This is John Batchelor. Conversation with colleague Rebecca Grant of the Lexington Institute

about the proposal by the President of the United States for an iron dome, a missile shield for North America,

maybe for all the Americas, but a missile shield on the ground will require a shield in space, in orbit, protection of

satellites, and the ability to counter an attack on the space-based system as well as the ground-based

system. As Rebecca says, much to do. It's Rebecca Grant on the ambition of the

Trump administration. Iron Dome. More of this tonight. Oh, such an interesting question.

It's really more about making sure that our U.S. satellites stay up. And if you look at the executive

order, launching some new and augmented satellite systems is absolutely key. You know, how we're

going to do a missile shield for America is through completely new space-based tracking and also

with the addition of space-based interceptors.

That means weapons in space that can hit missiles coming in. Right now we use land or sea-based

missile launches to kill out in the exo atmosphere. That's way up in space. But we're going to need to

add a space-based

system as well. And so we can't have China and Russia attacking our satellites in space and preserve

the missile shield. So a lot of questions there.