Posted on 05/13/2026 6:19:31 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
“Golden Dome” could cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion over 20 years, according to a government report issued on Tuesday.
...Even if the system is built, the report concluded, an adversary like Russia or China that has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons could overwhelm it and some missiles would hit their targets.
The budget office report found that the “space-based interceptors” the president envisions — satellites armed with missiles orbiting the planet — would consume about 60 percent of the cost.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Before such a system could be completed, it would be obsolete.
A salt shaker full of plutonium sprinkled around the largest US cities would criple the US. Anything with serious ionizing radiation will do massive damage.
Well, if we stop the Iranian pork chops from getting nukes, we wouldn’t need it.
I remember when Reagan proposed the SDI “Star Wars” idea.
The media said it was ludicrous. It would never work. To send up one of our missiles to hit one of their missiles was silly. Like shooting a bullet and hoping to hit the other guy’s bullet.
Then we did it. A missile went up and hit the target missile and knocked it out.
The media said, “Lucky shot. You couldn’t do it twice.”
We did it again.
The media said, “It’s expensive.”
Then the Soviet Union when bankrupt, fell apart, the Cold War ended and Eastern Europe was freed from communism.
The media said, “Bill Clinton never slept with Monica Lewinsky.”
Defense is one of the few legitimate federal responsibilities. Along with border control and immigration. Everything else is crap that local and state governments should take care of.
Well done article China couldn’t pay for a better media.
That 1.2 trillion over 20 years is chump change compared to what we spend on illegal aliens, birthright anchor rug rats and their families, and our normal professional Food Stamp Snappers native to our blue voter neighborhoods.
Reagan was right and if the democrats were in charge it would not have been funded.
Armageddon. Would we be safe if Europe and the middle east turned into glass? The fallout would reach us unless the world stopped turning.
Check
It will cost $120T over 2000 years. That’s a lot of moola, no matter how you slice it. Between dog rape and articles like this, NYT is moving to the left of Mother Jones.
A tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz is a single, comparatively compact target.
An aircraft carrier near Taiwan is a single, comparatively compact target.
If we can’t defend those, then trying to defend hundreds of widely dispersed cities is probably not realistic.
The Russians seem unable to detect the drones hitting their oil refineries.
Can we reliably detect stealth warheads?
If an F-35 can sneak through, a warhead can.
So you are saying do nothing and save the money for something else? Like what?
Can we even stop the missiles that might be fired from a Russian nuclear sub?
It could cost less too.
If China, Russia and Democrats are instigating an arms race by providing weapons and nuke tech to Iran, when does the US start running? Arming Taiwan, Japan, Phillipines, Poland and others should be underway.
Yep. Moreover, the Soviets KNEW it would work.
Immediately the Russkie dictators (who died faster than Reagan could meet with them) wanted “talks.”
Golden Dome will be extremely useful.
It wouldn’t take much to cripple us, 9/11 demonstrated that, if there had been 2, or 3, or 4 on the same day in our top cities, it would have been catastrophic, the same with a half dozen or 20 nukes but......
When it comes to the enemy powers that can destroy us like Russia and China then uncertainty of the effect of their first launch or response makes it much more difficult to make war plans, whether the uncertainty is because their maintenance is weak leading to malfunctions or because of our missile defenses (or both), and they don’t know which missiles will work and what targets will be hit and which targets will remain untouched, it sure makes it less appealing to try and make a war plan that you have confidence in.
The major powers would want to fight with a plan and some expectations of results and the aftermath, the more wet blankets thrown over different elements of their capabilities and threats the more it makes it impossible to for them to find the resolve and confidence to move against us.
When it came to SDI I had my first positive layman’s reaction, and then the argements started about would it work or not, arguments that I could not have a deep understanding of just like almost no one else could since we aren’t scientists and couldn’t even deeply understand their positions, so...... I figured out my simple man solution to understanding it, I decided that the Russian scientists and government understands the entire scenario, and boy, their position was clear as day, they were absolutely frantic and reactionary to it.
That told me what I needed to know.
Yes, and planning to spend trillions doesn’t mean we actually spend it - an arms race is won by winning economically, and convincing the enemy to give up.
China will not give up its arms race until it is convinced that it cannot compete with the US economically - that is what President Trump is now doing..
China is already facing some difficult choices in that regard - by expressing willingness to spend trillions, President Trump is demonstrating to Xi that he needs to forget about his dreams of China being the world’s military superpower and focus on saving China’s economic viability.
Xi has one chess move left: Taiwan. Taiwan is the world’s chip maker and is geographically in China’s domain.. and it has long been thought China could potentially hold the world hostage technologically if it were to take Taiwan.
But AI advances in chip making may soon threaten Taiwan’s monopoly - so it may already be too late for Xi to make that play…
I think part the rationalization for moving first on Venezuela and now Iran - is to force China’s hand now while it is weak - rather than let it gain strength and take Taiwan later when a weaker man is POTUS.
it will be interesting to see what happens - but I feel comforted knowing President Trump is on the case.
Reagan was right and if the democrats were in charge it would not have been funded.
Uhm. Reagan had a democrat house his entire 8 years and senate for some of it.
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