When President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders on January 27 and titled one of them “The Iron Dome for America,” it was recognized as a nod to the power of Israel’s homegrown, highly successful rocket defense system, one that also reflected Trump’s penchant for symbols of military might.
The directive was for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to start developing ways to guard against “the threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks.” All of those are conceivable threats that could approach through the air from enemies that may be thousands of miles away on other continents. The order that Trump signed called that array of dangers “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”
While the source of the threats is not mentioned, Amos Yadlin, former head of Israel’s massive military intelligence agency Aman, says, “America faces dangers from China, Russia, North Korea, and perhaps others.”
The executive order mentions an unrealized goal set by President Ronald Reagan: an array of space-based radar and lasers to protect America from missiles–an idea derided in the 1980s as a “Star Wars” fantasy. Yadlin says that while the Reagan plan was excessively expensive and ambitious for its time, “Israel has a battle-tested, multilayered system that could be expanded for America’s needs.”
Trump’s order made no mention of Israel, but there is a real chance that Israel would play a major role in any such project. Yadlin, one of the Israeli air force pilots who destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, is president of MIND Israel, a non-profit consultancy, and was his country’s military attaché in Washington. He points out that “Israel and the U.S. have been talking and cooperating about missile defense since the first Gulf War in 1991, when [Iraq’s] Saddam Hussein was hitting Israel with Scud missiles and the Americans put their Patriot air defense batteries in Israel.”
The original Iron Dome was designed—as described in Moment’s 2018 cover story, “Inside the Iron Dome”—to detect, track and shoot down short-range rockets, mortar shells and drones launched by enemies close to Israel. Skeptics had repeatedly said that those threats tend to fly so erratically and briefly that they could not be located and followed with a high degree of reliability.
[Read: “Inside the Iron Dome”]
Yet the Iron Dome development team defied the doubters and the odds by creating a system that has worked very well since its introduction in March 2011. Israeli military analysts estimate that Iron Dome has saved tens of thousands of lives, explaining that if Israeli neighborhoods had been subject to missile attack without the benefit of an innovative protective shield, the damage to civilians, structures and the military might have been unbearable for Israeli society.
Instead, attackers such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were unable to inflict severe destruction by firing cheap rockets and shells. Like all systems, Iron Dome is not perfect, but it is credited with intercepting more than 90 percent—even, recently, over 95 percent—–of projectiles that were on a course to hit populated locations in Israel. The Iron Dome developers note that their radar and algorithms are clever enough not to fire an interceptor missile at an object that is going to fall on empty ground or into the sea. Omitting these adds up to significant savings, given that each interceptor costs more than $50,000.
Of course, Iron Dome blocks attacks from just over Israel’s borders. Surely the United States does not expect similar attacks from its neighbors, no matter how much bitterness might be stirred up by Trump’s statements about Canada and Mexico, not to mention the stiff tariffs he’s now imposing on them.
Iron Dome, however, is only one part of a multilayered missile defense system. A newer component that may be more relevant to Trump’s ambitions are missiles aided by eye-in-the-sky satellites. Called Arrow 2, Arrow 3 and David’s Sling, they are co-creations with the United States. Israel has already had occasion to use them to shoot down missiles from far-off Yemen, Iran, and Iranian allies in Iraq.
While Iron Dome had significant seed money from the Obama administration, these higher-level systems—designed to foil attacks from much farther away—were created, from soup to nuts, as cooperative projects that brought together Israeli and American defense companies with the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and its Israeli counterpart.
Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing started working on Arrow in 1986 as a solution for ballistic missiles—those fired on a curved trajectory, the apex of which is so high it can leave Earth’s atmosphere before falling on its target. Arrow 2 can locate and destroy medium-range missiles, calculating their routes and blowing them up on their way down.
Arrow 3 goes even higher, designed to counter long-range missiles that could have unconventional warheads—such as a biological or nuclear threat from Iran—and striking the incoming object with precision on the edge of outer space. Arrow 3 has no explosives in its tip, depending instead on a destructive collision, so as not to spread any lethal substances in unpredictable directions.
The United States and Israel filled in the gap between the short-range Iron Dome and the longer-range Arrows by hiring America’s Raytheon and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the original Iron Dome creator. Development of the interceptor, called David’s Sling, started in 2006, and it was operational in 2017. It has also been battle-tested: David’s Sling was launched when large rockets were heading toward Israel, including cruise missiles on a fairly straight, low-altitude course, and ballistic missiles way up high.
Israeli experts say David’s Sling could surely destroy incoming manned aircraft too. Both Iran, about 1,100 miles east of Israel, and Yemen, around 1,300 miles south of Israel, fit in the definition of medium-range. The United States could benefit from the ability of David’s Sling and Arrow 3 to track and destroy longer-range threats such as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
So why is Trump calling his goal “Iron Dome,” when the vision is for so much more? Clearly the president, who considers himself a great marketer of real estate and various products, is simply purloining a terrific, globally recognized brand name. If the United States could have an Iron Dome that protects against a variety of aerial threats—not only locally launched rockets—then the name itself would instill confidence in its effectiveness.
Space Force, a branch of the military activated by Trump during his first term as president, is another brand name with powerful resonance (if only because movie and TV show titles are memorable). Space Force coordinates the hundreds of military satellites that the United States has in orbit for reconnaissance and communications. In recent years, at least 118 of these satellites have been provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation for a government-owned network called Starshield that, according to Musk, is capable of maintaining official communications even if a catastrophic attack on the United States were to cripple the internet and traditional radio channels. His satellites and many others are also able to detect and track missile launches from any nation around the globe.
Lest anyone think that achieving such goals is far above the capabilities and interests of Israel, the tiny nation of fewer than 10 million citizens is known for punching above its weight in all things technological and military. Israel has had its own communications and surveillance satellites in orbit since 1988. It now has 27 in space, according to the consulting firm Pixalytics.
Incidentally, on February 25, the Pentagon announced that it was changing the name of the program to “Golden Dome for America.” An executive in the defense industry, asking not to be named, speculated veering from iron to gold wasn’t a snub on Israel but simply Trump’s preference for everything gilded. He and others said that bids for profitable parts of the program are expected now from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Musk’s own SpaceX.
Iron Dome proved that Israel could develop a system with the potential for protecting American troops worldwide and America itself—although multi-layered aerial defense would require a lot more. “Working together should be seen as completely legitimate, for the purpose of countries defending themselves,” Yadlin adds. “There is no reason for it to be controversial.”
Chanoch Levin, an engineer and weapons designer who worked at Rafael in Haifa for decades and was the head of the team that developed Iron Dome, agrees. Now head of a medical device company, Levin absolutely favors defense cooperation with the United States. “If I could get permission from the Israeli government to take part,” says Levin, “I would gladly head over to America and help them.”
Dan Raviv’s books on Israeli intelligence include Spies Against Armageddon and Every Spy a Prince. He is co-host of the podcast, “The Mossad Files.” Raviv is a Moment contributor.