President Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ effort toward a missile-defense system for the homeland is the right move at the right time.

I wholeheartedly agree with the NR Editors that President Trump’s “Golden Dome” effort toward a missile-defense system for the homeland is the right move at the right time:

The most foreseeable existential threat to our society is a nuclear attack, and it’s always been insane that we’ve been so slow to develop and deploy the most robust possible defenses against one. Reagan was right when he advocated for the Strategic Defense Initiative during the Cold War, and Trump’s Golden Dome proposes to bring Reagan’s vision to fruition.

Of course, many Americans disagree. Those disagreements, however, are too often built on myths and misunderstandings, some dating back to the 1980s. Here are answers to three common objections to Trump’s program in particular and missile defense in general.

1. “Missile Defense Is Technologically Infeasible”

There is a common misconception that missile defense is impossible, impracticable, or technologically infeasible. None of this is true. The Israeli Iron Dome system, designed with American assistance, has proved capable of consistently knocking down short-range rockets with a high degree of success.

But while Iron Dome gets all the press as the most famous layer of Israel’s integrated air-defense systems, it is by no means its only component. Israel also fields David’s Sling, Arrow 2, Arrow 3, and the U.S.-developed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems, which are designed to destroy more advanced and harder-to-hit targets, including cruise missiles, one-way kamikaze drones, and long-range ballistic missiles.

The Trump executive order from January, which initially called for Golden Dome, gets our problem right in that it requires defensive systems against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries” that can be fired from long-range, over the seas, or, potentially, from space.

There are of course technical challenges here, but it’s not as if the United States is racing from a standing start. Work that was begun in the Reagan years has — despite decades of mockery — borne fruit in the design and development of THAAD and other currently deployed U.S. missile-defense systems. Progress accelerated after President Bush’s 2001 decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was one of the best decisions of his administration.

President Trump’s call for a functioning missile-defense system in the U.S. by the end of his term is a tall order. It’s also achievable — especially if we understand that the system can be improved, modified, and expanded as the years go by. Moreover, in this new era of innovation, led by SpaceX and other American aerospace and defense companies, a transformative system of space-based sensors and interceptors is indeed plausible.

Americans should have confidence that U.S. industry and know-how can solve the technical problems involved in building a new generation of missile-defense systems, of which there are, of course, still more than a few. But we can do this. It’s possible. In the ’80s, Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden may have mocked the Reagan-era ideas as “Star Wars,” but the feasibility of space-based missile-defense systems weren’t the only thing those men were wrong about during their long and ignominious careers.

2. “Missile Defense Is Too Expensive”

President Trump has said that Golden Dome will cost $175 billion. Many people have scoffed at that number, arguing the program could cost trillions. As with any government-led major project, skepticism is warranted.

But if that $175 billion is meant to bring about building a first phase of an operational system, along with major funding toward future, especially space-based, development, then, yes: $175 billion could get the job done.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, built by Lockheed Martin, is the premier U.S. land-based anti-ballistic missile system in operation today. It’s true that the system was designed to engage intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase — not modern intercontinental ballistic missiles or hypersonic missiles. But the system is already being modified for use against hypersonic missiles. A THAAD battery costs about $1.8 billion to deploy. As a starting point, the United States could defend the 15 largest American metropolitan areas using the off-the-shelf THAAD system for about $30 billion.

The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GBM) system is designed to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles. The United States currently fields — as in right now, as in today — around three dozen interceptors between bases in Alaska and California (the best positions to defend North America from missiles fired from Eurasia traveling a great circle route over the Arctic). The Pentagon has estimated that the “Next Generation Interceptor” program — a system designed to replace the GBM system — would cost in the range of $18 billion.

The point is not to say that these systems are perfect for our current needs or our forever solution. The point is that for about $50 billion, the U.S. could push to field, within a relatively short period of time, what would be the most advanced missile-defense system for any country on Planet Earth. We could then defend ourselves from rouge actors, such as North Korea or Iran, or even a mistakenly launched missile from one of our bigger competitors. The rest of the money could be poured into developing a future, comprehensive system to defeat a large-scale attack by a peer adversary, a.k.a., China or Russia, which have the ability to fire hundreds of missiles at us.

Will there be cost overruns? Of course there will be. But in terms of a $6 trillion federal budget, it’s hard to argue that Congress couldn’t find the money we’re talking about to prioritize this effort. It must merely want to.

3. “Missile Defense Is Geopolitically Provocative”

It’s true that the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative scared the hell out of the Soviets. They saber rattled over it. They complained bitterly. They argued it would start a war. But it’s important to understand why the Soviets were so against the prospect of American missile defense.

By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union understood that the United States was opening up a huge qualitative technological edge over what the Communist bloc could produce, across all commercial, technological, and defense sectors. The Soviets hated SDI because they knew they could not match it.

Our competition with the People’s Republic of China is entirely different. The Chinese have no sense of inferiority when it comes to matching — or exceeding — American defense-industrial technology. Indeed, they have ambitions to do just such a thing.

There should be no thought that, if the United States does not pursue national missile defense, Communist China would refrain from doing so as well. Beijing is actively developing anti-ballistic missile systems. Beijing is actively deploying an integrated air-defense network.

This week, a Chinese foreign-ministry official, Mao Ning, was quoted by Reuters, complaining that “China is seriously concerned about this.” America, she said, “is obsessed with seeking absolute security for itself. This violates the principle that the security of all countries should not be compromised and undermines global strategic balance and stability.”

President Trump is right to ignore her. If the United States does not develop advanced missile-defense systems to defend our homeland, we will find that our adversaries have beaten us to the finish line.