Retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told Newsmax on Thursday that he thinks President Donald Trump's just-announced Golden Dome missile defense system likely won't take three years to build, as the president has projected, saying he thinks the project will get the Chinese to engage with the United States on nuclear issues.
During an appearance on "The Chris Salcedo Show," Shaffer contrasted the impending reality of Trump's defense system with the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a theoretical project intended to safeguard the U.S. from Soviet ballistic missile attacks and nuclear annihilation.
"So, SDI was a bluff," Shaffer said. "I've talked to Bud McFarlane, [national security adviser to former President Ronald Reagan] who was there at Reykjavik, and when [former Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev bet the farm on stopping us from getting SDI, not knowing it was a complete bluff, they fell for it, and we won the [Cold] War. Well, there's no bluff now. The elements which we started working on back then have now been fielded.
"The Iron Dome is a derivative, believe it or not, the iridium phone system that's in orbit is a derivative," he said. "We are way farther ahead than people fully understand, so I don't think it's going to take three years. I think we can have it up with something called Brilliant Pebbles – that's space-based systems; Blaine probably knows better than me about that stuff – and I think we could be effectively covered within less than two years.
"I think the Chinese know that," Shaffer added. "The Chinese have never been willing to engage on nuclear issues. I think that's about to change."
Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt commented on the war in Gaza and what Israel needs to do now that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the Jewish state will permanently remove the Palestinians from the territory.
"The U.N. charter, Article 51, has … the requirement of the responsibility to protect," Holt said. "Israel needs to outline what that plan is going to look like, especially with very interested allies like the United States. I know there's a lot of back channel conversations going on with Egypt, with Jordan, with Algeria, about what that might possibly look like. There's no good places in Gaza left to live, unfortunately, and it is going to have to be reconstructed. Look, I get the sentiment, but the details of the plan need to be laid out because Israel could make a lot of unnecessary foes out of this plan if it's not very transparent."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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