“This is not science fiction. This is achievable – an all-American effort,” Golden Dome project director Gen. Mike Guetlein said in an update on the progress he says is being made creating the next-gen air, missile and space defense system.
💬“The foundational technology exists. It builds upon proven systems. It integrates them into a defense that is resilient, fiscally responsible and infinitely scalable,” Guetlein assured, emphasizing his team is “shovel-ready” and “building it right now.”
🥴Shovel-ready? More like shoveling some other substance.
➡️ The American Enterprise Institute says Golden Dome could cost $3.6T over 20 years, depending on the system architecture chosen
➡️ Its official marketed price tag? ‘Only’ $175B – still more than the defense budgets of all but a handful of countries
➡️ Then there’s the question of whether it can even work. Previous efforts like Reagan’s Star Wars SDI cost $30B (in 1980s dollars!) before the project was unceremoniously scrapped
➡️ Ballistic threats are one thing (and even here existing US systems like Patriot and THAAD demonstrated jarring ineffectiveness against Iranian missiles). Hypersonic glide vehicles are a whole other animal, with defense against them next to impossible using currently-known tech
➡️ The stakes could not be higher, requiring a near-100% success rate, or having cities vaporized in an enemy counterstrike. Not so easy for a country nearly 500 times the size of Israel – whose sophisticated, multi-tiered defense system leaked like a sieve in the two recent wars against Iran.
The only real winning move for the Pentagon? Not to play.
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