Fulfilling Reagan’s vision: Trump’s new U.S. ‘Iron Dome’ will ‘prevent deaths,’ expert says

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Monday to build an American version of the Israeli “Iron Dome” missile defense system. An expert in national security—and in the Iron Dome, in particular—praised Trump’s action as the fulfillment of President Ronald Reagan’s strategic defense plan.

According to a news release provided early to The Daily Signal, Trump’s executive order “directs the implementation of a next generation missile defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next generation aerial attacks.”

The order “accelerates the development and deployment of Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Layers, proliferated space-based interceptors, a Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, capabilities to defeat salvoes prior to launch, non-kinetic missile defense capabilities, and underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities.”

The order directs a review of America’s current missile defense posture “to defend United States troops deployed abroad” and cooperation with U.S. partners and allies on missile defense technology.

The White House characterized “the threat of attack by ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles” as “a catastrophic threat,” warning that the threat has increased over the past 40 years.

“Notwithstanding this increasing threat, United States homeland missile defense policy has been limited to staying ahead of rogue nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches,” the document states.

The White House framed the move as Trump’s fulfilling a recent promise.

“I will direct our military to begin construction of the great Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be made all in the USA,” Trump pledged at a December rally in Phoenix.

Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation and author of the new book “The Battle For The Jewish State: How Israel—And America—Can Win,” praised the move. She predicted it would fulfill the ambitions of President Ronald Reagan, who announced a similar missile defense program in 1983.

“President Trump’s comprehensive missile defense plan for the United States will fulfill President Reagan’s vision for the Strategic Defense Initiative laid out some four decades ago,” Coates told The Daily Signal. She noted the program “was designed in Reagan’s words ‘to prevent deaths rather than avenge them.’”

“Like Israel’s highly effective system of the same name, President Trump’s Iron Dome will provide an impenetrable defense for the American people that will bring peace through strength,” the security expert added.

“The United States and Israel have set the gold standard for missile defense systems, which have reliably foiled enemy missile and drone attacks—most recently intercepting 200 Iranian ballistic missiles launched at Israel on Oct. 1, 2024,” Coates noted. “Given the dangerous global situation President Trump has inherited, it is only prudent to provide this type of protection for the American people as well.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]