Does Trump’s Golden Dome Include the USVI?

M.A. Dworkin

USVI - Warheads raining down from beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Faster-than-sound cruise missiles striking United States infrastructure. Sky-high nuclear blasts. These are just some of the nightmarish scenarios that experts warn could come true if the dated and limited defence systems of the U.S. were ever overwhelmed in a future high-tech attack.

Even a single, relatively small nuclear detonation hundreds of miles above the heads of Americans would create an electromagnetic pulse - or EMP - that would have apocalyptic results. Planes would fall out of the sky across the country. Everything from handheld electronics and medical devices would be rendered completely useless.

“We wouldn’t be going back 100 years,” said William Fortschen, a weapons researcher at Montreat College in North Carolina. “We’d lose it all, and we don’t know how to rebuild it. It would be the equivalent of us going back 1,000 years and having to start from scratch.”  

Enter President Donald Trump’s grand vision to protect the U.S. from all future attacks.

The Golden Dome is a proposed multi-layer defense system for the United States, intended to detect and destroy various foreign threats - including ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles - before they launch or during their flight. The system would employ a global constellation of satellites equipped with both sensors and space based interceptors. If implemented, it would mark the first time in history that space weapons are maintained in orbit.

Speaking recently from the Oval Office, President Trump said the system would consist of “next generation” technologies encompassing land, sea and space. Mr. Trump added that the system would be “capable even of intercepting missiles launched from the other side of the world, or launched from space.”

The Golden Dome is designed to combat a wide range of threats, including hypersonic weapons able to move faster than the speed of sound and fractional orbital bombardment systems - also called Fobs - that could deliver warheads from space.

“Israel’s missile defence challenge is a lot easier than one in the United States,” said Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow at London-based Chatham House. “The geography is much smaller and the angles and directions and the types of missiles are more limited.”

The Golden Dome would probably work by using thousands of satellites to spot and track missiles and then use interceptors in orbit to fire at the missiles as they take off  and then destroy them. 

Trump said the program would require an initial investment of $25 billion, with a total cost of $175 billion over time. However, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the government could ultimately spend up to $542 billion over 20 years, on the space-based parts of the system alone.

Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair acknowledged that Canada was interested in participating in the Golden Dome project, arguing that it “makes sense” and was in his country’s “national interest.”   

As far as the U.S. Virgin Islands involvement with being covered in the Golden Dome’s umbrella defense system, it’s still too early to tell. Congress, of course, will be the determining factor as to which areas are protected. But there is a definition that was issued in recent years as to what parts of the U.S. is considered defensible.   

The 2019 Missile Defense Review (MDR) initially published under the first Trump Administration, includes a definition: The most recent MDR, published under the Biden Administration in 2022, defined homeland missile defense as “the defense of the 50 states, all U.S. Territories, and the District of Columbia.” 

Although the Golden Dome is still mostly a theoretical initiative, President Trump believes it could be put into play by the end of his term in office. Despite the numerous technical challenges such a system’s installation and implementation  will face, one has to be reminded of President John F, Kennedy’s famous “Moon Speech” where he addressed a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, and proposed that the United States should commit to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade.

The United States landed a man on the moon on July 20,1969 as part of the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first two humans to walk on the lunar surface.

“This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Neil Armstrong declared as he stepped onto the Moon’s surface.