U.S. Strategic Command is looking into potential impacts of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense to the nation’s nuclear deterrence, the commander said in a fiscal 2026 Strategic Forces Posture hearing April 9.
“We’re looking at some of the things that came from the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] initiatives, some of the talking points, some of the op eds… just to kind of capture what that looks like, and we’re still in the middle of doing that,” Strategic Command (STRATCOM) Commander Gen. Anthony Cotton said at the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee hearing in answer to a question.
The Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed the “Star Wars” initiative, was a proposed missile defense system that then-President Ronald Reagan announced in 1983. While the Star Wars initiative was never realized, it envisioned a space-based missile defense system most similar to Trump’s Golden Dome that he announced originally as the “Iron Dome for America” in a January executive order.
“You spend all day thinking about maintaining nuclear deterrence and strategic stability around the world,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), ranking member of the Strategic Forces subcommittee, said to Cotton. He then asked Cotton if he and STRATCOM were involved in thinking through potential impacts “a Golden Dome could have on the strategic stability that is increasingly precarious because of Russia and China’s novel delivery systems.”
Cotton, who will retire in the coming months and received many congratulations from the subcommittee members, responded that “at this time, STRATCOM is actually looking” at some of those impacts.
A spokesperson for Cotton told the Exchange Monitor in an email that so far, no one has been nominated to replace him, so Cotton will serve as the combatant commander until someone is selected and confirmed. The spokesperson confirmed that Cotton will retire from service after he changes command with his successor.
The Golden Dome, which the executive order states is intended to defend against hypersonic, cruise and nuclear-armed ballistic missile threats and a “countervalue attack by nuclear adversaries,” has gotten a mixed response. In a March hearing with Cotton held by the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said his “concern” was that in building such a defense system, “our adversaries response to having a missile defense system could be to build more nuclear weapons. And if one or two get through, that is too many.”
The Washington-based think tank the Arms Control Association (ACA), agreeing with Kelly, called the Golden Dome “misguided” with “enormous opportunity costs.”
“The fundamental problem with any plan for a national missile defense system against strategic nuclear attack is that cost-exchange ratios favor the offense and U.S. adversaries can always choose to build up or diversify their strategic forces to overwhelm a potential shield,” ACA said in a March 25 article. “The fantasy of a missile shield runs against a core rule of strategic competition: the enemy always gets a vote.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Exchange Monitor in early April that “these are the same arguments that have been made for decades and I reject that,” in response to arguments against the Dome.
“We need to protect the homeland from as many dangers as are out there,” Wicker said. “The concept of an Iron Dome for America is actually even more vital given the space capabilities of our adversaries are quickly developing.”
