Space is Trump’s new battlefield as he launches ‘star wars’ plan

SPACE is the new arena for war, Donald Trump said yesterday, as he announced a drive to update America’s missile defence system and touted his “Space Force” proposal.

The US president said he wanted a “layer” of sensors in space that could detect missile launches and that he would demand the technology was funded in his next budget.

The sensors are one of a host of improvements the Pentagon wants to make to its decades-old missile defence system, outlined yesterday in a review.

It drew comparisons to Ronald Reagan’s costly and ambitious project to create a space-based anti-missile system at the height of the Cold War in the Eighties, which was derisively dubbed “star wars” by critics.

At the Pentagon, Mr Trump explained the new strategy and insisted that now was the time to modernise to keep America safe. “Our goal is simple: to ensure we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States, anywhere, any time, any place,” he said.

The review picked out four countries that posed a missile threat to Americans on home soil – North Korea, Iran, Russia and China – and warned that adversaries were rapidly developing their weapons programmes.

It said that North Korea posed an “extraordinary threat”, in contrast to Mr Trump’s declaration after meeting its leader, Kim Jong-un, last year that “there is no longer a nuclear threat”.

Mr Trump’s comments on space especially raised eyebrows. “We will recognise that space is a new war-fighting domain, with the Space Force leading the way,” the president said.

Space Force is Mr Trump’s proposal for a free-standing military department focused specifically on space. Currently such issues largely fall to the US Air Force. The move has met with opposition in the Pentagon, including from James Mattis, the former defence secretary, over whether the major reorganisation needed for its creation would reap sufficient benefits.

Meanwhile, as the government shutdown continued Mr Trump yesterday denied a military aircraft for the most senior Democrat in the House of Representatives shortly before she was due to embark on a series of overseas trips.

He hit back at Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, a day after she told him to delay his State of the Union address until after the shutdown was over. Mrs Pelosi sent a letter to the president demanding he either push back the Jan 29 speech or submit a written version of what he wanted to say to Congress. “Due to the Shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt and Afghanistan has been postponed,” Mr Trump wrote yesterday.