Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system is massively over budget and won’t be able to stop large-scale attacks from the top U.S. adversaries, according to a congressional report.
Last year, Trump said that the U.S. could have a Golden Dome that would outshine Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system for the price of $175 billion.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the price tag will be closer to $1.2 trillion. On top of that, “It would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch,” the CBO wrote in a report published on Tuesday.
The Golden Dome is supposed to come with a “space layer” that protects the U.S. with 7,800 satellites that would be capable of intercepting 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and that layer alone would cost $720 billion to develop, the report found.
Those 7,800 satellites would be burned up while dragging across the atmosphere, so they would need to be replaced constantly, the report noted. Each satellite would only last for five years, so the U.S. military would need “roughly 30,000 satellites” to keep the system operational for twenty years.
“However, the system would be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack,” the report stressed, warning that the plan could backfire with missile proliferation. “Such a deployment could prompt regional adversaries to increase their inventories of long-range missiles (nuclear or conventional).”
On top of that, the system would need “an industrial base to produce enough interceptors and radars, particularly of the types that have been consumed in large numbers or destroyed in the Iran War.”
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