Nuclear weapons expert criticizes Trump “Golden Dome” plan

By Emilio Perez Ibarguen

This is the 3nd in a series of articles by Knight Center students who attended the recent annual conference of the National Association of Science Writers.

President Donald Trump has announced plans to create a network of satellites to defend the U.S. from a potential missile attack — a project he coined the “Golden Dome.”

While his administration has lauded the project as vital for protecting the nation from its enemies, particularly those armed with nuclear weapons, critics say it would be wildly expensive while not guaranteeing a comprehensive defense.

Lisbeth Gronlund, who researches nuclear weapons and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holds the latter opinion.

“The Golden Dome is not so golden,” Gronlund said during a lecture on nuclear weapons at the recent National Association of Science Writers annual conference in Chicago.

The White House’s pitch: A constellation of satellites capable of detecting and shooting down missiles that would be operational by the end of Trump’s second term and cost $175 billion.

But that price tag is inaccurate, Gronlund said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in May that a design built to defend against one or two missiles could cost anywhere from $831 to $161 billion, depending on the price of launching all those satellites into space.

The conservative American Enterprise Institute in September said that providing a “moderate level of protection” against aerial threats could cost up to $1 trillion.

Constructing the all-encompassing, impermeable defense the president wants, the institute stated in a research paper, could cost as much as $3.6 trillion.

That’s a price, Gronlund said, “which I don’t think Congress is going to vote for.”

Furthermore, Gronlund expressed doubt at the timeline the White House is presenting.

“It’s not going to be deployed in three years,” Gronlund told an audience of science journalists, writers and communicators. “In fact, nothing will be deployed in three years. It takes a while for things to happen.”

The kind of missiles that the Golden Dome would be tasked with stopping has three stages of flight.

First is the boost phase, during which powerful rockets lift the payload into the air, lasting less than five minutes.

Afterward, the missile enters its midcourse phase, where it coasts across the planet at speeds up to 6 miles per second, which can take 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the target.

The missile’s path ends in the terminal phase, the final 30 seconds when the projectile falls back toward the earth.

The federal government is asking potential contractors to develop interceptors that could intercept missiles shortly after takeoff or during midcourse, Reuters reported recently.

The U.S.’s current missile defense system relies on 44 ground-based interceptors based in Alaska and California, designed to destroy incoming projectiles during their midcourse phase.

That system has been tested 12 times since its deployment in 2004.

Only half of those tests resulted in the system successfully destroying a missile, Gronlund said.

That’s already a worrying result when considering the life-or-death consequences a system failure could mean, Gronlund said, but it’s even more worrying considering the lax standards of those tests.

Gronlund noted that the interceptors are tested on missiles traveling 3 miles per second — a comparatively easier target to hit than the 4 to 6 miles per second most missiles travel at.

“So, 50-50 is not all that great, but it’s even worse if you think about the conditions in which we got only 50-50,” Gronlund said.

In March, the Federation of American Scientists — an anti-nuclear weapons group — estimated that there are approximately 12,241 nuclear warheads in the world, with 3,912 actively deployed.

With so much on the line, Gronlund said, one of the most important things people should do at the ballot box is consider the consequences of these weapons.

“We need to be sure that we elect people…who are knowledgeable and understand the consequences of using these weapons,” Gronlund said.