Physics Colloquium - Fred Lamb 09/24/25

Title: “Golden Dome”: An Assessment of the Science and the Consequences

Abstract: In May 2025, President Trump approved the Defense Department’s architecture and implementation plan for “Golden Dome”—a multilayered defense system with ground-, sea-, and space-based components intended to protect the United States and its allies and their armed forces against attack by aircraft, ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles, cruise missiles, and drones fired at anytime from anywhere by any adversary, including peer and near-peer adversaries. This goal is clearly beyond reach anytime soon. Even attempting to create such a system would cost hundreds of billions of dollars or more and have other serious consequences.