Trump’s order ends 40-year debate over missile defense, space weapons

FPI / January 31, 2025

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

On the way toward fulfilling a campaign promise and beginning a shift of the global strategic balance of power back toward the United States — to include putting defensive U.S. weapons in space — on Jan. 27 President Donald J. Trump signed his executive order titled “The Iron Dome For America.”

On Jan. 27, 2025 President Donald Trump signed his ‘Iron Dome’ executive order, which if fulfilled would realize the national missile defense dream of President Ronald Reagan in his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). / Wikimedia Commons

As China and Russia are on course to pose a combined threat of many thousand nuclear warheads aimed at the United States, Trump’s executive order states: “Section 1. Purpose. The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”

Taking its name from Israel’s revolutionary Iron Dome short range missile defense system, and signed one week following his Jan. 20 inauguration, this executive order is in turn revolutionary on two levels.

First, Trump is ending a 40-year U.S. policy debate over national missile defense that has been dominated by liberal policy groups and Democrat Party opponents of missile defense.

Trump is also dispensing with the usual and time consuming process of bureaucratic evaluation, planning, funding planning, with the attendant Congressional and media scrutiny, to order the creation of a national missile defense for the United States, stating:.

The executive order recalls that President Ronald Reagan’s attempt (his Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI) to build a national missile defense “was canceled before its goal could be realized,” and starting with President George W. Bush, the U.S. built only a limited missile defense, noting, “official United States homeland missile defense policy has remained only to stay ahead of rogue-nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches.”

Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order states:

“…it is the policy of the United States that:
(a) The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the Nation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield;
(b) The United States will deter — and defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against — any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland; and
(c) The United States will guarantee its secure second-strike capability.”

The executive order then requires: Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Defense shall: “(a) Submit to the President a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield.”

At a second level, Trump’s Iron Dome executive order is revolutionary in that it requires that the Department of Defense plan to deploy U.S. weapons in space.

Full Report . . . . Current Edition . . . . Subscription Information

Free Press International