The so-called Iron Dome, Israel's advanced air defense system, has been in focus during the war in the Middle East. Now, Donald Trump's election promise to build a similar American system is becoming a reality, the newly elected president announced at a Republican meeting in Miami on Monday.
We must immediately begin constructing a state-of-the-art Iron Dome as a defense shield against robots, which will be able to protect Americans, he says.
The system will be developed in the USA, he adds.
"USA has the right to it"
The Israeli system is, however, designed to withstand attacks from shorter ranges, from 4 to 70 kilometers. It is therefore considered less suitable for shooting down intercontinental missiles, which would be the greatest potential threat to the USA.
Despite this, Trump praised the Iron Dome, which has been used by Israel to shoot down rockets fired from Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon during the war.
It knocks down almost every single one of them. So I believe that the USA has the right to it, says Trump.
Four presidential orders
The decision is one of four presidential orders related to the military that Trump has now signed.
Another one deals with getting rid of what Trump calls "trans ideology" from the military.
To ensure that we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get trans ideology completely out of our military, he says.
Rollercoaster
Transgender Americans have faced a rollercoaster of policies regarding military service in recent years. The former Democratic President Barack Obama lifted the ban on transgender military personnel in 2016, which Donald Trump then tried to reinstate during his first term.
It was dragged through the court system for several years, before his successor Joe Biden, shortly after taking office in 2021, again allowed transgender people to openly serve.
Trump's new order does not entail an immediate ban, but rather an assignment to the Pentagon to develop a policy for the whole thing, according to a source for AP.
Donald Trump also signed a presidential order allowing military personnel who were dismissed during the pandemic for refusing to get vaccinated to again serve with full pay and their previous rank.
