Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Donald Trump this week ordered work on the most ambitious missile shield in US history, one designed to destroy hypersonic missiles and prevent nuclear annihilation.The US president dubbed it the “Iron Dome for America” — a nod to Israel’s renowned air defence system. But the vision for Trump’s next-generation system, including space-based lasers, is actually much closer to Ronald Reagan’s so-called Star Wars programme, launched in 1983 at the height of the cold war.Developing a kind of Star Wars 2.0 would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The technological challenges it faces are immense. Nuclear experts also warned the initiative could provoke China and Russia to take countermeasures that would nullify its effects. It is partly why the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its “Doomsday clock” one second closer to midnight this week.What is Trump’s plan for a missile shield?The US president’s executive order, signed on Monday, gives defence secretary Pete Hegseth 60 days to flesh out a plan to defend the US against ballistic, hypersonic and advanced cruise missile attack. Trump’s proposed system, outlined in the memo, is comprehensive, extraordinarily expensive and a different order of technical sophistication from Israel’s Iron Dome. That system defends only small areas from short-range, low-flying and non-nuclear missiles. Trump’s initiative seeks to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles that travel 100 times further and seven times faster. The US is also almost 450 times bigger than Israel. Instead, Trump’s order demands the deployment of “space-based interceptors” — a web of satellites, some equipped with lasers. It then calls for the development of another layer of lower-altitude interceptors if the lasers fail. In addition, it demands “capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch” — in other words, a system that destroys the archer, not just the arrow. Analysts say that a leakproof, space-based missile shield is all but impossible. “There is no magical security blanket,” said Tom Karako, a leading missile expert at the CSIS think-tank in Washington. How would it work and what might it cost?To detect, intercept and destroy ballistic nuclear missiles during their so- called boost phase, the three- to five-minute period before they enter orbit, would require laser beams effective over hundreds of kilometres. No such technology currently exists.In part that is due to “thermal blooming”, whereby the energy from a laser heats up the atmosphere surrounding it and reduces the beam’s potency. While the effect is small in the near vacuum of outer space, it is much greater once the beam hits the earth’s atmosphere.Powering the satellites that fire the lasers would also require them to have mini nuclear reactors, or perhaps an advanced system of solar panels. “That’s not impossible but . . . would require a major research and investment effort that couldn’t be completed in the short term,” said Fabian Hoffmann, a missile expert at the Oslo Nuclear Project. Then there are costs, which Trump would need to convince Congress to fund. A 2012 report by the National Academy of Science found that “even an austere and limited-capability” space-based defence system would require 650 satellites at a cost of $300bn. It also warned that it would be vulnerable to anti-satellite weapons — such as the space-based nuclear weapons that Russia has developed recently, according to US intelligence.“Space-based missile defences have repeatedly been abandoned because they are expensive, very technically challenging and readily defeated,” said Laura Grego, research director for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Would a ground-based system be more practical?Effective technologies already exist. Ukraine has successfully used western-supplied systems — such as US-made Patriots and THAADs or German-manufactured NASAMS — to destroy incoming Russian ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The problem, again, is cost. The US already has a $60bn ground-based midcourse missile defence programme. This consists of 44 interceptors, deployed in Alaska and California, which are designed to knock out rogue long-range missiles from foes such as North Korea.But as each one costs upwards of $50mn, expanding that system to cover all the US would be vastly expensive. “One cannot put active defences everywhere that would be needed to defend cities, critical infrastructure and military sites,” said Stacie Pettyjohn of the Center for a New American Security think-tank.Moreover, a 2000 technical analysis found that even a less-developed country such as North Korea could use long-understood countermeasures, such as decoys or a “cooled shroud” that covers the nuclear warhead to confound heat-seeking interceptor missiles.“Current homeland missile defence systems, despite decades of development, may not even reliably counter rogue state threats,” said Zhao Tong, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.“Achieving comprehensive defence against Russia and China’s vastly larger missile arsenals would require astronomical spending without unprecedented technological breakthroughs,” he added.How might America’s nuclear adversaries react?Even a moderately successful Star Wars 2.0 would strip Russia and China of their retaliatory capability and could prompt them to embark on an accelerated arms race in order to retain nuclear parity. “If one [nuclear power] can show it can defend itself while also having first- strike capability [for its nuclear weapons], that is destabilising,” said Manpreet Sethi, head of the nuclear programme at the Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi.“It is an offensive threat that major power rivals cannot and will not ignore,” said Eric Heginbotham, an expert on Chinese nuclear issues at MIT. “Our intent may be defensive . . . but whatever the intent, if the capabilities are real, this will be regarded as a critical offensive threat.”Adversaries could then take easily available countermeasures. Russia, for example, could load more nuclear warheads on existing ballistic missiles, or target areas with weaker defences.“Adversaries could simply redirect attacks to numerous unprotected population centres — rendering the defence of select locations strategically meaningless,” Zhao said.Analysts argued that a more sober approach would involve the US working to limit countries’ strategic nuclear arsenals — something Trump backed in a recent speech at Davos. Conventional missile threats could meanwhile be addressed by beefing up lower-altitude systems, based on the ground or US naval ships. The cost would still be huge, but such an approach would be technically feasible and potentially avoid another arms race.“The US should focus on strengthening lower-layer missile defences while striving to maintain the current balance of power in the nuclear domain,” Hoffman said.Is the project potentially lucrative for Elon Musk’s SpaceX?The space-based part of the programme would require hundreds of carrier satellites to be launched — a market currently dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Although the US government has other contractors capable of sending carrier satellites into space, Musk’s rockets have a higher payload capacity, higher payload volume and are substantially cheaper than most competitors. They are also being launched at much greater frequency, with one launch on average every three days last year.“A lot of people stand to make money,” said Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists.There would be trade-offs, however. SpaceX already has $20bn worth of government contracts and would probably have to sacrifice capacity reserved for populating its Starlink constellation — the company’s biggest revenue driver.All this assumes the space-based programme, which Grego described as a “fantasy”, will be approved by Congress and goes ahead.Cartography by Steven Bernard
