This article gives details on the many shortcomings that make the 'golden dome' idea unworkable. These objections have been around since Ronald Reagan proposed the idea in the 1980's, and they are even more true today. The 'golden dome' proposal deals with ICBM-type missiles, but they are already out of date. The 'golden dome' proposal has even less chance against hypersonic missiles that travel at Mach 20.
Ask yourself a question – The $175 billion 'golden dome' idea requires 36,000 satellites. Is there a certain South African at the center of the US government who might be pushing this idea, because he's the man who'll get most of that $175 billion to supply & launch them?
Experts say the US's $175 billion 'golden dome' missile defense idea is a fantasy that is impossible to make work.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
45 Comments
It’s a grift, same as nearly anything this regime pushes into law.
the bigger issue is that it could be feasible but it most certainly is not going to cost $175 billion. i would at the minimum quadruple the cost. were talking about covering the entire (at least continental) united states in a shield from missile attacks. just to include covering hawaii and alaska in that would probly double the cost again, and theyre probly the two most likely states to be attacked in any war anyways.
Even if the technology advances to the point that the system is viably functional, China has already indicated this would kick off an arms race. In very short order China will have the world’s largest economy and meanwhile the US will be saddled with massive debt. In the long run they’ll win an arms race. The only use I see for this system is if we intend to perform a first strike on China which sounds crazy even as I typed that.
This is just theatre, like Reagan’s star wars plan.
Thought they wanted to save taxpayer money, not pick their pockets even further to fund some boondoggle project designed only to line the pockets of their defense industry buddies?
My guess is that it’s another boondoggle like the “Star Wars” program was for Reagan.
“impossible to make work”
It will work perfectly at its intended purpose – funneling endless amounts of tax payer money to private contractors.
We already know. Everyone knows.
It’s a grift for Elon Musk and SpaceX. It’s blatant, open air corruption.
Musk is thee ultimate overpromises and underdelivers champion.
Oh, I’m sure they can get something working for $1 trillion. The contractors will just string us along and say they’re almost there, we need just another couple hundred billion. Sigh.
its what Trump wants to give defense contractors to make up for all the loses of international weapons sales because of his unstable foreign policy doctorine.
I think Trump is excited by this because he confused Golden Dome with Golden Shower.
Which it is, just like every other idea in the orange cheeto’s head.
Better to throw away $175 billion on pure fantasy than spending it to help actual people in need in the country.
Thing is, we have already lost and it didn’t take missiles to do it.
Just what the world wants and needs, a bunch of armed space craft all pointed at earth. These people are 3rd grade level stupid.
I’m off the opinion that it could easily be made to work. The real issue is hypersonic missiles there are designed to work against these systems. So no real point in making one
A Republican defense boondoggle? Where have I seen this before? [Oh right…](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative)
Basically they want a vehicle that deorbits from low earth orbit, maintain communication with satellites, know its exact bearing which is an ICBM going over in a couple of machs speed, actively steer itself towards it, while not melting in the superheated plasma. Good fucking luck.
For much more money they could probably replicate the iron dome over similar areas, like important logistic areas, high density populations, manufacturing hubs, etc.
Would still cost hundreds of billions more than $175B, but at least it would be somewhat believable.
For reference the iron dome over Israel was ~$6B, and covers an area ~400x smaller than the USA. Closer to ~$10B in today’s money.
Portions of the wall fell. I don’t think the dome is going to receive any better attention.
As a retired air defense artillery officer, I can explain the economics of missile defense. It will always cost more to make something that can destroy a missile than it does to make the missile. Think about how much more technologically advanced a Patriot missile has to be than a SCUD. It has to be able to target and hit that SCUD while both are moving thousands of miles an hour. The SCUD, on the other hand, just has to fly. This is why you can never defend everything. You have to make a priority list of things you want defended and focus your limited air defense assets accordingly. The enemy can always launch too many missiles, drones, artillery, bombs, etc for you to defend all of them at the same time.
“Golden Dome” is a reference to Tr*mp’s impenetrable head.
I’d curious if there’s a more detailed article about this. What orbits are they assuming and how many satellites are they assuming per orbit?
We’ll spend $100 billion over the next couple of years to Republican contractors… Dems will win the next election and cancel the stupidity and we’ll have nothing to show for it.
I think the kernel of truth here is that military planners probably DID want to improve missile defense in a broad sense given the heightened potential for conflict with China in the coming years.
China has a signifnicantly smaller nuclear arsenal than the United States, so this could be a way to hedge for the future to tilt the scale a bit. Basically, to add some additional pressure and uncertainty for Chinese leader’s nuclear response policy. I.E. If there was a 5% chance that they might use nukes in a way then maybe with improved missile defense it goes down to 3 or 4% chance.
Unfortunately the Trump admin lacks both competence and subtlety so upon hearing a brief of course they’d go all in because Trump likes big huge projects that he can slap his name onto. So it goes from “hey lets budget some $$$ for this so that we can begin to prepare for the possible new capabilities of more advanced missiles from potential adversaries in 10-20 years time” to “WE NEED AN IMPENETRABLE GOLDEN DOME.”
The funny thing is that USAID really was a golden dome that worked. Spend money on lifting people up and they’re a lot less likely to lash out violently at you. You don’t have to worry about missiles that aren’t shot at you.
Resistance had something similar, but even in that game’s fictional setting, it didn’t work.
Any sober, sane person knows it’s bullshit. What’s outrageous is so many sane sober people don’t care as long as they’re told that the people they hate will be unhappy.
How about we concentrate on landing planes without collisions and radar systems that are modernized and don’t blip out in the night.
How are you assuming most will go to launching?
How about instead we give the contract to NASA with 0 SpaceX contribution?
Space X could launch 36,000 satellites:
**$16.8 billion for launches + $18 billion for satellites = $34 billion**
Space X cost per launch = $28 million (600 launches with 60 satellites per launch)
Space X Satellites cost $500,000 each, and less with mass production over time.
NASA could launch 36,000 satellites:
**$60-90 billion for launches + $36 billion for satellites = $100 billion-$126 billion (+bloat + setbacks and delays)**
NASA launch using non-Space X Rockets ranges from:
ULA’s Vulcan Centaur (~$100–$150 million per launch) x 600 launches = $60-90 billion
Boeing’s SLS (~$1 billion per launch) x 600 launches = $600 billion
NASA launching WITH Space X Falcon 9 = $67 million x 600 launches = $40.2 billion
NASA satellites at $1-10 million each (NASA’s smallsat programs (e.g., CubeSats) can cost $1–$10 million per unit) – So lets assume low end $1 million x 36,000 = $36 billion
Elon will be happy to take all of that money launching stuff in to space though.
The regime wants a capability to hit targets “left of launch”
I.e. a preemptive strike on another countries ICBM silos.
Let that sink in.
False sense of security so Trump can keep rattling our Sabre.
It’s the “gold” part that Trump supports, as long as it’s as gold as his toilet and daughter.
It’s a cash grab, plain and simple. There will be contracts awarded and money given. Then when they are about half way through, it will be declared that it can’t be done. Then POOF! All of a sudden it stops and nobody can find where the money went.
Lol. It’s almost like they watched the movie Remo Williams and said, “I think those guys had a good thing going with that HARP idea”.
The entire point was to justify expanded military spending and enrich contractors who will produce nothing while we foot the bill. It’s depressing that’s it’s just gonna happen even though we know full well and there isn’t anything we can do.
This was done before as a successful grift. The “Star Wars” missle defense system never existed and couldn’t work but billions were poured into the project.
That vehicular modulator will never be better than mah horse buggy.
You just hate the idea because it is happening under Trump. Which, of course, makes sense because he is an idiot.
It’s just a way to pass tax payer money into the pockets of private corporations.
I can’t even count the number of times I was surprised that an obsession of his was actually just something Ronald Reagon mentioned decades ago in a completely different America
Putin probably told Trump that Russia was working on something like this, and now Trump wants to build something bigger.
Anyone who thinks our military spending is ANYTHING but near pure grift is kidding themselves. The cost-benefit ratio of our military spending would have bankrupted any company immediately (no one would ‘invest’ in this for it’s own sake). The entirety of the endeavor is about supporting what industry we still do have – weapons. It’s bipartisan, but watch how certain senators change their tune on ‘big government’ when it means spending on near worthless military programs.
I understand why we want a shield, but I am also almost 50. My whole life has been spent under threat of nuclear annihilation. We all know that the first estimate provided for any government program is laughable. We also pissed away untold sums on the star wars program for absolutely nothing. It will always be cheaper to build more offensive missiles with a mixture of warheads and decoy warheads than for a system with the ability to shoot all of them down. The answer is to just shoot more missiles than a system can handle. Sadly MAD mutually assured destruction is the only thing that works.
“Golden” so its soft, malleable, and very expensive. Got it.
But have experts considered the financial gain of the companies making it?