Trump’s Star Wars plan: President reveals push for massive space-based missile defense system in biggest program since Ronald Reagan helped bring Soviet Union down
Trump spoke at the Pentagon to unveil new a missile-defense strategy in a deliberate echo of Ronald Reagan’s 1983 launch of ‘Star Wars’ initiative
Trump’s Missile Defense Review, the first compiled since 2010, was released during visit to the Pentagon
Says the Pentagon must expand defense technologies in space to more quickly detect, track and destroy incoming missiles
U.S. is considering putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles when they are launched
Administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight
Existing threats from North Korea and Iran prompted changes, along with new advanced weapon systems being developed by Russia and China
New strategy declares North Korea an ‘extraordinary threat’ just seven months after the president said Pyongyang posed no danger to the U.S.
Trump also pledged to back NATO, days after a news report suggested he has often spoke about pulling America out of the alliance
DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR
DAILYMAIL.COM
17 January 2019
Declaring that space is the new warfighting domain, President Donald Trump on Thursday vowed the U.S. will develop an unrivaled missile defense system to protect against advanced hypersonic and cruise missile threats from competitors and adversaries.
Trump said in a Pentagon speech that the U.S. will do what it takes ‘to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States anywhere, any time, any place.’
The president’s speech to an appreciative military audience coincided with the release of a 108-page report emphasizes the need for a “comprehensive approach to missile defense against rogue state and regional missile threats” and calls for the development of new technologies to its system in the future.
But the Pentagon’s new strategy makes clear that its plan for a more aggressive space-based missile defense system is aimed at protecting against existing threats from North Korea and Iran and countering advanced weapon systems being developed by Russia and China.
The retooled missile defense strategy declares that ‘[w]hile a possible new avenue to peace now exists with North Korea, it continues to pose an extraordinary threat and the United States must remain vigilant.’
Trump did not mention Russia, China or North Korea in his roughly 20-minute speech. He said last June after his summit with Kim Jong-un that the hermit kingdom no longer endangered the United States.
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