Donald Trump has called for an “iron dome” for America and for those who wonder what President Trump means, for those of us who remember the original Reagan vision of defending America, it is the Strategic Defense Initiative.
In 1983, when Ronald Reagan proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, his opponents called it star wars with disdain. One United States Senator spoke at the National Press club in 1986, “Star Wars represents a fundamental assault on the concepts, alliances and arms-control agreements that have buttressed American security for several decades, and the president’s continued adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.” When Iranian attacked Israel with missile, this Senator found himself working with Israel to knock down those missiles. Yes, Joe Biden should be thankful to Ronald Reagan for his foresight.
In 1988, I ran a congressional campaign in Missouri 5th district and my candidate, Mary Ellen Lobb, reviewed data on SDI and as we talked about the concept and how to use it in the election she insisted that we must include regional powers about Iran. Ms. Lobb was prophetic about the importance of SDI, and it use against Iran. This was 1988.
Israel realized the importance of missile defense and within two years of Reagan announcement, Israel began working with the United States and this past weekend, the world watched in real time how SDI worked in protecting Israel population. While United States didn’t develop a space-based system, the technology has put together an arsenal of ground, air, and sea based interceptors and Israel developed an iron dome to protect the population from short range missile along with David’s sling protection includes medium range missiles and the Arrow 2 and 3 hit missiles at high attitudes.
Now that we have a spaced based force, it should be obvious that a space-based system will protect American population from missiles but maybe also protects our satellites as well. It is time to review the Reagan years for on many issues, Reagan was ahead of the game and SDI was one area. He understood that keeping a world on the edge of mutual destruction was not the long-term strategy, but SDI allowed something different, a defense against missiles.
Israel has showed the ability to protect their population and shown how SDI does have a role in future of the warfare when defending the homeland.
Over past two decades, North Korea and Iran are expanding their missile capability and moving forward with their nuclear program. North Korea goal is to modernize their missile capability to be able to reach North America and Iran is working on the ability to strike at Europe and much of the Middle East. Russian invasion of Ukraine and its abandonment of nuclear arms control has shown that Putin is not interested any kind mutual relationship with the West and their present stockpiles is larger than the United States and China is aggressively expanding it own size of nuclear arsenal and will achieve numerical parity with the United States over the next decade.
Russia and China seek to destabilize their world order, and their neighbors are under threat of invasion, engage in both nuclear expansions including coercion so it is time to review Donald Trump Iron dome including hypersonic missiles. The Trump Iron Dome must evolve into a suitable missile defense that reaches for the next 30 to 40 years to include not just threats from North Korea and Iran but also China and Russia.
The present war in the Ukraine war and Israel battle with Hamas has shown the efficacy and potential of missile defense and how incorporating layer defenses to not just stay ahead of Iran and North Korea as well as well stopping any low escalation pathway to Russia and China. The Trump Iron Dome is continuation of Reagan original vision of SDI, a defense of the American people
The Donelson Files 