Lasers, space radars, missile interceptors: Defense leaders lay out vision for Trump's 'Golden Dome' project

Michael Guetleingeneral

Without a doubt, our biggest challenge is going to be organizational behavior and culture to bring all the pieces together,

Guetlein said

What I'm understanding [the goal] really is to protect the entire U.S. It is to put a dome around the homeland,

said Edward Zoiss, president of space and airborne systems for L3Harris Technologies

The full potential of all of those capabilities working in conjunction with each other, at that scale, there's definitely some new elements there,

Moneymaker said

In our view, it has to kind of be a layered system. Because, you know, shooting a UAV, for example, is very different than shooting a hypersonic vehicle or hypersonic weapon,

Raytheon CEO Phil Jasper told Fox News Digital

ICBMs followed parabola trajectories for decades. But a new class of highly maneuverable cruise weapons and hypersonic weapons now don't,

he explained

There are systems that sit today in the Air National Guard or in our current local defense infrastructure domestically. Those could actually be deployed inside of the U.S,

he said

If you go back to your high school physics class, if you understand the angle and trajectory of a bullet, you understand exactly where it's going to land because it follows a parabola,

he said

What the administration has laid out is that building block approach that you can start to protect certain areas, at times, certain regions, and build that out as you continue to produce these systems. And they can continue to come off of production lines,

he said

The most critical weakness of a system like this is its brittleness, its vulnerability to attack,

Grego added

You’ve gotta be responsible here,

Tierney said

The more you want it closer to 100%, the more expensive it’s going to get,

said Montgomery, the senior director of the Center On Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

It has been long understood that defending against a sophisticated nuclear arsenal is technically and economically unfeasible,

Grego told CNN

Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s [executive order], we’re working with the industrial base and [through] supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome,

Steven J. Morani, currently performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said this week at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington

There is a rigorous analytic process underway taking a relook at [the budget],

Morani added

Strategically, it doesn’t make any sense. Technically, it doesn’t make any sense. Economically it doesn’t make any sense,

Tierney added

We estimate that a constellation of about 16,000 interceptors would be needed to attempt to counter a rapid salvo of ten solid-propellant ICBMs like the [North Korean] Hwasong-18,

the APS wrote in a study earlier this month

Right now, Golden Dome is, it’s really an idea,

one source familiar with internal discussions about the project said, ... adding there

If you implement something that your nuclear armed adversaries believe is a reliable countermeasure that just nullifies their nuclear arsenal, now you’ve done away with deterrent stability, because you’ve improved the ease of the United States sending a nuclear attack to them with impunity,

the source added