapons, at Greenham Common airbase outside London. Protests erupt. Both nations adhere to a strategy known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the knowledge that if one were to strike first, the other would have just enough time to launch a devastating counter-blow. Even US president Ronald Reagan finds it bewildering. 'It is inconceivable to me,' he says, 'that the great nations of the world will sit here, like people facing themselves across a table, each with a cocked gun, and no one knowing whether someone might tighten their finger on the trigger.' There must be a better way, he thinks. And some prominent scientists, such as physicist Edward Teller, 'father of the hydrogen bomb' and arch-rival to atom-bomb developer Robert Oppenheimer, tell him there might be. The US, they believe, has the capability to build a network of defences high in the sky that could stop Russian missiles dead in their tracks, using satellite-borne lasers to blow them up harmlessly in space. In March 1983, Reagan announces an ambitious program in a televised address: the 'Strategic Defence Initiative', which is immediately dubbed 'Star Wars' for its resemblance to the 1977 George Lucas film, which featured a laser-equipped space station called the Death Star (and Chewbacca, played by an actor in a furry suit). It turns out, of course, that the scientists had promised more than they could deliver. There were never any giant space lasers. But the idea didn't vanish completely. And now Donald Trump, a president who's already made waves for his elaborate madcap schemes (trying to buy Greenland, turning Gaza into a beach resort), wants his own space-based missile defence system called the 'Golden Dome'. Forty years on from Reagan's dream, could a defence shield now be possible? Would it make nuclear weapons obsolete? And what are 'Brilliant Pebbles'? What do we know about Trump's Golden Dome? In January, the president made an executive order calling for what he described as an 'Iron Dome for America', a reference to the Iron Dome air defence system that Israel has deployed, with some success, since 2011 to shoot down rockets fired from Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Trump's order stated that since Reagan's time in office, the threat from strategic weapons had become more intense and complex; next-generation missiles were now 'a catastrophic threat' to the United States. It said that while some existing interceptor systems could counter 'rogue-nation threats' (presumably from North Korea, which has a fairly advanced ballistic missile program, and possibly Iran, which is believed to have nuclear weapons capability), they had not kept up with 'peer and near-peer adversaries' – that is, Russia and China. The solution would be a 'next-generation missile defence shield' to safeguard the US homeland from all possible airborne threats. These include intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs, which shoot out of concrete silos then fall to Earth on a parabolic arc, and their submarine-based cousins); ordinary cruise missiles (which look like planes and are slow but can evade detection by flying low); as yet theoretical 'fractional orbital bombardment systems' that live in space, flinging bombs down from on high; a new breed of hypersonic cruise missiles (much faster than cruise missiles); and so-called hypersonic glide vehicles (which are boosted to the edge of space on a rocket then continue under their own steam). No single defence weapon can neutralise all these. ICBMs have a predictable course but build up to a tremendous speed as they arc through space; hypersonic weapons fly lower but can manoeuvre in flight to evade detection. What we do know is that what Trump is calling the Golden Dome will incorporate many technologies. These include existing ground- and sea-based missile systems and – in a nod back to Star Wars – a new suite of anti-missile weapons based in orbit, where they might, if successful, destroy incoming ICBMs in the so-called 'boost phase', when they burn rocket fuel to reach space, and, ideally, before they break into multiple separate warheads that would have to be targeted individually. (Why 'Golden Dome'? Because it's Trump's favourite colour – the Oval Office is filled with golden knick-knacks he's collected.) While Reagan was not deluded about the scale of the task back in the '80s – 'It will take years, probably decades, of effort on many fronts,' he acknowledged – Trump, buoyed by scientific advances in the intervening years, is more bullish. 'We'll have it done in about three years,' he said. 'Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.' Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth elaborated slightly: 'Some US technology in space, such as space-based sensors and air and missile defence, exists today, but all of the systems comprising the Golden Dome architecture will need to be seamlessly integrated. Golden Dome will be fielded in phases, prioritising defence where the threat is greatest.' Meanwhile, if Canada wants in, it needs to come up with a $US61 billion entrance fee, Trump has said on social media, or it's 'ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State'. Is any of this 'dome' technology even possible? 'I don't think it's fantasy land,' says Malcolm Davis at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. 'There are aspects of it that are very aspirational and probably won't be achieved on schedule or on budget, but there's also aspects of it that are practical.' What is a fantasy is Trump's timeline, he says. 'This could take 10 years to develop, and it will cost a lot more than what Trump is anticipating.' Much of the technology required by Golden Dome has come a long way since the failure of Star Wars – at least, the bits that would be stationed on Earth. (The US has actually been exploring the idea since World War II, when its troops in Europe were threatened by Germany's V2 ballistic rockets.) Today, several countries have missile 'shields', including China, India, Israel, Italy, Russia and Turkey – South Korea is reportedly working on its own home-grown 'dome' – but nothing is at the scale or level of reliability that would be required to defend the entire US homeland. Israel, for example, is smaller than Hawaii and has faced less technologically sophisticated foes – nothing like the peer-level arsenal the US wants to shield against. 'US Navy ships are very capable in shooting down cruise missiles and drones, but they're essentially trying to defend one point, which is themselves,' says Marcus Hellyer, head of research at the think tank Strategic Analysis Australia. 'The more you scale it up from defending one point to a small area such as Israel to large areas such as Ukraine and then on to the continental US, the degree of difficulty and, of course, cost increases as well.' To successfully shield the US from nuclear attack, defensive interceptors would have to detect and destroy ICBMs that travel at speeds in excess of 24,000km/h. 'Defending against ballistic missile attacks is a challenging technical undertaking,' the Congressional Budget Office noted in a 2004 investigation into the practicalities of missile defence. 'In the case of ICBMs, a defensive system may need to hit a warhead smaller than an oil drum that is travelling above the atmosphere … countermeasures such as decoy warheads that may be carried by ICBMs further complicate the problem of intercepting targets.' It's possible to do it from the ground, as a successful military test showed in 2017, but that was under well-rehearsed conditions. 'Engaging ICBMs is not computationally hard because they fly on a simple parabolic arc,' says Sidharth Kaushal at the Royal United Services Institute in London, one of the world's oldest military think tanks. 'But given the speeds involved, it requires a very rapid hand-off of data between multiple systems. Engaging hypersonics is more complex, in computational terms, given the capacity of hypersonic glide vehicles to manoeuvre and their ability to fly beneath surface-based radar for longer than ballistic missiles.' In any case, the current arsenal of interceptors is far too small to provide adequate defence and would be immediately swamped by an attack from a major power, which would likely send many hundreds of missiles, each containing multiple warheads that would have to be targeted individually. The Federation of American Scientists calculates China already has some 600 warheads, with more on the way. The US has some 3700; Russia has more than 4000 (including those that are inactive). Meanwhile, the US has just two bases for what it calls its 'mid-course missile defence program' with the firepower to specifically target incoming intercontinental nuclear-tipped ICBMs: Fort Greely in Alaska, which has 40 interceptor rockets, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, which has four. The rockets are built by Boeing and have a 'kill vehicle' – made by US aerospace manufacturer Raytheon – that detaches from a booster to engage the enemy in orbit, during the 'mid-course' phase of flight. Loading The US also has numerous smaller units that can engage with shorter-range missiles, planes and drones, such as the Aegis ship-board system, the Patriot system used by Ukraine against Russian attacks, and the missile batteries known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, which have been successfully used by Israel. Some of these systems could conceivably attempt to intercept ICBMs but would be likely to have a lower strike rate than the much larger rockets deployed in the mid-course missile defence program. In short, shielding the entire US is likely to cost far more than the White House claim of $US175 billion ($270 billion). Weapons company Lockheed Martin, which already makes anti-missile weapons, has likened the Golden Dome to the Manhattan Project (the World War II program that built the atom bombs dropped on Japan) in the scale of its ambition. It will probably top the $US260 billion (in today's money) that funded the Apollo space program through the '60s until 1972. In 2021, Princeton's Frank von Hippel calculated the US had already spent some $US280 billion (in today's dollars) over the previous four decades on anti-missile programs. Star Wars fizzled not only because technology didn't catch up in time, but because of the enormous drain on taxpayer dollars that subsequent administrations decided were better deployed elsewhere, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Democrat senator Ed Markey has branded Golden Dome ' economically ruinous '. 'Mega-projects' like this go wrong, says Marcus Hellyer, 'because you don't understand the requirements, and the requirements keep blowing out. And as the requirements blow out, so does the technical difficulty, and therefore the cost and schedule. And, at the moment, Golden Dome's requirements are essentially unbounded.' What about the space lasers? Miniaturisation, and vast improvements in computing power and data storage, not to mention AI, make the idea of a space defence that can co-ordinate attacks autonomously seem much more technologically feasible than in Reagan's era. Satellite networks such as Elon Musk's 7000-strong Starlink have already proved it is economically possible to launch thousands of small objects into orbit. Loading The not-insignificant hurdle that remains, once these things are in space, is successfully destroying enemy missiles. Do interceptors shoot something at them? Or would they zap them with Reagan's beloved lasers? These days, laser weapons do exist, but they require enormous energy and weigh a lot; typically, they are installed on warships. Says Hellyer: 'It's been really hard to get them to work even against fairly traditional threats like cruise missiles or drones.' Star Wars offers some lessons (the real one, not the film). Many of Edward Teller's claims to Reagan about the prospects of satellites firing lasers made from concentrated X-rays, particle beams and 'microwave devices' were highly exaggerated, says William J. Broad, author of the 1992 exposé Teller's War, and rarely performed as hoped in tests. The popular notion of a giant space station permanently parked above a rogue state that can shoot death rays on command is, thanks to the laws of orbital physics, probably an impossibility. To park it in a geostationary orbit, it would end up 35,000 kilometres away from Earth, which would put its ability to rain down lasers that have enough power to cause damage into the realm of science-fiction. Washington consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton is instead advocating for a reboot of a curious idea that emerged out of Star Wars research called Brilliant Pebbles. A relatively low-tech scheme (at least, compared with lasers), it would deploy swarms of numerous small interceptors into a low-Earth orbit (2000 kilometres or lower altitude), to collide with enemy missiles as they speed past, their great numbers ensuring there are always enough passing over an enemy's territory to be able to intercept missiles in time. So, what's the catch? One would not imagine Russia or China sitting idly by while the US floods their skies with rocket-killing satellites, potentially depriving them of the capacity to respond to a nuclear strike. Both nations – and North Korea – have already condemned Trump's plan as destabilising. 'You could argue that all it does is kind of foster miscalculation,' Hellyer says. Then there are the inevitable countermeasures to overwhelm the anti-missile missiles (the anti-anti-missiles, perhaps) and space defences. 'All defensive systems can be defeated by countermeasures that cost far less,' wrote Charles Bennett of The New York Times in 1989 when Brilliant Pebbles was first proposed. 'The reason for that is simple. It's a lot easier to hit an orbiting satellite than a warhead moving at a vast rate of speed. Moreover, it's also easy to build enough new missiles to numerically overwhelm a defence, or to develop missiles that get into space before interceptors can target them.' Tellingly, the last remaining bilateral arms control treaty between the United States and Russia (the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which limits the number of long-range nuclear weapons) could expire early next year if not extended, opening the door to another arms race. China is believed to have been developing space-based weapons to disable satellites, Brigadier General Shawn Bratton, deputy director of operations at US Space Command in Colorado, said in 2020. Russia has also been considering sci-fi weapons of its own, says RUSI's Sidharth Kaushal, in the form of nuclear-powered jammers (or signal-blockers) and space-based plasma guns. Then there's the money. Star Wars was already on the nose with Congress by 1987, when doubts grew about its promised capability and Reagan continually asked for more funding. Republican senator Jim Coulter warned that the program would be 'bled to death' by budget cuts unless it could demonstrate at least some defences that could be deployed in a few years. 'I think it's just impossible to sustain a vague defence research goal,' he said presciently. The Congressional Budget Office this year estimated that even a skeleton deployment of what it calls 'space-based interceptors' would probably blow the entire Golden Dome budget, costing between $US161 billion ($250 billion) and $US542 billion ($840 billion). The US is also facing a bill in the billions to upgrade its existing nuclear deterrent, Hellyer says. While upgrading the existing Virginia class submarines to nuclear capability will shoulder some of the load, 'The US is facing a situation where it could be spending itself into irrelevance. It'll have an offensive system that's massively undercapitalised and obsolete and isn't the deterrent that it wants it to be. Meanwhile, it'll have this kind of half-baked defensive system that isn't really a deterrent either because any adversary will look at it and go, 'Well, it can't really stop us getting through'. It's the worst of both worlds.' Loading Malcolm Davis says: 'I think what you will end up with is a leaky shield that makes it more difficult for an adversary to get an attack through, and can certainly defend against limited attacks, but it will never be something that will make it impossible for the Russians or the Chinese to attack the United States.' Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, told The Wall Street Journal: 'This missile-defence mirage gives you the illusion you can protect yourself, but you're driving all these countries to build all these hundreds and thousands of missiles.' Says Hellyer: 'What's a satisfactory success rate? Let's say the bad guys launch 100 missiles at you with 1000 warheads. Let's say you have a 90 per cent success rate. Well, that's still 100 getting through.'
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
From a gilded perch, Trump tries to retain the common touch
WASHINGTON — Back in Donald Trump's first term, his staff decided they'd tuck into his briefing book a few letters from ordinary Americans who'd written to the White House. Only certain letters made the cut, though. Aides made a point of sending Trump the flattering mail while holding back the letters panning his work, a White House official in the last term said. 'Someone quite rightly thought that if we wanted to have any chance of him reading them consistently, it would be good if they were positive and praise-worthy,' the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity. All presidents say they want to keep in touch with typical Americans; few succeed. Everything about the job conspires against unscripted encounters that can enlighten a president about what's truly on peoples' minds. Armed guards shadow him while protective aides may shield him from bad reviews. Even the few souls who pierce the bubblewrap and get an audience with the president may find themselves too intimidated by the trappings of power to blurt out an unvarnished truth. 'When you are president, you are in a space where everyone comes to you, and most of them are people you've selected to come to you,' said Fred Ryan, who oversaw appointments and scheduling in Ronald Reagan's White House. 'And most people want to bring you good news rather than bad news.' This time around, Trump is looking and sounding insulated from the voters who put him back in the White House. That's a problem even for a second-term president who may have run his last campaign. Trump's political strength flows from an emotional connection to a loyal base. If he's perceived as oblivious to people's day-to-day concerns, he's at risk of losing a vital grassroots connection that is a source of Republican fealty. Trump's travels suggest a homebody on a gilded perch. By the end of May, he had spent 14 of his 18 weekends at one of his golf clubs or other properties. Over and over, he has returned to his Mar-a-Lago residence, a private club in Palm Beach where the membership fee is $1 million and guests applaud when he enters the restaurant. Rallies have long been a way for Trump to connect with the "Front Row Joes" and other hardcore voters who travel hundreds of miles and camp out overnight to see him speak live and maybe grab a selfie with him on the rope line. Not having to worry about reelection, he's cut back on rallies, holding just one since the day he was sworn in, versus four in the opening months of his last term. 'He needs to talk to more regular people and listen to them,' said Christopher Malick, 28, who works at a roofing company in Cleveland, Ohio and said he voted for Trump in the last three elections. 'He needs to be talking to people who aren't just his inner circle.' Billionaires run major parts of Trump's government, and the well-connected get access. Last month found the president at his golf club outside Washington, D.C. hosting a dinner for 220 crypto investors who'd bought into his meme coin, $TRUMP. The event was advertised as 'the most exclusive invitation in the world.' With some of the guests clutching their phones to trade on any market-moving news Trump might make, the audience dined on filet mignon and pan-seared halibut as protesters stood outside. The coin was launched just a few days before Trump was sworn in. One of the guests at the event, Morten Christensen, who lives in Mexico, came away feeling the demonstrators had a point. 'If I was in his [Trump's] position, I personally would not have done that,' Christensen, founder of the crypto company Airdrop Alert, said of the coin's timing. 'It's just a bad look — right before you become the most powerful man in the world.' Asked how he reaches the working people who elected him, Trump told NBC News' 'Meet the Press' last month: 'I think I get out quite a bit.' He mentioned a commencement speech he had given at the University of Alabama, hastening to add that he won the state handily in 2024. 'The president since entering politics has showcased a unique way of having his finger on the pulse of the American public,' Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in an interview. 'He stays connected through multiple public appearances in middle America, reading correspondence, being a consumer of the news, and inviting everyday Americans to the White House and to campaign events.' 'While most presidents are driven by staged and stuffy political events, this president has preferred a more organic and authentic approach to connecting with the American people,' Fields added. Still, Trump is surrounded by wealth. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, carried out Trump's plan to slash the the government workforce. A billionaire Wall Street executive, Howard Lutnick, is negotiating Trumps' trade deals; a billionaire hedge fund manager, Scott Bessent, is presiding over the U.S. economy; a billionaire real estate magnate, Steven Witkoff, is conducting high-level diplomacy. Economic policies coming out of the Trump administration skew in favor of the rich, budget analysts say. The 'Big, Beautiful Bill' that Trump is trying to push through Congress mixes tax and spending cuts in ways that would shave income for the bottom tenth of the U.S. population by 2% in 2027, and raise it for the top tenth by 4% that year, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, retailers like Walmart have cautioned that Trump's tariffs will drive up prices, squeezing some of the low-and middle-class voters he peeled away from Democrats. Exit polls showed that in the 2024 election, those with family incomes under $50,000 favored Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris by 50%-48%. Trump's speaking style — raw and unrestrained — has proved a reliable political asset over the years. In this moment, his language may be widening the gulf between the nation and its leader. Defending his tariffs, Trump said that children may have to make do with "two dolls instead of 30," a remark that some saw as insensitive. In a focus group, a Wisconsin swing voter who supported Trump in the last election told the research company Engagious that Trump's comment about dolls reminded him of Marie Antoinette, the 18th century French queen associated with the comment, 'Let them eat cake.' 'It rubbed me the wrong way when he said that,' the 49-year-old Wisconsin man said. 'It just seemed like a disconnect with the average American person.' Trump's fascination with the word 'groceries' may be another disconnect. 'It's such an old-fashioned term, but a beautiful term: groceries,' he said at his Rose Garden event at which he announced a series of steep foreign tariffs, later postponed. 'It sort of says a bag with different things in it.' For most Americans who shop for the stuff, there's nothing old-fashioned or particularly beautiful about groceries; they're a necessity. Same with a stroller. But Trump failed to summon the word when talking about prices last month on Air Force One: 'The thing that you carry the babies around in,' he called it. Various presidents used different methods to avoid being cocooned. Joe Biden's religious faith proved a blessing in every sense. A practicing Catholic, Biden regularly attended Mass, sitting in the pews and patiently waiting his turn for communion with fellow parishioners. Barack Obama routinely read letters culled by his White House staff. 'Some of them are funny; some of them are angry,' Obama said during his first term. 'A lot of them are sad or frustrated about their current situation.' 'These letters, I think, do more to keep me in touch with what's happening around the country than just about anything else.' Jimmy Carter once invited Americans to call in to him with questions as he sat in the White House with the moderator of the radio show, CBS's Walter Cronkite. At the end, Carter told the famed network anchor that he appreciated fielding questions that the White House press corps would never have asked, Barry Jagoda, a Carter White House aide who helped arrange the forum, said in an interview. Technology has changed the game. Phone in hand, a president can now scroll through social media and soak in all the candid commentary he can stomach. Trump posts regularly on his own site, Truth Social and often amplifies other users who've applauded his efforts. He reposted one person with fewer than 900 followers who questioned why former FBI director and Trump nemesis James Comey hasn't been arrested. Trump signals in various ways that despite his personal wealth, he sees and identifies with people of ordinary means. He gives off an accessible vibe. "The American media loves to downplay or outright ignore how much President Trump enjoys being around normal, everyday people, and he listens to them," Vice President JD Vance said in a prepared statement. In February, Trump attended the Daytona 500 race and took laps around the track in his limousine, 'The Beast.' The following month he went to see the college wrestling championship in Philadelphia and in April, he was on hand for a UFC fight in Miami. 'For all the Mar-a-Lago posh and polish, he also shows that he's more of a regular guy than Biden was,' said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. Or, perhaps, George H.W. Bush. Running for president in 1988, Bush was ridiculed for telling a waitress at a New Hampshire truck stop he wanted 'a splash' more coffee, feeding perceptions that he was an out-of-touch patrician. Some voters may recoil at Trump's intemperate language, by contrast, but his epithets may come off as human and relatable, allies say. 'He's one of the most in-touch modern presidents,' said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary for President George W. Bush. 'He has an amazing intuitive feel of what working people think and want. It's one of the reasons he can be so rude. He uses [the word] 'scum' in his Truth Social statements, which I find to be inappropriate but for a huge swath of the country it reinforces he's not a politician.' 'He doesn't do the things that everyone else in Washington who has lost touch with the country does," Fleischer added. 'He doesn't pretend — he lets it rip.' When he does escape the bubble and meet everyday Americans, he shows he's willing to listen, some who've met him say. Brian Pannebecker is a retired auto worker from Michigan who's become a campaign surrogate, bringing fellow blue-collar workers to Trump campaign events. Pannebecker, 65, recalled a moment during the 2024 campaign when he was invited to meet Trump backstage at a rally. Trump asked his opinion of Biden's electric vehicle mandates and after hearing his critique, Trump shared it with the audience when he gave his speech, the former autoworker recalled. 'He'll ask a question and then actually stand back and listen to you while you're talking, even if you go on for a minute or two,' Pannebecker said in an interview. "He's listening to you and trying to understand what your concerns are." Try as he might, a president's best-intentioned efforts to get honest feedback from the public can fall flat. Take Ronald Reagan. In 1982, he read a letter from an Arkansas woman who told him that her family's excavation business was foundering and she and her husband were 'starving slowly to death.' Reagan drafted a handwritten reply saying he had kept her letter on his desk and 'read it more than once.' 'I know no words of mine can make you feel any better about the situation in which you find yourselves,' Reagan wrote. He added that he had asked the Small Business Administration (SBA) to 'check out your situation.' The agency followed through. That's when the story took an odd twist. A SBA official drove more than 100 miles and found the woman's husband, who said the family was in fact financially stable and that his wife 'gets needlessly excited from time to time.' He had no idea she had written to Reagan and he didn't want a loan. The government official later drove by the family's home to see it for himself. He concluded it was 'fairly expensive' with a boat in the yard worth about $6,000. At that, the agency closed the file. This article was originally published on
The Age
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
Would Trump's ‘Golden Dome' keep the US safe – and do space lasers work?
It's 1983 and relations between the superpowers are close to an all-time low. Their arsenals of nuclear weapons are multiplying with the USSR alone estimated to have more than 1000 missiles capable of crossing continents, with more in submarines that could lie submerged off the coast of New York or Los Angeles, ready to sow Armageddon. The United States, meanwhile, has provocatively stationed low-flying cruise missiles, seen as 'first strike' weapons, at Greenham Common airbase outside London. Protests erupt. Both nations adhere to a strategy known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) – the knowledge that if one were to strike first, the other would have just enough time to launch a devastating counter-blow. Even US President Ronald Reagan finds it bewildering. 'It is inconceivable to me,' he says, 'that the great nations of the world will sit here, like people facing themselves across a table, each with a cocked gun, and no one knowing whether someone might tighten their finger on the trigger.' There must be a better way, he thinks. And some prominent scientists, such as physicist Edward Teller, 'father of the hydrogen bomb' and arch-rival to atom-bomb developer Robert Oppenheimer, tell him there might be. The US, they believe, has the capability to build a network of defences high in the sky that could stop Russian missiles dead in their tracks, using satellite-borne lasers to blow them up harmlessly in space. In March 1983, Reagan announces an ambitious program in a televised address: the 'Strategic Defence Initiative', which is immediately dubbed 'Star Wars' for its resemblance to the 1977 George Lucas film, which featured a laser-equipped space station called the Death Star (and Chewbacca, played by an actor in a furry suit). It turns out, of course, that the scientists had promised more than they could deliver. There were never any giant space lasers. But the idea didn't vanish completely. And now Donald Trump, a president who's already made waves for his elaborate madcap schemes (trying to buy Greenland, turning Gaza into a beach resort), wants his own space-based missile defence system called the 'Golden Dome'. Forty years on from Reagan's dream, could a defence shield now be possible? Would it make nuclear weapons obsolete? And what are 'Brilliant Pebbles'? What do we know about Trump's Golden Dome? In January, the president made an executive order calling for what he described as an 'Iron Dome for America', a reference to the Iron Dome air defence system that Israel has deployed, with some success, since 2011 to shoot down rockets fired from Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Trump's order stated that since Reagan's time in office, the threat from strategic weapons had become more intense and complex; next-generation missiles were now 'a catastrophic threat' to the United States. It said that while some existing interceptor systems could counter 'rogue-nation threats' (presumably from North Korea, which has a fairly advanced ballistic missile program and, possibly Iran, which is believed to have nuclear weapons capability), they had not kept up with 'peer and near-peer adversaries' – that is, Russia and China. The solution would be a 'next-generation missile defence shield' to safeguard the US homeland from all possible airborne threats. These include intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs, which shoot out of concrete silos then fall to Earth on a parabolic arc, and their submarine-based cousins); ordinary cruise missiles (which look like planes and are slow but can evade detection by flying low); as yet theoretical 'fractional orbital bombardment systems' that live in space, flinging bombs down from on high; a new breed of hypersonic cruise missiles (much faster than cruise missiles); and so-called hypersonic glide vehicles (which are boosted to the edge of space on a rocket then continue under their own steam). No single defence weapon can neutralise all these. ICBMs have a predictable course but build up to a tremendous speed as they arc through space; hypersonic weapons fly lower but can manoeuvre in flight to evade detection. What we do know is that what Trump is calling the Golden Dome will incorporate many technologies. These include existing ground- and sea-based missile systems and – in a nod back to Star Wars – a new suite of anti-missile weapons based in orbit, where they might, if successful, destroy incoming ICBMs in the so-called 'boost phase', when they burn rocket fuel to reach space, and, ideally, before they break into multiple separate warheads that would have to be targeted individually. (Why 'Golden Dome'? Because it's Trump's favourite colour – the Oval Office is filled with golden knickknacks he's collected.) While Reagan was not deluded about the scale of the task back in the '80s – 'It will take years, probably decades, of effort on many fronts,' he acknowledged – Trump, buoyed by scientific advances in the intervening years, is more bullish. 'We'll have it done in about three years,' he said. 'Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.' Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth elaborated slightly: 'Some US technology in space such as space-based sensors and air and missile defence, exists today but all of the systems comprising the Golden Dome architecture will need to be seamlessly integrated. Golden Dome will be fielded in phases, prioritising defence where the threat is greatest.' Meanwhile, if Canada wants in, it needs to come up with a $US61 billion entrance fee, Trump has said on social media, or it's 'ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State'. Is any of this 'dome' technology even possible? 'I don't think it's fantasy land,' says Malcolm Davis at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. 'There are aspects of it that are very aspirational and probably won't be achieved on schedule or on budget, but there's also aspects of it that are practical.' What is a fantasy is Trump's timeline, he says. 'This could take 10 years to develop, and it will cost a lot more than what Trump is anticipating.' Much of the technology required by Golden Dome has come a long way since the failure of Star Wars – at least, the bits that would be stationed on Earth. (The US has actually been exploring the idea since World War II, when its troops in Europe were threatened by Germany's V2 ballistic rockets.) Today, several countries have missile 'shields', including China, India, Israel, Italy, Russia and Turkey – South Korea is reportedly working on its own home-grown 'dome' – but nothing is at the scale or level of reliability that would be required to defend the entire US homeland. Israel, for example, is smaller than Hawaii and has faced less technologically sophisticated foes – nothing like the peer-level arsenal the US wants to shield against. 'US Navy ships are very capable in shooting down cruise missiles and drones, but they're essentially trying to defend one point, which is themselves,' says Marcus Hellyer, head of research at the think tank Strategic Analysis Australia. 'The more you scale it up from defending one point to a small area such as Israel to large areas such as Ukraine and then on to the continental US, the degree of difficulty and, of course, cost increases as well.' To successfully shield the US from nuclear attack, defensive interceptors would have to detect and destroy ICBMs that travel at speeds in excess of 24,000km/h. 'Defending against ballistic missile attacks is a challenging technical undertaking,' the Congressional Budget Office noted in a 2004 investigation into the practicalities of missile defence. 'In the case of ICBMs, a defensive system may need to hit a warhead smaller than an oil drum that is travelling above the atmosphere … countermeasures such as decoy warheads that may be carried by ICBMs further complicate the problem of intercepting targets.' It's possible to do it from the ground, as a successful military test showed in 2017, but that was under well-rehearsed conditions. 'Engaging ICBMs is not computationally hard because they fly on a simple parabolic arc,' says Sidharth Kaushal at the Royal United Services Institute in London, one of the world's oldest military think tanks. 'But given the speeds involved, it requires a very rapid handoff of data between multiple systems. Engaging hypersonics is more complex, in computational terms, given the capacity of hypersonic glide vehicles to manoeuvre and their ability to fly beneath surface-based radar for longer than ballistic missiles.' In any case, the current arsenal of interceptors is far too small to provide adequate defence and would be immediately swamped by an attack from a major power, which would likely send many hundreds of missiles, each containing multiple warheads that would have to be targeted individually. The Federation of American Scientists calculates China already has some 600 warheads, with more on the way. The US has some 3700; Russia has more than 4000 (including those that are inactive). Meanwhile, the US has just two bases for what it calls its 'mid-course missile defence program' with the firepower to specifically target incoming intercontinental nuclear-tipped ICBMs: Fort Greely in Alaska, which has 40 interceptor rockets, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, which has four. The rockets are built by Boeing and have a 'kill vehicle' – made by Israeli weapons manufacturer Raytheon – that detaches from a booster to engage the enemy in orbit, during the 'mid-course' phase of flight. Loading The US also has numerous smaller units that can engage with shorter-range missiles, planes and drones, such as the Aegis ship-board system, the Patriot system used by Ukraine against Russian attacks, and the missile batteries known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, which have been successfully used by Israel. Some of these systems could conceivably attempt to intercept ICBMs but would likely have a lower strike rate than the much larger rockets deployed in the mid-course missile defence program. In short, shielding the entire US is likely to cost far more than the White House claim of $US175 billion ($270 billion). Weapons company Lockheed Martin, which already makes anti-missile weapons, has likened the Golden Dome to the Manhattan Project (the World War II program that built the atom bombs dropped on Japan) in the scale of its ambition. It will probably top the $US260 billion (in today's money) that funded the Apollo space program through the '60s until 1972. In 2021, Princeton's Frank von Hippel calculated the US had already spent some $US280 billion (in today's dollars) over the previous four decades on anti-missile programs. Star Wars fizzled not only because technology didn't catch up in time but because of the enormous drain on taxpayer dollars that subsequent administrations decided were better deployed elsewhere, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Democrat senator Ed Markey has branded Golden Dome ' economically ruinous '. 'Mega projects' like this go wrong, says Marcus Hellyer, 'because you don't understand the requirements, and the requirements keep blowing out. And as the requirements blow out, so does the technical difficulty, and therefore the cost and schedule. And, at the moment, Golden Dome's requirements are essentially unbounded.' What about the space lasers? Miniaturisation, vast improvements in computing power and data storage, not to mention AI, make the idea of a space defence that can co-ordinate attacks autonomously seem much more technologically feasible than in Reagan's era. Satellite networks such as Elon Musk's 7000-strong Starlink have already proved it is economically possible to launch thousands of small objects into orbit. The not-insignificant hurdle that remains, once these things are in space, is successfully destroying enemy missiles. Do interceptors shoot something at them? Or would they zap them with Reagan's beloved lasers? These days, laser weapons do exist, but they require enormous energy and weigh a lot; typically, they are installed on warships. Says Hellyer: 'It's been really hard to get them to work even against fairly traditional threats like cruise missiles or drones.' Star Wars offers some lessons (the real one, not the film). Many of Edward Teller's claims to Reagan about the prospects of satellites firing lasers made from concentrated X-rays, particle beams and 'microwave devices' were highly exaggerated, says William J. Broad, author of the 1992 exposé Teller's War, and rarely performed as hoped in tests. The popular notion of a giant space station permanently parked above a rogue state that can shoot death rays on command is, thanks to the laws of orbital physics, probably an impossibility. To park it in a geostationary orbit, it would end up 35,000 kilometres away from Earth, which would put its ability to rain down lasers that have enough power to cause damage into the realm of science-fiction. Washington consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton is instead advocating for a reboot of a curious idea that emerged out of Star Wars research called Brilliant Pebbles. A relatively low-tech scheme (at least, compared with lasers), it would deploy swarms of numerous small interceptors into a low-Earth orbit (2000 kilometres or lower altitude), to collide with enemy missiles as they speed past, their great numbers ensuring there are always enough passing over an enemy's territory to be able to intercept missiles in time. So, what's the catch? One would not imagine Russia or China sitting idly by while the US floods their skies with rocket-killing satellites, potentially depriving them of the capacity to respond to a nuclear strike. Both nations – and North Korea – have already condemned Trump's plan as destabilising. 'You could argue that all it does is kind of foster miscalculation,' Hellyer says. Then there are the inevitable countermeasures to overwhelm the anti-missile missiles (the anti-anti missiles, perhaps) and space defences. 'All defensive systems can be defeated by countermeasures that cost far less,' wrote Charles Bennett of The New York Times in 1989 when Brilliant Pebbles was first proposed. 'The reason for that is simple. It's a lot easier to hit an orbiting satellite than a warhead moving at a vast rate of speed. Moreover, it's also easy to build enough new missiles to numerically overwhelm a defence, or to develop missiles that get into space before interceptors can target them.' Tellingly, the last remaining bilateral arms control treaty between the United States and Russia (the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which limits the number of long-range nuclear weapons) could expire early next year if not extended, opening the door to another arms race. China is believed to have been developing space-based weapons to disable satellites, Brigadier General Shawn Bratton, deputy director of operations at US Space Command in Colorado, said in 2020. Russia has also been considering sci-fi weapons of its own, says RUSI's Sidharth Kaushal, in the form of nuclear-powered jammers (or signal-blockers) and space-based plasma guns. Then there's the money. Star Wars was already on the nose with Congress by 1987, when doubts grew about its promised capability and Reagan continually asked for more funding. Republican senator Jim Coulter warned that the program would be 'bled to death' by budget cuts unless it could demonstrate at least some defences that could be deployed in a few years. 'I think it's just impossible to sustain a vague defence research goal,' he said presciently. The Congressional Budget Office this year estimated that even a skeleton deployment of what it calls 'space-based interceptors' would probably blow the entire Golden Dome budget, costing between $US161 billion ($250 billion) and $US542 billion ($840 billion). The US is also facing a bill in the billions to upgrade its existing nuclear deterrent, Hellyer says. While upgrading the existing Virginia class submarines to nuclear capability will shoulder some of the load, 'The US is facing a situation where it could be spending itself into irrelevance. It'll have an offensive system that's massively under-capitalised and obsolete and isn't the deterrent that it wants it to be. Meanwhile, it'll have this kind of half-baked defensive system that isn't really a deterrent either because any adversary will look at it and go, 'Well, it can't really stop us getting through'. It's the worst of both worlds.' Loading Malcolm Davis says: 'I think what you will end up with is a leaky shield that makes it more difficult for an adversary to get an attack through, and can certainly defend against limited attacks, but it will never be something that will make it impossible for the Russians or the Chinese to attack the United States.' Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, told The Wall Street Journal: 'This missile-defence mirage gives you the illusion you can protect yourself, but you're driving all these countries to build all these hundreds and thousands of missiles.' Says Hellyer: 'What's a satisfactory success rate? Let's say the bad guys launch 100 missiles at you with 1000 warheads. Let's say you have a 90 per cent success rate. Well, that's still 100 getting through.'
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Would Trump's ‘Golden Dome' keep the US safe – and do space lasers work?
It's 1983 and relations between the superpowers are close to an all-time low. Their arsenals of nuclear weapons are multiplying with the USSR alone estimated to have more than 1000 missiles capable of crossing continents, with more in submarines that could lie submerged off the coast of New York or Los Angeles, ready to sow Armageddon. The United States, meanwhile, has provocatively stationed low-flying cruise missiles, seen as 'first strike' weapons, at Greenham Common airbase outside London. Protests erupt. Both nations adhere to a strategy known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) – the knowledge that if one were to strike first, the other would have just enough time to launch a devastating counter-blow. Even US President Ronald Reagan finds it bewildering. 'It is inconceivable to me,' he says, 'that the great nations of the world will sit here, like people facing themselves across a table, each with a cocked gun, and no one knowing whether someone might tighten their finger on the trigger.' There must be a better way, he thinks. And some prominent scientists, such as physicist Edward Teller, 'father of the hydrogen bomb' and arch-rival to atom-bomb developer Robert Oppenheimer, tell him there might be. The US, they believe, has the capability to build a network of defences high in the sky that could stop Russian missiles dead in their tracks, using satellite-borne lasers to blow them up harmlessly in space. In March 1983, Reagan announces an ambitious program in a televised address: the 'Strategic Defence Initiative', which is immediately dubbed 'Star Wars' for its resemblance to the 1977 George Lucas film, which featured a laser-equipped space station called the Death Star (and Chewbacca, played by an actor in a furry suit). It turns out, of course, that the scientists had promised more than they could deliver. There were never any giant space lasers. But the idea didn't vanish completely. And now Donald Trump, a president who's already made waves for his elaborate madcap schemes (trying to buy Greenland, turning Gaza into a beach resort), wants his own space-based missile defence system called the 'Golden Dome'. Forty years on from Reagan's dream, could a defence shield now be possible? Would it make nuclear weapons obsolete? And what are 'Brilliant Pebbles'? What do we know about Trump's Golden Dome? In January, the president made an executive order calling for what he described as an 'Iron Dome for America', a reference to the Iron Dome air defence system that Israel has deployed, with some success, since 2011 to shoot down rockets fired from Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Trump's order stated that since Reagan's time in office, the threat from strategic weapons had become more intense and complex; next-generation missiles were now 'a catastrophic threat' to the United States. It said that while some existing interceptor systems could counter 'rogue-nation threats' (presumably from North Korea, which has a fairly advanced ballistic missile program and, possibly Iran, which is believed to have nuclear weapons capability), they had not kept up with 'peer and near-peer adversaries' – that is, Russia and China. The solution would be a 'next-generation missile defence shield' to safeguard the US homeland from all possible airborne threats. These include intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs, which shoot out of concrete silos then fall to Earth on a parabolic arc, and their submarine-based cousins); ordinary cruise missiles (which look like planes and are slow but can evade detection by flying low); as yet theoretical 'fractional orbital bombardment systems' that live in space, flinging bombs down from on high; a new breed of hypersonic cruise missiles (much faster than cruise missiles); and so-called hypersonic glide vehicles (which are boosted to the edge of space on a rocket then continue under their own steam). No single defence weapon can neutralise all these. ICBMs have a predictable course but build up to a tremendous speed as they arc through space; hypersonic weapons fly lower but can manoeuvre in flight to evade detection. What we do know is that what Trump is calling the Golden Dome will incorporate many technologies. These include existing ground- and sea-based missile systems and – in a nod back to Star Wars – a new suite of anti-missile weapons based in orbit, where they might, if successful, destroy incoming ICBMs in the so-called 'boost phase', when they burn rocket fuel to reach space, and, ideally, before they break into multiple separate warheads that would have to be targeted individually. (Why 'Golden Dome'? Because it's Trump's favourite colour – the Oval Office is filled with golden knickknacks he's collected.) While Reagan was not deluded about the scale of the task back in the '80s – 'It will take years, probably decades, of effort on many fronts,' he acknowledged – Trump, buoyed by scientific advances in the intervening years, is more bullish. 'We'll have it done in about three years,' he said. 'Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.' Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth elaborated slightly: 'Some US technology in space such as space-based sensors and air and missile defence, exists today but all of the systems comprising the Golden Dome architecture will need to be seamlessly integrated. Golden Dome will be fielded in phases, prioritising defence where the threat is greatest.' Meanwhile, if Canada wants in, it needs to come up with a $US61 billion entrance fee, Trump has said on social media, or it's 'ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State'. Is any of this 'dome' technology even possible? 'I don't think it's fantasy land,' says Malcolm Davis at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. 'There are aspects of it that are very aspirational and probably won't be achieved on schedule or on budget, but there's also aspects of it that are practical.' What is a fantasy is Trump's timeline, he says. 'This could take 10 years to develop, and it will cost a lot more than what Trump is anticipating.' Much of the technology required by Golden Dome has come a long way since the failure of Star Wars – at least, the bits that would be stationed on Earth. (The US has actually been exploring the idea since World War II, when its troops in Europe were threatened by Germany's V2 ballistic rockets.) Today, several countries have missile 'shields', including China, India, Israel, Italy, Russia and Turkey – South Korea is reportedly working on its own home-grown 'dome' – but nothing is at the scale or level of reliability that would be required to defend the entire US homeland. Israel, for example, is smaller than Hawaii and has faced less technologically sophisticated foes – nothing like the peer-level arsenal the US wants to shield against. 'US Navy ships are very capable in shooting down cruise missiles and drones, but they're essentially trying to defend one point, which is themselves,' says Marcus Hellyer, head of research at the think tank Strategic Analysis Australia. 'The more you scale it up from defending one point to a small area such as Israel to large areas such as Ukraine and then on to the continental US, the degree of difficulty and, of course, cost increases as well.' To successfully shield the US from nuclear attack, defensive interceptors would have to detect and destroy ICBMs that travel at speeds in excess of 24,000km/h. 'Defending against ballistic missile attacks is a challenging technical undertaking,' the Congressional Budget Office noted in a 2004 investigation into the practicalities of missile defence. 'In the case of ICBMs, a defensive system may need to hit a warhead smaller than an oil drum that is travelling above the atmosphere … countermeasures such as decoy warheads that may be carried by ICBMs further complicate the problem of intercepting targets.' It's possible to do it from the ground, as a successful military test showed in 2017, but that was under well-rehearsed conditions. 'Engaging ICBMs is not computationally hard because they fly on a simple parabolic arc,' says Sidharth Kaushal at the Royal United Services Institute in London, one of the world's oldest military think tanks. 'But given the speeds involved, it requires a very rapid handoff of data between multiple systems. Engaging hypersonics is more complex, in computational terms, given the capacity of hypersonic glide vehicles to manoeuvre and their ability to fly beneath surface-based radar for longer than ballistic missiles.' In any case, the current arsenal of interceptors is far too small to provide adequate defence and would be immediately swamped by an attack from a major power, which would likely send many hundreds of missiles, each containing multiple warheads that would have to be targeted individually. The Federation of American Scientists calculates China already has some 600 warheads, with more on the way. The US has some 3700; Russia has more than 4000 (including those that are inactive). Meanwhile, the US has just two bases for what it calls its 'mid-course missile defence program' with the firepower to specifically target incoming intercontinental nuclear-tipped ICBMs: Fort Greely in Alaska, which has 40 interceptor rockets, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, which has four. The rockets are built by Boeing and have a 'kill vehicle' – made by Israeli weapons manufacturer Raytheon – that detaches from a booster to engage the enemy in orbit, during the 'mid-course' phase of flight. Loading The US also has numerous smaller units that can engage with shorter-range missiles, planes and drones, such as the Aegis ship-board system, the Patriot system used by Ukraine against Russian attacks, and the missile batteries known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, which have been successfully used by Israel. Some of these systems could conceivably attempt to intercept ICBMs but would likely have a lower strike rate than the much larger rockets deployed in the mid-course missile defence program. In short, shielding the entire US is likely to cost far more than the White House claim of $US175 billion ($270 billion). Weapons company Lockheed Martin, which already makes anti-missile weapons, has likened the Golden Dome to the Manhattan Project (the World War II program that built the atom bombs dropped on Japan) in the scale of its ambition. It will probably top the $US260 billion (in today's money) that funded the Apollo space program through the '60s until 1972. In 2021, Princeton's Frank von Hippel calculated the US had already spent some $US280 billion (in today's dollars) over the previous four decades on anti-missile programs. Star Wars fizzled not only because technology didn't catch up in time but because of the enormous drain on taxpayer dollars that subsequent administrations decided were better deployed elsewhere, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Democrat senator Ed Markey has branded Golden Dome ' economically ruinous '. 'Mega projects' like this go wrong, says Marcus Hellyer, 'because you don't understand the requirements, and the requirements keep blowing out. And as the requirements blow out, so does the technical difficulty, and therefore the cost and schedule. And, at the moment, Golden Dome's requirements are essentially unbounded.' What about the space lasers? Miniaturisation, vast improvements in computing power and data storage, not to mention AI, make the idea of a space defence that can co-ordinate attacks autonomously seem much more technologically feasible than in Reagan's era. Satellite networks such as Elon Musk's 7000-strong Starlink have already proved it is economically possible to launch thousands of small objects into orbit. The not-insignificant hurdle that remains, once these things are in space, is successfully destroying enemy missiles. Do interceptors shoot something at them? Or would they zap them with Reagan's beloved lasers? These days, laser weapons do exist, but they require enormous energy and weigh a lot; typically, they are installed on warships. Says Hellyer: 'It's been really hard to get them to work even against fairly traditional threats like cruise missiles or drones.' Star Wars offers some lessons (the real one, not the film). Many of Edward Teller's claims to Reagan about the prospects of satellites firing lasers made from concentrated X-rays, particle beams and 'microwave devices' were highly exaggerated, says William J. Broad, author of the 1992 exposé Teller's War, and rarely performed as hoped in tests. The popular notion of a giant space station permanently parked above a rogue state that can shoot death rays on command is, thanks to the laws of orbital physics, probably an impossibility. To park it in a geostationary orbit, it would end up 35,000 kilometres away from Earth, which would put its ability to rain down lasers that have enough power to cause damage into the realm of science-fiction. Washington consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton is instead advocating for a reboot of a curious idea that emerged out of Star Wars research called Brilliant Pebbles. A relatively low-tech scheme (at least, compared with lasers), it would deploy swarms of numerous small interceptors into a low-Earth orbit (2000 kilometres or lower altitude), to collide with enemy missiles as they speed past, their great numbers ensuring there are always enough passing over an enemy's territory to be able to intercept missiles in time. So, what's the catch? One would not imagine Russia or China sitting idly by while the US floods their skies with rocket-killing satellites, potentially depriving them of the capacity to respond to a nuclear strike. Both nations – and North Korea – have already condemned Trump's plan as destabilising. 'You could argue that all it does is kind of foster miscalculation,' Hellyer says. Then there are the inevitable countermeasures to overwhelm the anti-missile missiles (the anti-anti missiles, perhaps) and space defences. 'All defensive systems can be defeated by countermeasures that cost far less,' wrote Charles Bennett of The New York Times in 1989 when Brilliant Pebbles was first proposed. 'The reason for that is simple. It's a lot easier to hit an orbiting satellite than a warhead moving at a vast rate of speed. Moreover, it's also easy to build enough new missiles to numerically overwhelm a defence, or to develop missiles that get into space before interceptors can target them.' Tellingly, the last remaining bilateral arms control treaty between the United States and Russia (the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which limits the number of long-range nuclear weapons) could expire early next year if not extended, opening the door to another arms race. China is believed to have been developing space-based weapons to disable satellites, Brigadier General Shawn Bratton, deputy director of operations at US Space Command in Colorado, said in 2020. Russia has also been considering sci-fi weapons of its own, says RUSI's Sidharth Kaushal, in the form of nuclear-powered jammers (or signal-blockers) and space-based plasma guns. Then there's the money. Star Wars was already on the nose with Congress by 1987, when doubts grew about its promised capability and Reagan continually asked for more funding. Republican senator Jim Coulter warned that the program would be 'bled to death' by budget cuts unless it could demonstrate at least some defences that could be deployed in a few years. 'I think it's just impossible to sustain a vague defence research goal,' he said presciently. The Congressional Budget Office this year estimated that even a skeleton deployment of what it calls 'space-based interceptors' would probably blow the entire Golden Dome budget, costing between $US161 billion ($250 billion) and $US542 billion ($840 billion). The US is also facing a bill in the billions to upgrade its existing nuclear deterrent, Hellyer says. While upgrading the existing Virginia class submarines to nuclear capability will shoulder some of the load, 'The US is facing a situation where it could be spending itself into irrelevance. It'll have an offensive system that's massively under-capitalised and obsolete and isn't the deterrent that it wants it to be. Meanwhile, it'll have this kind of half-baked defensive system that isn't really a deterrent either because any adversary will look at it and go, 'Well, it can't really stop us getting through'. It's the worst of both worlds.' Loading Malcolm Davis says: 'I think what you will end up with is a leaky shield that makes it more difficult for an adversary to get an attack through, and can certainly defend against limited attacks, but it will never be something that will make it impossible for the Russians or the Chinese to attack the United States.' Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, told The Wall Street Journal: 'This missile-defence mirage gives you the illusion you can protect yourself, but you're driving all these countries to build all these hundreds and thousands of missiles.' Says Hellyer: 'What's a satisfactory success rate? Let's say the bad guys launch 100 missiles at you with 1000 warheads. Let's say you have a 90 per cent success rate. Well, that's still 100 getting through.'
