Gerold Yonas, PhD
Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
Introduction
Last year, Donald Trump announced that “we must be able to defend our homeland, our allies, and our military assets around the world from the threat of hypersonic missiles, no matter where they are launched from.” After his election, he called for a program labeled the Golden Dome and requested a plan with no limit on cost to achieve his goal. This brought back many memories from 40 years ago.
Although I had been involved—and often frustrated—for many years with the rather slowly advancing R&D related to space-based missile defense, I became intrigued by new ideas after a lunch conversation with the brilliant and creative physicist Freeman Dyson. I had become convinced that the tactics and technology needed to counter a massive missile attack would always fail. I was sure that the offense would always have the advantage. Dyson introduced me to a more interesting way of looking at this complex issue. He told me about his concept of a quest that would “allow us to protect our national interests without committing us to threaten the wholesale massacre of innocent people.” He argued on moral grounds for “a defensive world as our long-range objective … and the objective will sooner or later be found, whether the means are treaties and doctrines or radars and lasers.”