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Soldiers stand in front of a missile defense system.

A soldier with Battery Echo, 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade shows the members of the brigade staff around the training area developed specifically for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense weapon system, Sept. 20 at Fort Hood, Texas. (Brandon Banzhaf/U.S. Army)

President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order for a “next generation” defense shield to protect the U.S, against ballistic missiles and other long-range attack.

“The threat of attack by ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles remains a catastrophic threat facing the United States,” according to a White House document on the upcoming executive order.

It says Trump will order the construction of an Iron Dome shield, comparing it to Israel’s vaunted system which was developed in coordination with the U.S. and is designed to address threats including drones, rockets and cruise missiles.

Any U.S. system would have to go well beyond what Israel’s Iron Dome provides. Raytheon Co, which produces Iron Dome in coordination with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, says the system’s Tamir missile downs weapons launched from a range of 4 to 70 km.

The U.S. already has a range of missile defense systems in place. There are Terminal High Altitude Air Defense systems, with Aegis systems on warships and Patriot batteries and ground-based interceptors. The U.S. systems must cover a much larger area than those of Israel, and successive presidential administrations have worked to modernize and upgrade the complex array of defenses.

The president’s executive order seeks to accelerate the production and delivery of new systems to track and intercept incoming missiles, as well as defeat them before launch. The U.S. Iron Dome executive order was first reported by CNN.

Adversaries such as China and Russia have worked to develop hypersonic weapons in recent years, as Defense Department has struggled to keep pace. According to the White House, even in the face of mounting threats, “United States homeland missile defense policy has been limited to staying ahead of rogue nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches.”

According to the president, the new system “will be made all in the USA.”

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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