The Trumpian nuclear shield

 Cannon:

On May 20, President Donald Trump launched the Golden Dome missile defense initiative. I was in college when President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative—initially mocked by its opponents as “Star Wars.”

Trump named Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein as the Golden Dome project’s leader, a tell that the system will be primarily space-based.

Technology in two areas has altered the equation for missile defense, likely making defending against nuclear missiles—even hypersonic ones, less expensive than building the offensive nuclear weapons. This was not the case when Reagan announced SDI in 1983. The Great Communicator said then that, “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies? … this is a formidable, technical task … will take years, probably decades of effort on many fronts… But isn’t it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is.”

The threat of nuclear war that Reagan was worried about and thought immoral, was that of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, or MAD. MAD held that a nuclear balance of terror could keep the peace—that as long as nuclear rivals knew that, even if they struck first, the other side could still inflict massive damage in return.

Now, 42 years later, the cost to launch objects into low earth orbit has gone from about $12,045 per pound to $760 per pound for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and $33.41 per pound for Starship. This is a reduction in the cost to orbit of 360-fold with Elon Musk shooting for $4.54 per pound ($10 per kilogram)—a reduction in the cost of putting defensive systems into space of 2,400 times since the mid-1980s. This makes it far more affordable to loft a missile defense system into orbit.

On the electronics front, the advancements are even more impressive. Computing power has surged over 40 years, with costs of processing power dropping by over 37 million times from 1985 to 2025, enabling real-time tracking of missiles aimed at the homeland.

With lighter sensors and computers, modern interceptor missile warheads can weigh 4-10 pounds, compared to 22 pounds in 1985. Space-based sensor systems can be similarly lighter and far more capable.
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I am not surprised that Trump would put a name like Golden Dome on the project.  If it works, I am all for it.   Missile defense, at least for the US, becomes affordable and worthwhile.  Nuclear weapons will no longer be a case of mutual assured destruction.  This could create a dilemma for China and Russia until they are able to develop their own missile defense systems.  Elon Musk is showing that he can produce genius weapons for defending the US.