Israel’s aerial defense system Iron Dome destroys rockets fired from Southern Lebanon in Haifa, Israel on September 23, 2024. (Saeed Qaq/Anadolu via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – A new executive order from President Donald Trump calls for greater investments for a multilayered homeland air defense system, including a requirement for the development of space-based interceptors.
On the campaign trail in June, then-candidate Trump stated his desire to “build a great Iron Dome over our country, a dome like has never seen before, a state-of-the-art missile defense shield that will be entirely built in America.”
“We’re going to build the greatest dome of them all,” he said at the time.
On Monday night, Trump signed an executive order to that effect titled “The Iron Dome for America”. The order gives Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth 60 days to develop a plan to defend the homeland against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.”
“Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities,” the EO reads.
Among the mandates in the executive order:
- Acceleration of the deployment of the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor layer
- Development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept;
- Deployment of underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities postured to defeat a countervalue attack;
- Development and deployment of a custody layer of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture;
- Development and deployment of capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch and in the boost phase;
- Development and deployment of a secure supply chain for all components with next-generation security and resilience features; and
- Development and deployment of non-kinetic capabilities to augment the kinetic defeat of ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks;
Once plans for homeland defense have been sorted, the Pentagon is then to look at theater defenses. That includes to defend forward-deployed US force but also to “increase and accelerate the provision of United States missile defense capabilities to allies and partners.”
The fiscal 2026 budget request should take into account this EO, per the language, although the order itself does not contain any budgetary estimates.
In an interview with Breaking Defense last week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., expressed a belief that money that is obligated for defense during the reconciliation process could be used for such an Iron Dome for America construct.
“Israel is a small state about the size of New Jersey, so Iron Dome for Israel is much different from Iron Dome for America,” Wicker said. “But a missile defense shield with a large satellite, a space-based component, that’s going to be expensive, but it’s a must, and it happens that the president feels some urgency in getting that done.”
Is It Really ‘Iron Dome?’
The actual Iron Dome currently in existence is an Israeli air defense system designed by Rafael, primarily to counter short-range rockets, small drones and artillery shells. The system is the lowest-tier of a broader, layered air defense network which also includes the middle-tier David’s Sling and higher-level Arrow defense capabilities. Rafael is also working on a directed energy version of Iron Dome known as Iron Beam, which executives have said may be active in 2025.
But Iron Dome has become synonymous with Israel’s defense in a way the other systems have not, and as a result has become almost a shorthand for “national air defense systems.”
While many Israeli air defense capabilities have been built with American development dollars, those systems have not flowed back to the US in any meaningful way. And based on the Trump’s previous pledge, these systems are going to be American-made.
In a note to investors, TD Cowen analyst Roman Schweizer said the EO will likely “require tens of [billions of dollars] to develop and field, and we see it as a massive expansion of existing programs of record as well as the development and fielding of nascent systems … We see this as very positive for a number of existing programs.”
So while the EO may be short on details, there are some options to look at.
The Pentagon already has air defense missions and plans in the works, including the National Capital Region Integrated Air Defense System designed to shield the Washington, DC area from incoming aerial threats, and includes systems like the Norwegian National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS). The Army is also leading the charge to set up a new air defense construct on Guam slated to include the service’s answer to Iron Dome dubbed the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 system, as well as a C2 system called the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radar and more.
The Army has directed energy capabilities under development like the IFPC High-Energy Laser and IFPC High-Powered Microwave. The Marine Corps is also working on mobile system called the Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS), which uses a truck-mounted Iron Dome launcher with Tamir interceptors, and teams them up with a Common Aviation Command-and-Control System (CAC2S) and a mini battle management control (BMC) system, along with the AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR).
Other possible components could include an over-the-horizon-radar (OTHR), designed to help spot low-flying, modern cruise missiles that can hug the curvature of the earth to evade detection. The US is planning a joint Canadian procurement to field new OTHR with an eye toward the Arctic as an anticipated vector of attack for adversaries like Russia.
After originally planning to begin buying the radars in fiscal year 2024, the Air Force deferred the OTHR procurement out to FY26 to focus on “risk reduction” activities in the meantime, the service told Breaking Defense in July. A public timeline released by Ottawa calls for an Arctic OTHR system to be operational by 2028 as part of a twenty-year and $38.6 billion CAD modernization project for NORAD.
“Canada and the US are committed to ensuring interoperability in its OTHR initiatives — and we are in active and constant dialogue to ensure alignment in our plans,” the Canadian Defence Ministry told Breaking Defense in July. “Canada will continue to work closely with the United States to bolster NORAD’s ability to detect threats earlier and more precisely and to respond effectively.”
Valarie Insinna, Michael Marrow and Aaron Mehta contributed to this report.
