President Donald Trump’s Monday night executive order on the creation of an “Iron Dome for America” calls for much more than the air defense system Israel utilizes. The order calls for “a next-generation missile defense shield” to protect the homeland.

The first Trump administration floated a space weapon concept in March 2018: a neutral particle beam in space. But it ultimately shelved the idea because of the massive amount of power needed to destroy a missile with directed energy.

The United States is estimated to have spent more than $400 billion on the kinds of antimissile goals that the president now says will provide “for the common defense.”

President Trump signed an executive order to build an "Iron Dome for America," modeled on Israel’s missile defense system.

President Donald Trump's proposed "Iron Dome For America" is designed to protect the U.S. against sophisticated missiles.

An executive order said the United States faced a “catastrophic threat” from advanced aerial weapons. But a defense system like Israel’s may not be feasible in the country, which is more than 400 times larger.

President Donald Trump has ordered the development of an "Iron Dome" defense system to shield the United States from an intercontinental missile attack.

Such defense systems are extremely costly” with “their effectiveness often being questionable,” one expert said.

The executive order highlighted that the weapon was an objective of a policy goal of “peace through strength.”

National Security sources tell Threat Status that President Trump’s “Iron Dome for America” rhetoric is tethered to a viable plan to harness 21st-century satellite technology to create an advanced missile shield capable of deterring potential long-range attacks from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.