President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to start building a "great Iron Dome" air defense network for the U.S. without specifying how he will craft an Israeli-style missile defense shield.
"I will direct our military to begin construction of the great Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be made all in the USA, much of it right here in Arizona," the Republican said during a rally in Phoenix on Sunday.
Trump, who is less than a month away from his inauguration, has repeatedly said he will build a domestically made Iron Dome around the "entire country," with the pledge appearing in the Republican Party's preelection commitments and its leader's "core promises."
The Iron Dome is an Israeli air defense system that intercepts incoming short-range rockets and shells as part of the country's layers of advanced air defenses. It has a range of about 43 miles. Newsweek contacted the Trump transition team for comment via email.
Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries developed the Iron Dome, although the U.S. had a hand in creating and supporting the system.
The U.S.'s geography has made experts question whether an Iron Dome would be a viable air defense system when the likely main threat would be intercontinental ballistic missiles, which primarily carry nuclear weapons. Israel, which is surrounded by hostile states, uses other systems—such as David's Sling system and the Arrow 3 system—to intercept longer-range missiles.
In mid-October, the U.S. sent Israel one of its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense batteries, which are designed to boost Israel's air defenses against a range of ballistic missiles, after Iran launched a large-scale missile attack on the country a few weeks earlier.
Representative Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida whom Trump tapped as his pick for national security adviser, said earlier this month that "we need an Iron Dome for America."
Trump told the crowd in Arizona on Sunday: "Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many, many years ago, but they didn't really have the technology … But they have it now, you can knock a needle out of the sky."
Reagan, the Republican president who stewarded Washington through the 1980s while the Cold War drew to an end, pushed for what he termed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), popularly dubbed "Star Wars."
Reagan intended for the SDI, partly based in space, to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by the then-Soviet Union at different points in the missile's flight.
While the Soviet Union has since crumbled, relations between the U.S. and Russia dipped to their worst point since the end of the Cold War after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022. Trump has repeatedly vowed to end the conflict within 24 hours.
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