Does America Need an Iron Dome?

By Oren @Adobe Stock

President Trump has called for the creation of an “Iron Dome” missile defense system over the United States, similar to that which guards Israel from attacks. Henry F. Cooper discusses the comments of retired Air Force Brigadier General Houston Cantwell on the matter at Newsmax, writing:

Ret. Air Force Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell is most definitely correct in his February 4 Air and Space Force Magazine article “Air and Missile Defense for the US is an Absolute Imperative,” which also correctly notes that the building blocks already exist for President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for an “Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield for America” to protect against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks.”

Indeed, as I noted my January 31 Newsmax article, Trump’s “Iron Dome” should revive development efforts from President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI ) era.

While most folks think SDI focused its efforts on space-based defenses, it actually fostered ballistic missile defenses for all basing modes … and against ballistic missiles of all ranges. Note that article also referred to an August 24, 2017 article, that I co-authored with Dale Teitz, calling for air- and space-based missile defenses.

And SDI also pioneered ground- and sea-based defenses. Indeed, on my watch as SDI Director, we supported the Army’s Patriots used in the 1991 Gulf War … actually, every “then-untested” Patriot employed in the Gulf War was manufactured by Raytheon and Martin Marietta between early August 1990 (when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait) and the early June 1991 Gulf War.

From its very beginning, the SDI efforts included research and development on ground-based defenses for the American people, initially the only very limited homeland missile defenses allowed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

Its prohibitions held sway until December 13, 2001, when President George W. Bush withdrew from the treaty. But there was no serious development effort for homeland missile defenses of any other basing mode — and even what was done was kept limited.

Read more here.