nuclear-news

Russia Warns West Against New Arms Race

Aug 21, 2026 , By Ellie Cook, Senior Defense Reporter, https://www.newsweek.com/russia-warns-west-against-new-arms-race-12346603

A senior Russian official has warned that President Donald Trump’s new defense plans, including for the vast Golden Dome missile shield currently in development, will lead to a new space “arms race” and could be “devastating.”

“The risks of turning outer space into an arena of armed confrontation have ceased to be hypothetical,” Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s envoy to the United Nations in Geneva, said in remarks reported by Russia’s Tass state news agency on Thursday.

“Its consequences will be devastating for all of humanity,” he added.

Although militaries worldwide already use satellites for intelligence gathering, communications, missile warnings and navigation, putting weapons in orbit has been controversial for decades.

A major part of the planned design for the Golden Dome will be orbiting interceptors to knock out incoming missile attacks, with early-warning sensors positioned in space, although the United States government and military haven’t released a full breakdown of how the system would be put together.

A White House spokesperson told Newsweek in a statement: “President Trump is building on the transformational achievements of his first term to maintain America’s leadership in space.”

Newsweek reached out to the Department of Defense via email for comment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping jointly said in May 2025 the proposed outline for the futuristic Golden Dome was an “obvious threat to strategic stability,” while North Korea said the program smacked of “self-righteousness” and “arrogance.”

The Trump administration says the project is needed to counter next-generation attacks on U.S. soil, like fast-moving ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons able to travel at more than five times the speed of sound. Moscow and Beijing have invested heavily in hypersonic programs, while the U.S. and NATO have lagged behind in developing these weapons.

Advocates for the Golden Dome say technology is now advanced enough to build a partially space-based system. Trump has explicitly linked the project to an ultimately shelved initiative launched by late Republican President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War arms race, popularly dubbed “Star Wars” because it planned to intercept Soviet missiles with lasers in space.

But critics argue that despite the ballooning projected costs, Trump’s Golden Dome may not protect the U.S. from a full-scale attack by Russia or China.

Costly and Possibly ‘Overwhelmed’

The Congressional Budget Office—the nonpartisan agency that advises American lawmakers on funding—said in May the “Golden Dome” will cost roughly $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, far exceeding the initial $175 billion allocated to the project.

The CBO said up to 70 percent of the acquisition costs and 60 percent of the total bill would be linked to the space-based components. It has also said that while the Golden Dome could cope with a “small-scale” assault or a North Korean attack, it would be “overwhelmed by a full-scale attack” from a country like Russia or China.

A dozen companies are competing to develop this space-based layer, including defense giants Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The U.S. Space Force says it can show off an “initial capability” by 2028.

In separate remarks on Wednesday, senior CBO official David Mosher said the agency hadn’t been able to contact the team in charge of the Golden Dome in the Pentagon and hadn’t secured briefings on the program, despite requesting updates.

“I know nothing about what they’re actually building,” he said during an appearance at the Brookings Institution.

Last year, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and three other Democratic lawmakers said the Golden Dome would be “detrimental to U.S. and global security by igniting a nuclear arms race with Russia and China.”

Unanswered Questions

The Golden Dome is expected to cover the U.S. mainland, Alaska and Hawaii. But Canada is in talks to come under the Golden Dome’s umbrella, and the U.S. has said previously that its northern neighbor would need to pay tens of billions of dollars to be included.

Currently, both the U.S. and Canada’s defenses against long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles are handled by the binational North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). At this point, it’s hard to work out how an air defense system for long-range attacks would work without Canadian cooperation.

It’s also not clear how the Golden Dome will address the threat posed by drones, particularly after the U.S.’s experience intercepting unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the Middle East since the start of the war with Iran.

The Pentagon said in its National Defense Strategy released in January that the Golden Dome would have a “specific focus on options to cost-effectively defeat large missile barrages and other advanced aerial attacks.”

Because air defense interceptors that can shoot down sophisticated weapons often cost several million dollars apiece, many global militaries are wrestling with how to reliably knock out major air threats like drones at a far lower cost than in past years.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon said it had set up a new “hub” for defense companies, academics and investors with the Department of Defense, which it said would slash red tape often found in defense procurement negotiations.

August 25, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, USA, weapons and war