Former President Donald Trump proposed reviving an ambitious space-based missile defense program thought up during the Reagan administration.
Speaking at a rally in Laconia, New Hampshire, Trump promised to build a “state-of-the-art missile defense system” that would cover the entirety of the United States, dubbing it the United States’s own “Iron Dome.” Adding credence to his proposal, he brought up the famous “Star Wars” missile defense program touted by former President Ronald Reagan, which was scrapped due to the technology being out of reach.
“I will build an Iron Dome over our country, a state-of-the-art missile defense shield made in the USA,” Trump declared. “We do it for other countries. We help other countries, we build, we don’t do it for ourselves.”
“You know, Reagan proposed that many years ago, Star Wars,” he continued. “He proposed it many, many years ago, but at that time, there was no technology, it was just like, it looked good. But we have unbelievable technology. We should have then.”
The former president then recounted his inspection of missile defense systems as president, making sounds mimicking the noises the system would make.
“And we don’t have it here! But we help other countries in having it,” Trump said. “No, we’re going to have the greatest Iron Dome, let’s call it Iron Dome. And it’s going to be manufactured, a lot of it, right here in New Hampshire, actually, come to think of it.”
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The system Trump had in mind was known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars” after the popular movie at the time, developed in 1984 at the height of the Cold War. The system would be based in space and use lasers to shoot down Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles before they could plunge back down to Earth.
Though the technology was far too ahead of its time to even leave the design stage, Reagan’s public touting of the system convinced the Soviets that the technology was real and played a part in the country’s economically destructive military buildup that contributed to the Soviet Union’s collapse.
