US President Donald Trump chose a design for his Golden Dome missile defense system and appointed a leader of the ambitious defense program of $ 175 billion. Here are details of the Golden Dome where the idea comes from and how it will work.

How does it work?

The goal is for the Golden Dome to utilize a network of hundreds of satellites circling around the globe with sophisticated sensors and interceptors to knock out -of -time enemy missiles after lifting countries such as China, Iran, North Korea or Russia.

“I promised the American people that I would build a groundbreaking missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attacks,” Trump said as he released the message on Tuesday.

In April, Pentagon asked defense contractors how they would design and build a network to beat intercontinental ballistic missiles during the “boost phase” just after the lift -OF -the slow and predictable increase of a hostile missile through the Earth’s atmosphere. Existing defense is targeted at hostile missiles while traveling through space.

Once the missile has been discovered, the Golden Dome shoots either that before it enters the room with an interceptor or a laser, or further along its way to travel in space with an existing missile defense system using land -based interceptors stationed in California and Alaska.

Under the space shield layer, the system will have another defencive layer based on or around the United States. This is something that the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency looked at during the first Trump administration.

Is the Golden Dome as Israel’s Iron Cup?

“We helped Israel with their and [it] was very successful, and now we have technology that is even far advanced from it, ”Trump said, referring to Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

The short -covered iron dome air defense system was built to intercept the kinds of rockets fired by Hamas in Gaza.

Developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with us support it was operational in 2011. Each truck-drawn unit fires radar-controlled missiles to blow up threats on short range such as rockets, mortars and drones in the air.

The system determines whether a rocket is on its way to hitting a populated area; If not, the rocket is ignored and allowed to land harmlessly.

Iron Dome was originally invoiced as providing city size coverage against rockets at intervals of between 4 and 70 km (2.5 to 43 miles), but experts say this has since been expanded.

How does the then President Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars initiative look like?

“We really want to quit the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago to end the missile threat against the US homeland,” Trump said Tuesday.

The idea of ​​beating rocket throwers or lasers to satellites so they can shoot the enemy’s intercontinental ballistic missiles is not new. It was part of the Star Wars initiative that was devised under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. But it represents a huge and expensive technological leap from the current capabilities.

Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative,” as it was called, was announced in 1983 as pioneering research into a national defense system that could make nuclear weapons outdated.

The heart of the SDI program was a plan to develop a space-based missile defense program that could protect the United States from a large-scale nuclear attack.

The proposal involved many layers of technology that would allow the United States to automatically identify and destroy a large number of incoming ballistic missiles as they were launched as they flew and as they approached their goals.

SDI failed because it was too expensive, too ambitious from a technology perspective, could not be easily tested and seemed to violate an existing anti-ballistic missile treaty.

Who builds the Golden Dome?

Trump Alley Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company SpaceX has emerged as a front runner with the software company Palantir and Drone -Maker Anduril to build key components in the system.

Many of the early systems are expected to come from existing production lines. Participants at the White House press conference with Trump named L3harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin and RTX Corp as potential contractors for the massive project.

L3 has invested $ 150 million in building its new facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where it makes the hypersonic and ballistic tracking room sensor satellites that are part of a Pentagon effort to better detect and trace hypersonic weapons with space-based sensors and could be adapted to the Golden Dome.

But Golden Domes funding is still uncertain. Republican lawmakers have proposed an initial investment of $ 25 billion for it as part of a wider $ 150 billion defense package, but this funding is linked to a contentious reconciliation bill that faces significant obstacles in congress.