Trump Sees Israel's Iron Dome for America

Debra Saunders on Feb 4, 2025

WASHINGTON -- "We will build a massive missile defense shield to protect us," Donald Trump told a crowd at an Arizona campaign rally in October. "And it's going to be made in the USA, a lot of it right here."

It was a timely proposal given that in 2023, Americans spent more than a week watching a Chinese spy balloon travel from Asia to Alaska, then Canada, and a swath of states from Montana to South Carolina.

President Joe Biden decided against shooting down the big balloon until it reached the Atlantic Ocean.

America looked weak.

So, a week after taking the Oath of Office, Trump took the first step toward delivering on his missile-defense pledge. He signed an executive order that directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a plan for a "U.S. Iron Dome," modeled after Israel's highly successful, U.S.-funded anti-missile defense program, within 60 days.

"The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States," the order read.

Good for Trump for sticking to his word and putting American security first.

"Our homeland has never been less secure, particularly from nation states," retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told me Monday.

"I'm glad to see this focus," Montgomery added.

I'm glad to see the resurrection of President Ronald Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which sought to protect the nation from missile attacks before the close of the Cold War. The usual critics spit out their coffee over the scheme, commonly lampooned at the time as "Star Wars," but it did serve as a deterrent to Russian and Chinese ambitions, and it is widely credited for ending the Cold War.

Some 40 years later, the rap against Trump's Iron Dome is not that an anti-missile system could not work here -- even if it works for Israel -- because America is too big, more than 400 times the size of the Jewish state.

An American Iron Dome simply would cost too much money. If a U.S. adversary were to launch missiles against the United States, Montgomery figured, that adversary might fire 500 to 600 missiles. To stop each one of those missiles, the military would have to shoot one to two missiles, which cost between $70 million and $100 million each.

"Do the math on that," the admiral continued, "and you're very quickly in a number that begins with a T, trillions of dollars just on missiles."

"That's not realistic in the fiscal environment we're in."

That's where innovation could save the day. Instead of relying solely on hi-tech weaponry, the Pentagon could look at using dirigibles, putting radars in unmanned balloons, Montgomery offered.

So we're back to balloons.

The heat is on Hegseth to come up with a strong plan that can be implemented at warp speed.

Quoth Montgomery: "If this executive order doesn't work, we don't have a fallback plan to stop a conventional strike."

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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