Under a Golden Dome: with Prof. Iain Boyd

President Donald Trump and the Department of Defense recently announced the Golden Domeprogram, an attempt to develop an integrated missile defense system to meet curent threats. While the United States has long had several sophisticated air defenses in place, most experts agree that China and Russia have pulled ahead in the hypersonic missile race, which has left American systems outdated and the nation vulnerable to attack.
Nevertheless, some skeptics are questioning the cost, necessity, andfeasibility of such an undertaking.
Professor Iain Boyd knows something about those issues. Professor Boyd serves as director of the Center for National Security Initiatives and teaches aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He has taken a lead role in developing defense technology for the United States military and space program.
Professor Boyd shared his insights on Golden Dome with Mishpacha about what the program would do, why it is needed, and how achievable its goals are.

What are America’s present missile defenses and how equipped are they to deal with current threats?

America has very good capabilities against Cold War–era missile threats, which mostly focus on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Those were designed to travel thousands of miles and inflict the kind of Armageddon situations associated with nuclear attacks.

But over the last ten to 20 years, several countries have been developing hypersonic missiles, which are really the next generation in missile technology. China sent one around the world, but they can also be used for shorter-range attacks. Russia has used some hypersonic missiles against Ukraine.

Some of these threats can be addressed with existing defenses like the Patriot system and others the US has in place, but a significant gap has emerged.

Why do hypersonic missiles challenge present defense systems?

They travel very fast, but that alone is not the core challenge, since we have technology to deal with fast-moving ICBMs. A core problem is the region of the atmosphere they fly in. It’s below space, and above where airplanes fly. It’s in between, and our defensive systems are not designed to look there.