The president of the United States, Donald Trump, who has hung a portrait of Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, has officially launched a space defense project with which to emulate the ambitious “Guerra de las Galaxias” that champied his predecessor and Republican idol. With him, he promises, the United States can neutralize possible attacks of the most advanced missiles in countries such as China or North Korea.
In an act in the Oval Office with the head of the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, and before a poster of the huge Trump project has announced the launch of the Golden Domeor “golden dome”: the construction of a huge antimile shield formed by a network of satellites and interceptors that, according to its idea, will protect from space the entire US territory – almost ten million square kilometers – of all kinds of enemy missiles, including hypersonic, thrown from any distance.
The network would link hundreds of satellites in charge of the detection and monitoring of the trajectory of enemy missiles. In case of danger, attack satellites in space or interceptors from the earth’s surface would take care of demolishing projectiles on the way before they arrived in US territory. Always according to Trump, Canada has expressed interest in being included in the protected area.
The Golden Dome He will be ready, as the president said, before his term is finished and will have an initial cost of 175,000 million dollars. Of these, 25,000 are already appearing in the Budget Law for next year that the United States Congress handles these days.
When announcing the new system, both Trump and Hegseth have alluded to the Galaxies War of Reagan in the eighties as the predecessor project of the shield. The then president wanted to challenge the Soviet Union with that space defense program; Moscow’s attempts to develop a parallel program could contribute to the collapse of that superpower. But Reagan’s plans did not pass projects: the technology at that time did not allow it. “We are going to complete the work that Reagan began forty years ago, ending the threats of missiles against the American homeland,” said the current president.
The project, on which Trump had already signed an executive order on January 27 in which he asked the Pentagon to present various options, is inspired by the “iron dome”, the system that Israel has and that in April of last year contributed to neutralize the attack of hundreds of missiles and drones launched by Iran against the Israeli territory. But it is a completely different model.
Broadly speaking, the Israeli system protects the most populated nuclei against short -range missiles in a country of tiny territory, just 22,000 square kilometers, approximately double Navarra. The Golden Dome that the US President has in mind would cover the extension of the ally country more than 400 times, to prevent the hypothetical missile attack much more powerful and advanced.
The American version would also be many times more expensive. Despite the figures offered by Trump and the Department of Defense directed by Hegseth, the Congress Budget Office calculates that to finish it, that amount will be necessary for twenty times, more than half billion dollars, and about two decades.
Although the Pentagon will be responsible for supervising the development of the complex project, it does not have the capacity to carry it out on its own, and will have to resort to private companies, defense contractors with the necessary capacity and knowledge. The Space X of the technological oligarch and great ally of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, is emerging as a favorite to take a good part of the juicy contracts that the plan will generate. In the act in the Oval Office, other participants mentioned as possible contractors RTX Corp, Lockheed Martin or L3harris Technologies. The American media have also conjectured in recent days about the possible participation of other companies already collaborators of the Pentagon, such as Palantir, specialized in data analysis, or Anduril, which provides artificial intelligence systems and robotics products to the Department of Defense. Both have been founded or backed, among others, by the ultraconservative billionaire Peter Thiel.
The perspective that Trump’s right -man -man in his first months of mandate in efforts to cut federal expenses, close entire departments and execute mass dismissals of officials considered unnecessary or not very loyal to the dictates of the Republican Administration – has unleashed the anger of the legislators of the Democratic opposition, who denounce possible conflicts of interest.
At a hearing in the House of Representatives, the head of the US Space Force, General Chance Saltzman, declared Tuesday that the armament planned for the Golden Dome It presents, given the need for it to work in space, “new and emerging requirements for the missions that have never been achieved by military spatial organizations.”
Trump insists that the United States, separated by the Pacific and Atlantic oceans of the countries that, in principle, could be more susceptible to attacking -Iran, North Korea, China or Russia -needs a protective shield beyond the systems with which it already has, given the advances of those countries in their missile systems. The Defense Intelligence Agency recently published an unlacified report on the golden dome project in which it stands out as those adversary hypothetics have the capacity to attack the US territory with a series of long -range or intercontinental missiles, hypersonic rockets or long -distance bombers.
A key part of the implementation of the plan will be the appointment of a project director, which will be responsible for supervising the different stages of shield development. Trump has announced that the hitherto attached head of operations in the US space force, General Michael Guetlein will be in charge. The military has extensive experience in new technologies for war in space and in the acquisition of antimile defense systems for pentagon.
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