US ending MAD doctrine to build an Iron Dome air defense system – Asia Times
President Donald Trump will matter a number of senior orders for US security, including the development of an Iron Dome system “like the one used by Israel to divert approaching missiles,” according to recently approved Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The old Mutually Assured Destroy ( MAD ) doctrine will no longer be effective in preventing a first strike, and the US could be the target of a devastating and fatal nuclear ballistic missile attack as hypersonic threats start to grow.
The US does not have an all-encompassing air defense system for the continental United States. Additionally, it lacks a system in place to stop the development of hypersonic nuclear missiles and delivery systems, including hypersonic glide cars.
On the East Coast, nowhere near the US border, nowhere near the US’s facility, or anywhere along the Caribbean Sea, the country has almost no full-time heat protection.
What Trump calls Iron Dome and what Israel calls it is important to identify.
Iron Dome ( Kippat Barzel ) refers to the air defense system created to withstand short-range missiles launched into Israeli territory from Gaza.
Iron Dome, in Trump’s use, refers to an integrated air defense system that may defend the United States from missile attacks.
Now Israel has an incorporated air defense system that includes Iron Dome,  , Iron Beam,  , David’s Rope,  , Arrow 2 , and , Arrow 3 , plus , much collection scanners. Israel’s program includes a ability to capture projectile missiles in the exoatmosphere and, perhaps, beyond. In collaboration with the US, Israel is likewise developing a new Bow technique, called Arrow 4. ( Israel air defenses have also been , integrated with US radars. )
Major US defense companies Raytheon ( now RTX Corporation ), Boeing, and Lockheed all contribute to Israel’s air defense programs under US funding.
RTX even markets , Sky Hunter, a variation of the , Tamir interceptor , used in Iron Dome.
RTX is building a new facility in Camden, Arkansas to , produce Sky Hunter , for the US Marines. The Marine Corps requested$ 11 million for the system to help with the transition from quick prototyping to swift fielding, according to the FY-25 finances request. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, an Jewish company that makes Iron Dome, owns a portion of the new service.
The partnership between the US Missile Defense Agency ( MDA ) and the Israel Missile Defense Organization ( IMDO ) is at the top level of US-Israel air defense cooperation. The IMDO is part of the Israeli Directorate of Defense Research and Development ( DDR&, D), at Israel’s Ministry of Defense. The MDA is a research, creation, and consolidation organization that works on ballistic missile security devices for the United States and its allies.
The US is one of the least prepared allies to combat army ballistic missiles and other challenges, including robots. The lack of protection was intended, as those opposed to President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative ( SDI) claimed that creating a missile shield was neither technically feasible nor politically acceptable.
The difficulty of putting fighter systems in space was the subject of the specialized debates in the mid-1980s.
( One of the Reagan proposals was called , Brilliant Pebbles, an idea pioneered by Lowell Wood and Edward Teller at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. )
The plan discussion claimed that SDI would stifle the Wild philosophy. The term” Middle East Assured Destruction” is derived from the idea that neither the US nor its allies would use nuclear weapons because the results of their use would be the party’s own destruction.
Arms control agreements were created with the goal of preventing any breakthrough that would allow the US or the USSR ( or its successor, Russia ) a way to establish a credible first-strike capability assuring that the nuclear assets of the other side would be destroyed before they could be used for retaliation.
While some claimed Wild to be a good way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, people, including Reagan, saw MAD as a common murder agreement. A key issue was that one country, China, did not participate in hands control partnerships and continued to grow its nuclear attack skills. Another was the increase of more nuclear actors, most notably North Korea and Iran, who were both interested in joining them.
The US put in place a ground-based fighter air defense system based in Greely, Alaska, and the Vandenberg Space Force center in California. The US Earth Based Midcourse Defense System includes GBI. A renewed work is now underway to update the fighter remove vehicles and install a$ 17 billion “next-generation fighter” for GBI. That multibillion dollars system has been plagued by various issues. An “interim option” of 20 submarines is planned for 2026.
It is claimed that GBI was primarily focused on a rogue state risk ( North Korea ) and no China, despite the existence of only a select few ships, 44, associated with it.
GBI employs a hit-to-kill capture system, which means that a non-explosive eliminate vehicle’s dynamic force causes an approaching ballistic missile warhead to be destroyed by the dynamic force of a non-explosive kill vehicle. It has been a source of issues and has been confined to dealing with maneuvering nuclear warheads. It is known as an EKV for exoatmospheric kill vehicle. A plan to redesign the kill vehicle, called RKV,  , was dropped , after the plan was judged unworkable. Beyond the kill vehicle, a huge issue, radars associated with GBI also have had problems, particularly a radar known as , Sea Based X Band. X-band radars operate in the 8 to 12 GHz microwave band.
The Defense Department appears to have plans to install a GBI system on the East Coast. At least four locations are under consideration, but the most likely is , Fort Drum in New York , near Lake Ontario. Congress has mandated an East Coast system to be in place by 2030 – although, without a workable system and funding, the 2030 date is optimistic.
The US also has forward-deployed THAAD (terminal high-altitude air defense ) systems, in Korea, UAE, Israel, Romania and Guam. THAAD is mainly an area defense system, and it has been used once, successfully, intercepting a Houthi-launched ballistic missile. That THAAD unit was running out of Israel. THAAD has a range of 150 to 200 kilometers ( 93 to 124 miles ).
In addition, the US has AEGIS air defense systems on board US Arleigh Burke-class destroyers ( DDG-51 ) and Ticonderoga cruisers ( CG-47 ). AEGIS is thought to be successful in preventing ballistic missiles. There are around 56 AEGIS-equipped ships, although the US Navy is , retiring some Ticonderoga-class cruisers.
The US also has three AEGIS-Ashore ( land based ) systems, one each in Guam, Poland and Romania. AEGIS-Ashore was also planned for Japan, but the Japanese government , canceled the program, allegedly because of local opposition to interceptor sites near them. Japanese , Kong ō class , ships do have the AEGIS system, but there are only four ships. Two new Kongo-class ships , are planned , over the next few years. Additionally, Japan and the US are developing an interceptor designed to deflect threats from hypersonic aircraft.
AEGIS has been used to thwart Houthi missiles in the Red Sea. A key problem has been intercepting Houthi-fired anti-ship ballistic missiles. AEGIS has assisted in helping track threats and destroy Houthi missiles, and AEGIS has been hurriedly upgraded to account for the anti-ship missile threat. As of January, US ships have fired 120 , SM-2 missiles, 80 , SM-6 missiles, 160 rounds from destroyers and cruisers ‘ , five-inch main guns as well as a combined 20 , Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles , ( ESSM) and , SM-3 missiles. SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 are AEGIS missiles. In one instance, the USS Gravely had to rely on its Phalanx CIWS rapid fire short range gun to detonate a Houthi missile that the AEGIS system’s radar had detected.
AEGIS is crucial for US missile defense in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf as well as in the Pacific and Atlantic.
New types of threats
The current jumble of US ballistic missile defenses is not necessarily a suitable model to fulfill President Trump’s desire to build an Iron Dome for the country.
An American Iron Dome requires some crucial elements from the US. Among these components are highly advanced radars, hit-to-kill technology, sophisticated secure communications, space based sensors, and experience it can draw on from its deployments in the Middle East and Israeli know-how and experience dealing with enemy swarm tactics.
Russian and Chinese pursuing hypersonic platforms, including those of Russians like Avangard and Chinese threats, are likely to follow. China already has” the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal” according to the , US Defense Intelligence Agency. The use of the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile by Russia in Ukraine, which is a hybrid hypersonic glide vehicle with multiple kinetic warheads, demonstrates that conventionally armed missile defenses will also be challenged by nuclear weapons.
An Iron Dome for the United States, therefore, needs to account for both conventional and nuclear threats, for hypersonic weapons, and for serious problems of detecting and destroying the threats efficiently and effectively.
This implies that the US should look once more at Brilliant Pebbles and other space-based intercept capabilities for long range ballistic missile threats. A space-based approach is more likely to derail hypersonic glidecraft before they are launched by ballistic missiles.
The US needs to strengthen its ability to neutralize incoming threats at the theater level, whether on land or sea, for intermediate and short range threats. For this reason, it might be possible to use AEGIS and other systems to connect improved space-based sensors to improved land-based radars and create hypersonic interceptors.
Additionally, the US needs to increase its efforts on air defense integration and the use of artificial intelligence to combat increasingly sophisticated tactics, including various decoy types and maneuvering warheads. If properly developed, AI might be able to distinguish between a conventional threat and a nuclear threat.
A US Iron Dome is a daunting task, but it is necessary before a rivalry realizes it is simple to accomplish. That’s the chance of staying with MAD, which is why Hegseth and Trump are moving quickly to construct a US Iron Dome.
Stephen Bryen is a former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy and a special correspondent for Asia Times. This article, which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.
