Yves here. It is hard to say enough bad things about Trump’s Golden Dome pork project. Haig Hovaness had a go, but there is vastly more to add, as this post demonstrates.
By Matthew Bunn, Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. Originally published at The Conversation
President Donald Trump’s idea of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States.
Golden Dome is meant to protect the U.S. from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space. Trump has called for the missile defense to be fully operational before the end of his term in three years.
Trump’s goals for Golden Dome are likely beyond reach. A wide range of studies makes clear that even defenses far more limited than what Trump envisions would be far more expensive and less effective than Trump expects, especially against enemy missiles equipped with modern countermeasures. Countermeasures include multiple warheads per missile, decoy warheads and warheads that can maneuver or are difficult to track, among others.
Regardless of Golden Dome’s feasibility, there is a long history of scholarship about strategic missile defenses, and the weight of evidence points to the defenses making their host country less safe from nuclear attack.
I’m a national security and foreign policy professor at Harvard University, where I lead “Managing the Atom,” the university’s main research group on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policies. For decades, I’ve been participating in dialogues with Russian and Chinese nuclear experts – and their fears about U.S. missile defenses have been a consistent theme throughout.
Russian President Vladmir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have already warned that Golden Dome is destabilizing. Along with U.S. offensive capabilities, Golden Dome poses a threat of “directly undermining global strategic stability, spurring an arms race and increasing conflict potential both among nuclear-weapon states and in the international arena as a whole,” a joint statement from China and Russia said. While that is a propaganda statement, it reflects real concerns broadly held in both countries.
Golden Dome explained.
History Lessons
Experience going back half a century makes clear that if the administration pursues Golden Dome, it is likely to provoke even larger arms buildups, derail already-dim prospects for any negotiated nuclear arms restraint, and perhaps even increase the chances of nuclear war.
My first book, 35 years ago, made the case that it would be in the U.S. national security interest to remain within the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which strictly limited U.S. and Soviet – and later Russian – missile defenses. The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated the ABM Treaty as part of SALT I, the first agreements limiting the nuclear arms race. It was approved in the Senate 98-2.
The ABM Treaty experience is instructive for the implications of Golden Dome today.
Why did the two countries agree to limit defenses? First and foremost, because they understood that unless each side’s defenses were limited, they would not be able to stop an offensive nuclear arms race. If each side wants to maintain the ability to retaliate if the other attacks – “don’t nuke me, or I’ll nuke you” – then an obvious answer to one side building up more defenses is for the other to build up more nuclear warheads.
For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets installed 100 interceptors to defend Moscow – so the United States targeted still more warheads on Moscow to overwhelm the defense. Had it ever come to a nuclear war, Moscow would have been even more thoroughly obliterated than if there had been no defense at all. Both sides came to realize that unlimited missile defenses would just mean more offense on both sides, leaving both less secure than before.
In addition, nations viewed an adversary’s shield as going hand in hand with a nuclear sword. A nuclear first strike might destroy a major part of a country’s nuclear forces. Missile defenses would inevitably be more effective against the reduced, disorganized retaliation that they knew would be coming than they would be against a massive, well-planned surprise attack. That potential advantage to whoever struck first could make nuclear crises even more dangerous.
Post-ABM Treaty World
Unfortunately, President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, seeking to free U.S. development of defenses against potential missile attacks from small states such as North Korea. But even now, decades later, the U.S. has fewer missile interceptors deployed (44) than the treaty permitted (100).
The U.S. pullout did not lead to an immediate arms buildup or the end of nuclear arms control. But Putin has complained bitterly about U.S. missile defenses and the U.S. refusal to accept any limitation at all on them. He views the U.S. stance as an effort to achieve military superiority by negating Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
Russia is investing heavily in new types of strategic nuclear weapons intended to avoid U.S. missile defenses, from an intercontinental nuclear torpedo to a missile that can go around the world and attack from the south, while U.S. defenses are mainly pointed north toward Russia.
Similarly, much of China’s nuclear buildup appears to be driven by wanting a reliable nuclear deterrent in the face of the United States’ capability to strike its nuclear forces and use missile defenses to mop up the remainder. Indeed, China was so angered by South Korea’s deployment of U.S.-provided regional defenses – which they saw as aiding the U.S. ability to intercept their missiles – that they imposed stiff sanctions on South Korea.
Fuel to the Fire
Now, Trump wants to go much further, with a defense “forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland,” with a success rate “very close to 100%.” I believe that this effort is highly likely to lead to still larger nuclear buildups in Russia and China. The Putin-Xi joint statement pledges to “counter” defenses “aimed at achieving military superiority.”
Given the ease of developing countermeasures that are extraordinarily difficult for defenses to overcome, odds are the resulting offense-defense competition will leave the United States worse off than before – and a good bit poorer.
Putin and Xi made clear that they are particularly concerned about the thousands of space-based interceptors Trump envisions. These interceptors are designed to hit missiles while their rockets are still burning during launch.
Most countries are likely to oppose the idea of deploying huge numbers of weapons in space – and these interceptors would be both expensive and vulnerable. China and Russia could focus on further developing anti-satellite weapons to blow a hole in the defense, increasing the risk of space war.
Already, there is a real danger that the whole effort of negotiated limits to temper nuclear arms racing may be coming to an end. The last remaining treaty limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, the New START Treaty, expires in February 2026. China’s rapid nuclear buildup is making many defense officials and experts in Washington call for a U.S. buildup in response.
Intense hostility all around means that for now, neither Russia nor China is even willing to sit down to discuss nuclear restraints, in treaty form or otherwise.
A Way Forward
In my view, adding Golden Dome to this combustible mix would likely end any prospect of avoiding a future of unrestrained and unpredictable nuclear arms competition. But paths away from these dangers are available.
It would be quite plausible to design defenses that would provide some protection against attacks from a handful of missiles from North Korea or others that would not seriously threaten Russian or Chinese deterrent forces – and design restraints that would allow all parties to plan their offensive forces knowing what missile defenses they would be facing in the years to come.
I believe that Trump should temper his Golden Dome ambitions to achieve his other dream – of negotiating a deal to reduce nuclear dangers.
Will we ever evole past our lizard-brained inclination to build endlessly expensive ‘defense’ systems that only provoke similar reactions to build more of the same around the globe? Sure, it’ll create a lot of jobs, and line the pockets of the weapons producers; but wouldn’t that money be better spent on comprehensive renewable energy sources, or improved medical coverage, or free higher education, all of which would have far greater return on the dollar?
Yes it will line the pockets of weapons producers- that is the point, alas.
What’s this lizard brain business! Lizards are intelligent and blameless animals. Their brains function perfectly. Unless kept as pets, they avoid humans like the plague. Being cold-blooded, they function more efficiently than mammals. They regulate their own body temperature, eat less, and live longer. The tuatara lizard retains a vestigial, light-sensitive third eye.
Let’s hear it for the lizards! Mammals are the problem here.
The real threat coming from a “Golden Dome” – which would be in reality a Golden Colander – is that you would have people like Mike Pompeo or Lindsay Graham or any other number of DC denizens that would then convince themselves that it was 100% infallible. Meaning that they would be free to launch a few small tactical nukes at some country as they are now “Missile-proof” and nobody can do anything about it – until they did.
Absolutely, an argument for limiting ABM is the study of defenses implies nuclear war is conscionable even winnable!
The ABM adds a dimension to the “game” that is simulated to justify strategy which drives arms races.
Then there is gaming survival rates, etc to conscion feasible second strike plans etc., etc.
In retrospect. Game theory clouds the grave evil of nuclear weapons, and cannot consider human emotion, raged by sensor mistakes and overload.
Reality is Russia has a lot of defensive capacity, has endured more while U.S. needs Musk to keep its space station supplied, and has 55 year old ICBMs
Musk is too big to fail.
This Is How U.S. National Security Has Become Dependent On SpaceX, The War Zone (TWZ). The lede, A bitter feud between Trump and Musk serves as a reminder of just how important SpaceX has become to the U.S. military and federal agencies.
This is interesting, and is referred to in the above article. From March 20, 2024, If SpaceX’s Secret Constellation Is What We Think It Is, It’s Game Changing (Updated), TWZ. The lede, A constellation of hundreds of sensor-equipped satellites would offer unprecedented strategic and tactical surveillance around the globe.
Thank you for the link.
Over the years I have worked in both E-3 and E-8 program management offices.
In my olden days GMTI was a big stretch, but what E-8 could do was of interest to them.
Putting a SAR/AESA in orbit would be a breakthrough.
One issue for F-35 is cooling and energy drag on engine power, make it run hot to run chillers, space is a new realm.
In the New Cold War arms race, it will be the U.S., not Russia, that suffers an economic collapse.
Glen Deisen interviews Ted Postol in a much more thorough Golden Dome discussion. In addition to the obvious points made here, Postol talks about GD deployment resulting in space war making future satellites infeasible. Also says that GD might give US leadership false confidence. He call the “arms control” people brain dead.
The idea behind the Burevestnik I really don’t get.
Yeah, nuclear powered, unlimited range, etc. But in the end it is a very big quite slow subsonic missile. Easy target for air defense, and it will also have a gang of fighter jets descending on it and shooting it down long before it gets to any targets deep in the continental US. Plus, how many of those can be produced to make a difference anyway? This involves nuclear reactors, after all.
The Russians are not known for spending so much on obvious boondoggles, so there has to be something there that has not been said or is escaping attention…
“But in the end it is a very big quite slow subsonic missile”
Not if it is in space or high Earth orbit…and on re-entry is designed for hypersonic attacks.
I think you may be conflating the burevestnik nuclear powered cruise missile (IMO a second strike weapon) with their latest Fractional Orbit Bombardment System ICBM, which also has effectively unlimited range, and could well be used in a first strike.
But if you only have assault rifles and binoculars available (in the south), what are you going to do against a subsonic missile?
After a nuclear exchange there would be no functioning radar sets — they would have been fried by EMP. The purpose of the nuclear-powered cruise missile is to take advantage of post-exchange paralysis. The idea being that if the US were able to defend itself against a first strike by detonating incoming nuclear missiles, it would still be vulnerable to a second strike from cruise missiles. Much the same as the “Typhoon” nuclear submarine, which was supposed to sit under the Arctic icecap until the exchanges were over, then come out and fire its missiles at a prostrate US.
Am I the first to make the really dumb joke of “Golden Shower” being more proper? Problem being, I am not at all into the Russiagate hoax and Mr. Steele (whose name probably stolen from a porn movie in the 1970s.) So it all amounts to a huge Freudian clusterfuck…
No. The joke was made a few times. As as far as Mr. Steele goes, Wikipedia says that he was born in 1969, so you are off with movie production dating.
To at least contribute a bit to serious discussion, here your average madman Piotrowski´s take on “Golden Dome”:
Trump’s Golden Dome Missile Defence Idea Faces Numerous Challenges
04.06.2025
The Trump administration has indicated a desire to rapidly expand and strengthen continental U.S. missile defence by building what it is calling the Golden Dome. However, its declarations have not been accompanied by the usual comprehensive intelligence threat estimates, traditional Pentagon review, or a detailed budget. The goals, scale, complexity, and costs of Golden Dome seem to preclude its full implementation in the declared three years’ timeframe.
by Marcin Andrzej Piotrowski
https://pism.pl/publications/trumps-golden-dome-missile-defence-idea-faces-numerous-challenges
Piotrowskis comment on X:
“As an enthusiast of missile defense since 1999 I tend to think that will be very thin or very leaky Golden Dome by 2028 – my take on the main threat, architecture, and budget issues with this project.” (see above link)
And short entry:
Ryabkov sees no reason to restart the START Treaty
According to the Deputy Head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, a full-scale return to the treaty will require raising Russian-American relations from the ruins
https://tass.ru/obschestvo/24153383
p.s. Postol always stated that ABM-shield around Moscow was worthless when he saw it – now that was the 1990s.
Of course – Martyanov today contradicts completely.
However both seem to agree on the futility of US endevaours into this territory.
I don’t think the ABM shield over Moscow is supposed to deflect all incoming missiles. I think it was supposed to gain extra minutes – just like the Perimeter retaliation-strike system is – for the Soviet leadership not to launch a counter strike at the first warning of an imminent USA nuclear strike.
To some extent, the motivation for the ongoing SMO draws from that same source – Russian leadership wants to have more than 5 minutes before responding to an incoming nuclear Armageddon.
And as a matter of fact, the system still exits, I believe approaching it fourth generation, and has been recently extended with S-500 batteries with rumors of anti-ballistic-missile specific S-550 batteries having circulated for some years.
But the basic design principle is still to be able to thing straight under pressure and not trigger a nuclear war until you are certain that you are under an attack.
The Russian “nuclear suitcase” is actually a button to cancel a retaliation, and there are three of them. The president, the defense minister and the chief-of-general-staff all have one, and two of them are needed to cancel an automatic retaliation if and when the Russian missile defense forces think Russia is under an attack.
There doens’t seem to be any automatic retaliation.
If there was, Putin would have been pressing that button a lot in the last nine months or so.
Thank you for the comment, Polar. Especially the last paragraph — So the plan is that in the event of an attack, the Perimeter system will launch all Russia’s nukes at the US and Europe, unless there are two surviving politicians to cancel?
This is quite an argument for not starting a nuclear war…
Yes, the system dates from an era when the Soviet government expected a final cataclysmic war with the West which would finish with a nuclear exchange. After a period, though, perhaps 10-20 years, the Soviet system would recover faster than the West, and they would have won. The system existed simply to keep the Politburo alive long enough send the order to launch a devastating response. It still exists: as far as I know the old A-125 system is being replaced by the A-235, still with nuclear warheads. This demonstrates quite well that you can do missile defence, but you can’t do it at scale.
That is a fascinating angle thanks. I haven´t been into Perimetr seriously.
Steven Starr on MoA 2 years ago among others mentioned this re: Perimetr and Valery Yarynich:
“(…)
For the record, both “Smaller and Safer”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2010-09-01/smaller-and-safer
and the corresponding “One Hundred Nuclear Wars: Stable Deterrence between the United States and Russia at Reduced Nuclear Force Levels Off Alert in the Presence of Limited Missile Defenses”
https://archive.is/fITj0
https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs19blair.pdf
were really developed and written by Valery Yarynich, not Bruce Blair, but it was Blair who was put in charge of the project by NTI and he called the shots and got the credit.
(…)”
and
“(…)
Historically, Perimetr never was a “fully automatic” system. There was/is always a launch crew that must first receive an alert order from the National Command Authority in the event that a nuclear strike is imminent. The order will contain a specific time frame as to when the strike is likely to occur. The Perimetr launch crew is connected to the National Command Authority by a number of independent communication systems: radio, satellite, land line, fiber optic . . . there are several systems specifically set up to facilitate communication, and according to one of the designers of the system, Colonel Valery Yarynich, who wrote a description of Perimetr in his book, C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation, see pages 156 through 159.
Yarnich wrote that a command crew, located in a super-hardened radio command and control center, someplace distant from the National Command Authority (NCA), waits to receive a code from the NCA for preliminary authorization to prepare and transmit the launch order to the Emergency Communication Rockets (which will broadcast a launch order to all surviving Russian nuclear forces to launch, an order that requires no human interaction to launch).
The launch order is issued if three conditions are met simultaneously:
(1) the receipt of preliminary authorization from the NCA,
(2) a complete loss of communication with the NCA,
and (3) reception of reliable confirmation of nuclear detonations from different types of sensors (visual, seismic, radiation sensors, etc).
Colonel Yarynich stressed that there could be no launch without the participation of the launch crew. He said that he had argued against a complete automation of the system (when it was in the design phase) for what seemed to him to be obvious reasons — any mistake could cause the obliteration of most people and large animal life on the planet. (Some life will survive a nuclear holocuast, but most likely the less complex forms and not those on top of the food chains.)
I worked with Colonel Yarynich before he passed away and he told me that there were some issues with the various sensors in terms of reliability. But my conversations with him were about 10-11 years ago, and things change over time.
There was one article that inferred that a computer has replaced the launch crew. It was published in RT on Nov 6, 2022 (I will attempt to include the link but will omit if the URL causes the post to be scrubbed), entitled Dead Hand’s nuclear revenge: What would happen if the West launched an attack on Russia?
The article ended with these two paragraphs:
“According to Pyotr Kazulsky, a former researcher at the Research Center for Applied Informatics, today the Perimeter system has been updated and the new control center is equipped with a neural network. There is no confirmation of this. There are no other sources who would talk about it, so the ‘singularity’ upgrade remains a rumor – and will probably stay this way, since all information about the system (and its analogue) is classified. Bruce Blair has also repeatedly claimed that the system is constantly being updated.
In December 2011, the commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Lieutenant General Sergei Karakaev, stated that the Perimeter system exists to this day and is on alert.
Posted by: Steven Starr | Apr 2 2023 16:19 utc
(…)”
Starr linked to this touching obituary on Valery Yarynich 2012 by John Hallam of the Australian campaigning group, People For Nuclear Disarmament:
https://www.pressenza.com/2012/12/a-salute-to-colonel-valery-yarynich/
How many rare earth magnets will be needed to build this golden dome? Have we asked the Chinese for their production schedule?
Zero! It’s powered by magic. That’s why it costs so much.
In this video (link below) Ted Postol explains that for Golden Dome to do what Trump says it will, the cost will be about four-hundred trillion— with a ‘t’, dollars, plus every satellite in earth’s orbit will be destroyed, for every event. While this may read as ludicrous, that is mainly because people have been told that the technology works. According to Postol, it doesn’t. Not at all. His cost estimate is therefore to get it to work.
In his favor is that he correctly predicted— according to his own recounting, the how and why that Reagan’s SDI (Star Wars) wouldn’t work before the project was launched. Also, according to Postol, the original science for SDI was fundamentally flawed. He explains why it was wrong, as well as why the science is still wrong.
Postol doesn’t need to be 2% correct for his argument to doom Golden Dome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_yEaW9ubSo
thanks!
Very worthwhile video to watch. Postol notes that the real Russian concern is that Washington, DC might believe it would work and act accordingly.
What would be left to win or lose, to leave an advantage? What advantage is available and for what end?Any missle defense system needs something to defend – so what would be left even in a limited nuclear exchange??
would it be defending democracy ? I find that to be a stretch in any aftermath where democracy or semblance of democracy would no longer exist!
I thought that the promotion of peace would be a foundational missle defense shield, whereas, it appears the thinking that I can sus-out is: that everyone needs to be going into hock to support an economic system who’s whole purpose is to support debt bondage and slavery around the world. One that is in support of a small finacial predatory class who have monopolized the western democratic politics into their name – sort of like the royals of past or dictators of present…subsume the church subsume the state subsume the fourth estate to pay homage to the creditors or the ultimate price will be born upon the rest.
Simple, cowardly, murder suicide.
. “War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.” -George Orwell
Such an enourmous hoax that may cost humanity – this Golden Dome brought to you by the biggliest swarm of huxters, con-persons and psychopants the world has ever seen.
Money seems to explain why so many ‘leaders?’ are hell bent on making as many enemies of neighbors slaughtering, degrading the whole of humanity for their own narssisistic grasping at power and excuse.
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” -James Madison
I would add that the current wars are by and for internal and external parisites, antithetical to democracy – the cartel of rent extractors and the compound interest employed by them.
Psychofants
I’m stealing this. Perfect!
There is no contempt sufficient for the creatures who profit from endangering all the people of the world.
Indeed, very shortly we shall need to move away from trying to out muscle the other guys, or we are going to find ourselves with a nuclear cloud swirling above us. If this isn’t the time to reconcile ourselves to finding some way to coexist without trying to destroy each other, then when?
Wasn’t one of the reasons for the USSR’s collapse its inability to provide ‘guns and butter’ to the population? If so, wouldn’t the US be facing the same situatiion, if China and Russia up the ante in an arms race. How is the US going to fund this nonsense: tariffs, not taxing the wealthy, austerity, forcing other countries to purchase treasuries, stagflaction, recession, or magic? Trump has no credibility, he preaches peace threatens war; that makes the US unreliable and untrustworthy. Will the US collapse internally before any nukes are launched?
In 1972 the Senate voted 92 to 2 in favor of SALT I. This followed a decade of heightened anxiety over nuclear war related to the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises and widespread coverage of the perils of nuclear war in the popular culture. I remember the backyard fallout shelters and the signs on public buildings stating that they contained stored food and water. Today’s congressional SALT controversy is about State and Local Tax deductions. I doubt that a vote for limiting nuclear weapons would struggle for a simple majority in today’s congress. This shows the intellectual deterioration of our current political leadership. Sadly, Trump is no Nixon. Each was/is psychologically damaged, but Nixon was capable of wisdom.
Public Fallout Shelter Signs that were a familiar sight. Images from the Civil Defense Museum.
https://www.civildeensemuseum.com/signs