President unveils 'Golden Dome' air defence system

Donald Trump announced funding for the Golden Dome air defence system yesterday. More than four decades after President Ronald Reagan's widely derided "Star Wars" ballistic missile barrier was announced, Mr Trump revived the Pentagon’s efforts to protect the continental United States from foreign projectiles with a massive shield.

- ANDREW FEINBERG

Speaking in the Oval Office alongside defense secretary Pete Hegseth, Mr Trump says the US now has the technology to construct a system to combat not just the intercontinental ballistic missiles that were the subject of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, but also against space-based and hypersonic missiles.

“In the campaign, I promised the American people that I would build a cutting edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack, and that's what we're doing today,” said Mr Trump, who added that he was “pleased to announce” that the US has settled on an “architecture” for a “state of the art system” he promised would “deploy next-generation technologies across the land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors”.