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Business Standard
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
What is Golden Dome, Trump's ambitious $175 billion missile defence system?
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled plans for a $175 billion missile defence system — the Golden Dome — a multi-domain shield that promises to defend the United States against aerial threats from adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Speaking from the White House, Trump described the system as a "transformative leap" in national defence, combining land, sea, and space-based technology to intercept missiles, drones, and potentially even space-launched weapons. 'Golden Dome will protect our homeland,' Trump said from the Oval Office. 'Once fully constructed, 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.' What is Golden Dome system? The Golden Dome is envisioned as a comprehensive missile defence system that integrates ground- and space-based interceptors, early-warning satellites, and AI-driven tracking systems. The project, which Trump said will be completed within three years, would mark the US' first deployment of weaponry in space. 'It will deploy next-generation technologies across the land, sea and space,' Trump said, adding that the design integrates with existing systems and should be operational before the end of his current term. Golden Dome: How much will it cost? While Trump has pegged the cost of the Golden Dome at $175 billion, the Congressional Budget Office has warned that the total price tag could exceed $500 billion over the next two decades, due to the technological complexity involved. An initial $25 billion has already been proposed under a GOP-led reconciliation bill, though the funding path remains uncertain amid opposition from both conservative and moderate Republicans. Who is leading the project? General Michael Guetlein of the US Space Force has been appointed to oversee the initiative. A four-star general with a 30-year career in missile defence and space systems, Guetlein currently serves as the Vice Chief of Space Operations. "This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defence capabilities,' Trump said, reaffirming his confidence in Guetlein's leadership. Which countries and states are involved? Though the system is primarily intended to shield the US, Canada has expressed interest in joining the programme. Trump confirmed discussions with Canadian officials. However, Prime Minister Mark Carney's office has not yet issued a formal statement yet. States such as Alaska, Florida, Georgia, and Indiana — all home to defence or space infrastructure — are expected to play a key role in hosting components of the system. Potential contractors include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and L3Harris Technologies, with Trump insisting that all development and manufacturing would happen within the United States. Inspired by Israel's iron dome The name Golden Dome draws inspiration from Israel's Iron Dome, which has intercepted thousands of short-range rockets since its deployment in 2011. However, Trump emphasised that the American version would be 'scaled up' to counter long-range and high-speed missile threats, including hypersonic and intercontinental ballistic missiles. 'Ronald Reagan wanted it many years ago, but they didn't have the technology,' Trump noted. 'But it's something we're going to have. We're going to have it at the highest level.' For Trump, the Golden Dome is not just about defence — it's also a campaign fulfilment. 'In the campaign, I promised the American people that I would build a cutting-edge missile defence shield... And that's what we're doing today,' he said. (With agency inputs)
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Business Standard
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Trump unveils $175 bn Golden Dome missile defence with space weapons
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday (IST) announced that a design had been finalised for the "Golden Dome" missile defence system, adding that he expected it to be operational before the end of his term. Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said the multi-layered $175 billion defence system would put US weapons in space for the first time, Associated Press reported. He further added that the Golden Dome missile programme would have the capability to stop missiles even if they were launched from space. Trump named Gen Michael Guetlein, the current Vice Chief of Space Operations, as the official responsible for overseeing the progress of the Golden Dome. President Trump announced the Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect the homeland from advanced missile threats. Included in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, this project aims to ensure American security. Congress must pass the bill and send it to the President's desk. — The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 21, 2025 Golden Dome project The plan to introduce a Golden Dome missile system was announced by the US President just days after his return to the White House for a second term, with the aim of countering "next-generation" aerial threats to the country, including ballistic and cruise missiles. Reports suggest that the Golden Dome is designed to include both ground- and space-based systems, which are capable of detecting and intercepting threats. Citing an official, the report added that over the past few months, Pentagon officials had been developing options categorised as 'medium, high and extra high', based on cost, including space-based interceptors. This development comes after repeated warnings from the Pentagon that new missiles developed by China and Russia are so advanced that updated countermeasures are crucial. Trump noted: "There really is no current system. We have certain areas of missiles and certain missile defence, but there is no system... There has never been anything like this." Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the space-based components of the Golden Dome alone could cost nearly $542 billion over the next two decades. Trump has made an initial request of $25 billion for the defence programme in his proposed tax break Bill. However, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink informed senators that there was no money for the project yet, and it remained in the conceptual stage. The Golden Dome project draws inspiration from Israel's Iron Dome, which has been in use since 2011 to intercept rockets and missiles.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Air Force Chief Responds To Possibility Of Buying New ‘Block 80' F-16s
Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin today responded to questioning regarding the potential of a new version of the prolific F-16, a so-called Block 80, as a way of increasing the combat mass of the service in the future. While the Air Force doesn't at this point have a plan to start buying Vipers again, it's certainly interesting that the topic is up for discussion, especially with the service looking hard at how it will balance its next-generation fighter requirements, while introducing the F-47 crewed stealth fighter and Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones. At the same time, it continues to buy the F-35A stealth fighter and the F-15EX. Alongside Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, Gen. Allvin was testifying before the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Senator Thomas Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Allvin about the potential need to buy new aircraft to replace the Air Force's oldest fighters, some of which will still be flying into the 2040s. 'Focusing on just the next decade, then, our current acquisition options are pretty limited,' Cotton said, before asking Allvin: 'Would you be able to use newly built U.S.-configured Block 80 F-16s to strengthen our strike fighter fleet, if Congress can find additional funds for such an effort?' 'Looking at what that would be to take that export variant and adapt it to a Block 80, and the time it would take, and where that would fall in the production line, I'd have to get back with you with more details to see if that would be an advisable situation,' Allvin responded. 'I'd really have to look at what the defense industrial base can do on that,' Allvin added, 'because my sense is that the current Block 70 is really eating up a lot of production lines and production capacity and all the FMS [Foreign Military Sales].' At this point, it's worth noting that it's unclear whether the Block 80 exists as a concept for the Air Force or whether the designation was being used in the hearing in a purely speculative way. TWZ has reached out to Lockheed Martin for more details. Obviously, however, Allvin was happy to consider the idea of a new version of the F-16 for the service, even if only on a hypothetical level. Undoubtedly, the in-production Block 70/72 F-16C/D aircraft are already highly capable, featuring sophisticated avionics, mission systems, active electronically scanned array radar and a digital electronic warfare suite. The supposed Block 80, however, would presumably be more capable still, as well as being adapted for the specific needs of the Air Force. Aside from the Block 80, Cotton also asked if the Air Force would potentially have a place for the Block 70 (and the related Block 72), currently being built by Lockheed Martin in Greenville, South Carolina, for export customers. MYTHBUSTER MYTH: The F-16 is a legacy, outdated technology from the The F-16 is a critical piece of 21st century security, connecting assets in the battlespace. The newest, most advanced F-16, Block 70/72 offers capabilities to air forces around the world! — Lockheed Martin (@LockheedMartin) August 11, 2023 Again, Allvin said he would take the question for the record and come back with a fuller response. In particular, he said he would have to look in more detail at 'what the export variant can and can't do, and any sort of adjustments we would have to make to make it more easily integrable with our U.S.-built fighters. I would need to see what the integration opportunities and costs would be before I can give you a good answer.' Whether Block 80, or Block 70/72, there remains a big question over whether an Air Force order for these jets would be feasible, given the limited production capacity at the Greenville plant, as you can read more about here. Interestingly, the possibility of the Air Force buying new-production Block 70/72 aircraft to bolster its tactical aviation fleets in the near term has come up in the past. Back in 2021, the outgoing Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Will Roper, suggested the service might want to order an advanced version of the F-16, such as the Block 70/72. 'As you look at the new F-16 production line in South Carolina, that system has some wonderful upgraded capabilities that are worth thinking about as part of our capacity solution,' Roper said, in an interview with Aviation Week. The idea was quickly shot down by the then Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown Jr., who was vehement that the F-16 — even a much-improved version — was not the right choice for the future Air Force. In particular, he pointed to the F-16's inability to receive software updates at the speed that's desired and its lack of open-architecture software protocols that would allow it to be rapidly reconfigured. At the same time, Brown did, however, bring up the possibility of a 'clean-sheet design' for a future fighter, which he described as a 'four-and-a-half-gen or fifth-gen-minus' aircraft. This would be cheap enough to be procured in the numbers required to eventually replace the F-16. But perhaps, after all, the idea of a potential future Air Force F-16 buy is not altogether dead. Speaking today, Gen. Allvin stressed the importance of having 'not only the right capacity but the capability … to make sure that we have the right mix of the high-end to be able to dominate and be relevant in an Indo-Pacific fight, as well as other fighters that may not need to be as sophisticated as our fifth-generation, sixth-generation.' Furthermore, Allvin said that CCA drones — at least as far as Increment One is concerned — will not be able to replace crewed fighters like the F-16 and the F-15E. 'My assessment [of the CCA] as of right now, it will not replace that. It will be a great augmentation. And its threshold is to be able to work with the F-35 and the F-22 even before the F-47 gets fielded, so it will help us deliver more combat capability at a better cost point. But as far as replacing the manned fighters, that remains to be seen. What we have built into Increment One, my assessment right now is that would not be a good one-for-one replacement.' Meanwhile, the need to replace aging F-16s, which still serve as a backbone of the USAF's fighter fleet, is becoming more acute, Allvin noted. 'As we continue to keep the older aircraft, they do become more and more expensive to maintain,' Allvin said, while the mission capable rate 'is not what we'd like it to be.' He added that the average Air Force F-16 'was built right about the time the Cold War ended. So even those F-16s are getting pretty old.' As of 2024, the mission capable rate (MCR) for the F-16C stood at 64 percent, down from almost 72 percent in 2021. This compares with 52 percent for the F-22, and 86 percent for the brand-new F-15EX. The designated replacement for the F-16 should be the F-35 stealth fighter, although there have long been signs that the Air Force doesn't see this platform as necessarily the direct successor to all its legacy tactical fighters. The Air Force F-35A buy is still officially pegged at 1,763 aircraft, but there have been reports that, as early as 2018, the service had prepared a study that called for these orders to be cut back to 1,050. The Air Force is, notably, also buying F-15EX fighters, alongside F-35As, so clearly hasn't entirely given up on acquiring fourth-generation fighters. In the past, Allvin has also raised the possibility of some kind of light crewed fighter that could serve as a future adjunct to more advanced and costly fifth- and sixth-generation fighters. Allvin presented a highly notional concept illustration for a light fighter last year, as you can read about here. Despite the Air Force's commitment to the F-35, the Joint Strike Fighter program remains an enormously expensive one — the costliest in Pentagon history — leaving room for discussions, at least, about a cheaper crewed fighter. With advanced versions of the F-16 now being manufactured for export customers, it's perhaps no surprise that the Viper, or a further optimized iteration of it, is being at least discussed by some as potential equipment for the U.S. Air Force, too. Contact the author: thomas@
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Putting Missile Interceptors In Space Critical To Defending U.S. Citizens: Space Force Boss
New space-based interceptors called for in President Donald Trump's Golden Dome missile defense initiative are all about addressing threats as quickly and as far away from the U.S. homeland as possible, according to U.S. Space Force's top officer. The Golden Dome (formerly known as Iron Dome) plans come amid broader discussions and concerns about the weaponization of space. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman talked about Golden Dome and other topics during an interview broadcast online as part of Defense One's State of Defense 2025: Air Force and Space Force virtual conference today. Golden Dome was first rolled out publicly in an executive order in January and proposes a huge expansion of America's missile defense architecture. 'It's not just that we want space-based interceptors, we want them in [the] boost phase,' Saltzman said. 'We want them to achieve their effects as far from the homeland. So they've got to be fast, they've got to be accurate.' The boost phase is where ballistic missiles, as well as highly maneuverable hypersonic boost-glide vehicles that use ballistic missile-like rocket boosters, are moving slowest and are at their most vulnerable. The bright plume of hot gas also makes them easier to spot and track for an intercept attempt. It is also a short engagement window and any such intercept is likely to occur well within an adversary's territory. This all presents particular challenges for boost-phase missile defense concepts using air, sea, and/or ground-based assets, as you can read more about here. The U.S. military has moved to develop and field space-based anti-missile capabilities multiple times in the past only to abandon those plans due to technical complexities and high costs. Space-based weapons were a particularly key element of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), infamously dubbed 'Star Wars' by its critics, and which never came close to achieving its ambitious goals. Speaking today, Gen. Saltzman acknowledged those challenges, but also made clear that he felt they were surmountable. 'I think there's a lot of technical challenges,' he said. 'I am so impressed by the innovative spirit of the American space industry. I'm pretty convinced that we will be able to technically solve those challenges.' 'We've got a pretty amazing space industrial base and I'm pretty sure they're going to solve most of those technical problems,' he continued. 'So, from that standpoint, I think it's just about how fast you want to go, you know, how fast can we leverage the technology, and put it in place and test it, [and] get a demo out there so you can see what's possible.' Gen. Saltzman also addressed broader concerns about the potentially destabilizing impacts of weaponizing space. Space Force's top officer countered, as he and other American officials have in the past, by highlighting examples of how this is already happening. China and Russia, in particular, have significant and still-expanding arsenals of space-based and terrestrial anti-satellite capabilities. 'Depends on where you sit, right, you know? But to say that it's the responsibility for the U.S. government to protect its citizens from emerging threats makes perfect sense to me,' Saltzman said. 'And we clearly see a country like the PRC [People's Republic of China] investing heavily in these kinds of threats, whether it's hypersonic [weapons], whether it's threats from space. And so now it's time for the U.S. government to step up to the responsibilities to protect American citizens from those threats.' Saltzman's comments here notably follow Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein's remarks at the McAleese and Associates annual Defense Programs Conference earlier this week about how China especially is expanding its ability to 'dogfight' in space. 'There are five different objects in space maneuvering in and out around each other, in synchronicity and in control. That's what we call dogfighting in space,' Guetlein said, according to Breaking Defense. 'They are practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.' 'Gen. Guetlein referenced Chinese satellite maneuvers observed in space. China conducted a series of proximity operations in 2024 involving three Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two Chinese experimental space objects, the Shijian-6 05A/B,' a Space Force spokesperson subsequently clarified to that outlet. 'These maneuvers were observed in low Earth orbit. These observations are based on commercially available information.' 'Unfortunately, our current adversaries are willing to go against international norms of behavior, go against that gentleman's agreement, and they're willing to do it in very unsafe and unprofessional manners,' Guetlein also said, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. 'The new norms of behavior in space, unfortunately, within the past three years: jamming, spoofing, dazzling … cyber hacks are happening all around us on a day-to-day basis.' Space Force officials have publicly highlighted this reality in the past. Gen. Saltzman has also already been a notably outspoken advocate of treating space as just as much of a potential arena for active warfare as the air, sea, and land below. He has also been among those pushing for the U.S. military to acquire new so-called 'counter-space' capabilities, which could include additional types of space-based weapon systems, as well as ones within Earth's atmosphere. 'What I think we're really recognizing is now space is a contested war-fighting domain, and that's what's new, not that the military is considering offensive and defensive operations,' Saltzman said today. 'Militaries always conduct offensive and defensive operations to contest the domains to meet military objectives. We just recently had to up our game, if you will, because space has become a warfighting domain.' 'I talk about six categories of counter-space weapons. [There are] three that are ground-based, jammers, directed energy, and then kinetic capabilities, like we've seen the PRC use with missiles attacking satellites. And then those same three categories can be done from space, from satellites on orbit, jamming, and directed energy, and kinetic capabilities,' he continued. 'So those six categories all have to be invested in, because each one is optimized for different types of targets, whether it's low earth orbit, whether it's in geosynchronous orbit, [or] whether it goes out further than that. How much you need in each weapon is kind of what we're working through in terms of a strategy. But you really have to invest across all those. PRC is showing us that because they're investing in all those.' This is fully in line with what Saltzman told TWZ and other outlets about his service's counter-space priorities at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association's 2025 Warfare Symposium earlier this month. The only counter-space systems that the U.S. military currently acknowledges possessing are variants of the Counter Communications System (CCS), which are ground-based jammers. However, there have been clear indications over the years that there may be more in the classified realm. It is worth noting that U.S. officials are broadly in alignment with critics of weaponizing space about the potentially catastrophic downstream impacts of any sustained campaign of attacks on assets in orbit. Gen. Saltzman and others have stressed a need therefore to focus on non-destructive counter-space capabilities to reduce potential risks, but also the need to be prepared for the worst. 'We have to plan for those bad scenarios, and we have to defend ourselves, and hopefully we can be so strong that we deter any kind of attack or any kind of progress into the space domain,' Saltzman said today. Whether or not Golden Dome's anti-missile interceptors in orbit or the U.S. military's other counter-space plans become a reality, the prospect of mass weaponization of space is increasingly on the horizon. Contact the author: joe@
