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Global Network Statement on Golden Dome

Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ proposal is a continuation of Ronald Reagan’s SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), the Star Wars system of early 1980’s.

Trump calls it a ‘layered defense shield, safeguarding the American homeland with unwavering precision, ensuring the security and resilience of our nation’. Trump shared few specifics in the May 20 news conference, saying “Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.”

Early cost estimates from Congressional sources range from $550 billion to trillions over 20 years. Trump wants a $25 billion down payment for the program in 2025. Canada is being brought into Golden Dome likely to help pay for it. We should expect that NATO members will also be hit up to help cover the massive costs.

There are already extensive missile defense programs, such as the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GBMD); the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) program; the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Satellite Tracking Layer program; the ‘Space Based Infra-Red System’ (SBIRS) of missile detection and tracking satellites and its replacement the ‘Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infra-Red’ (Next Gen OPIR) satellites. The aim of Golden Dome is to combine these with new components, such as space-based interceptors aimed at intercepting missiles soon after launch.

The price tag is bound to be the Achilles Heel of the Golden Dome program. Already, over the past 70 years, the US has spent more than $500 billion on missile defense, according to an American Physical Society (APS) report. Golden Dome would be a colossal waste of resources when the US has $37 trillion in debt. Merely replicating Israel’s Iron Dome over the US — multiplying it out to cover nearly four million square miles — would require 24,000 Iron Dome batteries at $100 million each. Development cost of Golden Dome would be more than we spend on the Pentagon budget in one year.

Golden Dome would create a dangerous arms race in space. It is an offensive, not defensive program. It is extremely unlikely to be able to provide the claimed 100% effective shield against an all-out attack from thousands of missiles incorporating countermeasures such as multiple decoy warheads or the ability to maneuver in the final stages of their trajectory. However, it will embolden the US to launch a first-strike attack and attempt to pick off any retaliatory strike.

The US and Canada land mass is so vast that Golden Dome could never successfully cover it all. Golden Dome just won’t work. It simply encourages other nations to expand hypersonics development, mass drone swarms, advanced cruise missiles and other technologies to overwhelm the US system.

Israel’s similar Iron Dome proved not to be effective when Iran launched missiles and drones that evaded that system. “Intercepting even a single, nuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missile or its warheads … is extremely challenging,” physicist Frederick Lamb of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said at an APS meeting in March. “The ability of any missile defense system to do this reliably has not been demonstrated.”

Ensuring protection from just one ‘enemy’ ICBM launch site would require more than 1,000 interceptors in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the APS report finds. Protection from ten ICBMs might demand over 30,000 interceptors, depending on missile types. For comparison, there are currently about 12,000 active satellites in orbit around Earth, most in SpaceX’s Starlink network.

Scientists at China’s Zhejiang University have created a composite, multi-layered, heat-absorbing stealth material they say can evade detection by infrared and microwave systems at long ranges. It operates at temperatures up to 700 °C, meaning it can be potentially used in an array of military and space applications.

That’s bad news for Golden Dome, which will rely on ground and space-based early warning, tracking, fire control and radars to detect and track threats. Without help from its sensor-based eyes and ears, Golden Dome’s interceptors would be essentially useless and firing blind in the event of a crisis.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, L3Harris and SpaceX would likely be the prime beneficiaries along with Republican megadonor Peter Thiel’s Palantir and venture capital-backed startup Anduril.

Any war in space would lead to the Kessler Syndrome – masses of orbiting debris – making it virtually impossible to utilize orbits that are becoming dangerously congested like Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). There are currently more than 1,550 Starlink satellites in LEO with thousands more planned.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites are launched from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force bases. All space launches today have major environmental impacts – particularly exhaust products trapped for long periods in the upper atmosphere that are further damaging the ozone layer. Space is an environment that must be protected. Golden Dome’s huge number of launches would be the stake in the heart of planet Earth.

Deployment of Golden Dome would also doom any hopes for nuclear disarmament as China, Russia, North Korea and others could not afford to get rid of their nuclear retaliatory capabilities. No other nation will surrender to US becoming the Master of Space.

The Pentagon (Space Force) has long been planning to control the pathway from the Earth to the Moon and beyond. Plans for space-based orbiting battle stations, used to ‘police’ the Earth-Moon gravity well to ensure US and allies ‘control and domination’ of space, are called for in the 1997 US Space Command document ‘Vision for 2020’.  

The US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia in 2002. From 1972 until 2002 the Treaty bound the US and Russia to very limited missile defense systems in order to maintain the deadly nuclear balance. What is needed now is a new global ABM Treaty that all states can sign up to and ensure that no state, or group of states, can hold the threat of a nuclear first strike over others.

If the US truly wishes to protect the US and Canada, then it should honor the spirit of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It should agree to negotiate and sign a treaty at the United Nations to ban all weapons in space. China and Russia have been annually introducing a space weapons ban treaty for more than 30 years but the US and Israel have been blocking its development.

We, the undersigned, call upon the US Congress, the White House, and the Canadian government to abandon plans for the creation of the Golden Dome. Rather than wasting massive amounts of tax dollars on a new space arms race those funds should be used for human needs, environmental protection, education, health care and long neglected infrastructure repair. The US and Canada should lead a global initiative to protect our global commons and keep space for peace.

List in formation:

  • Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
  • Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (London, UK)
  • Popular Resistance
  • Centre for Research on Globalization (Montreal, Qc. Canada)
  • World Beyond War
  • War Industry Resisters Network (WIRN)
  • Safe Tech International
  •  PARC Against DARC (Wales, UK)
  • Ellen Woodsworth & Patsy George, Co-chairs of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Canada)
  • Dr Helen Caldicott, Co-Founder and president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, 1985 Nobel Peace Prize (Australia)
  • Prof. Dr. Klaus Buchner, former member of the European Parliament (Germany)
  • Professor Dave Webb, Chair of Yorkshire CND & Convenor of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (United Kingdom)
  • Dud Hendrick, US Naval Academy, Vietnam veteran (Maine)
  • Bill Astore, Lt Col, USAF, Retired, Senior Fellow, Eisenhower Media Network (Massachusetts)
  • Olle Johansson, Professor, Retired, Karolinska Institute and Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden)
  • CND Cymru (Wales)
  • Lyn Adamson & Hannah Hadikin, Co-chairs of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
  • Tamara Lorincz, GN Advisory Board, PhD candidate, Wilfrid Laurier University, Fellow with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (Canada)
  • Michael Wong, Former national vice president, Veterans For Peace
    Current national board member, Veterans For Peace, Co-founder, Pivot To Peace (California)
  • Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign, North Yorkshire (UK)
  • Kate Kheel, Advocate for safe technology and peace (Maryland)
  • Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (Maine)
  • Yorkshire CND (UK)
  • Ken Jones, Retired Professor of Teacher Education (North Carolina)
  • Russell Wray, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (Maine)
  • Marrickville Peace Group” (Sydney, Australia)
  • Rosie Paul, Coordinator, Greater Brunswick PeaceWorks (Maine)
  • Tom Valovic, Author of Digital Mythologies and journalist (Massachusetts)
  • Lisa Savage, Maine Natural Guard
  • Professor Kevin P. Clements, Director, The Toda Peace Institute (Tokyo, Japan)
  • Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, Activist, journalist, lawyer. Founder of Wage Peace International (South Africa)
  • Stop the War Machine (Albuquerque, New Mexico)
  • Max Obuszewski & Janice Sevre-Duszynska, Baltimore Nonviolence Center (Maryland)
  • Jean Hudon, Quebec Peace Activist (Canada)
  • Lynda Williams, Physicist and Science Communicator, Physics Professor Emeritus, The Physics Chanteuse (Hawaii)
  • Ronald M. Powell, Ph.D. Applied Physics (Maryland)
  • Jim Mason, Author, attorney (Missouri)
  • John and Carrie Schuchardt, House of Peace (Ipswich, Massachusetts)
  • Colin Archer, Retired Secretary General, IPB (UK)
  • Samantha Smith Chapter 45 Veterans for Peace (Massachusetts)
  • Mary Beth Sullivan, Retired Social worker (Maine)
  • Dr. Tess Lawrie, World Council for Health Coordinator (Bath, United Kingdom)
  • Waging Peace Project (Minnesota)
  • Montreal for a World Beyond War (Canada)
  • Rae Street, Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group (UK)
  • Dianne Poole (Barrington, Rhode Island)
  • Jon Olsen, Lifelong anti-imperialist (Maine)
  • Helmut Kuhn (Ottawa, Canada)
To add your name to this statement, email globalnet@mindspring.com.