The Golden Teapot Dome: Mark Kelly Warns “This Is a Very Hard Physics Problem”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX had an even more spectacular failure than his last spectacular failure last night.
Whoa!! Not only did his latest Starship blow up, but fuel tanks nearby caught fire as well.
I was already going to point to this exchange from yesterday, in which astronaut and Senator Mark Kelly quizzed Whiskey Pete Hegeseth about plans for a Golden Dome. But Elon’s continued spectacular failures raise the stakes of it, because SpaceX and Elon’s other fascist buddies are poised to win a lot of the contract to build a Golden Dome.
Elon can’t do what he’s already being paid to do. But Republicans are poised to provide billions more, probably to him, to take on a far more complex problem.
And Mark Kelly, a guy who (even Whiskey Pete recognizes) would know, seems to suspect that Hegseth just fired the people who would tell him that this boondoggle is physically impossible to pull off.
The exchange starts with Senator Kelly trying to understand the goals of Golden Dome. He then tries to get Whiskey Pete to understand the difficulty of the physics behind it.
Kelly: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I want to talk about the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system. There’s a request to spend $25 billion in this year alone. First of all, is this system designed to intercept a full salvo attack?
Hegseth: Senator, it’s a multi-layer system, that would include different types of salvos–
Kelly: So it’s not just rogue nation. Okay.
Hegseth: Yeah, it’s not meant to be just one nation. It could be utilized —
Kelly: Against Russia, China. Full salvo. So what kind of reliability are you aiming to build into this system? Are we looking for something like four-9s on intercept success?
[Hegseth pauses.]
Kelly explains: 99.99% reliability.
[Hegseth makes hand gesture, seemingly assuring Kelly he’s not that dumb.]
Hegseth: Obviously you seek the highest possible. You begin with what you have in integrating those C-2 networks and sensors. Building up capabilities that are existing with a eye toward future capabilities that can come online as quickly as possible. Not just ground-based but space-based.
Kelly: So against future capability too. So do you believe that we can build a system that can intercept all incoming threats? Do you think we could build that system? This is a very hard physics problem.
Hegseth: You are [points emphatically] You would know as well as anybody, Sir, how difficult this problem is and that’s why we put our best people on it. We think the American people deserve it.
Kelly: So let me tell you what I think we’re facing here.
[Hegseth continues to babble.]
Kelly: You’re talking about hundreds of ICBMs running simultaneously, varying trajectories, MIRVs, so multiple re-entry vehicles. Thousands of decoys. Hypersonic glide vehicles, all at once. And considering what the future threat might be, might even be more complicated than that. And you’re proposing spending not just $25 billion, but upwards of — I think CBO estimated this at at least half a trillion. Other estimates, a trillion dollars. I am all for having a system that would work. I am not sure that the physics can get there on this. It’s incredibly complicated.
This video explains some of the difficulties. [Link fixed.]
Then Senator Kelly shifts to concerns about whether the impossibility of the Golden Dome project was behind Whiskey Pete’s recent decision to eliminate most of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, the office that validates weapons and platforms for DOD.
Kelly: So I want to get to another issue that is — that you’re facing here. How much of the staff of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation did you cut?
Hegesth: After collaboration, Sir, with the Service — Department of Joint Staff and others, we identified that as a place where there were redundancies and multiple additional layers —
Kelly: I’ll tell you what you cut. You cut 74%
Hegseth: Most of it.
Kelly: Most of it.
Kelly: And was your decision to cut more than half of the Pentagon’s testing and evaluation oval office staff driven in part by concerns about the Office’s plan to oversee testing of Golden Dome?
Hegseth: Uh, the concerns were not specific to Golden Dome, Sir. It was years and years of delays, unnecessarily, based on redundancies in the decision-making process that the Services, COCOMs, and the Joint Staff, together with OSD, identified a logjam that was not–
So Kelly sums up the problem. Trump is demanding $25 billion to pay off the guy who got him elected, and as he’s doing that, Hegseth fired the people who can test whether the whole boondoggle would work.
Kelly: Mr. Secretary, to get the reliability we would need, you need something that’s at four-9s, 99. 99% reliability, with all these challenges. And you cut the staff of the people who are going to make sure this thing works before we make it operational, before we give it to the war fighters. You got to go back and take look at this but I also strongly encourage you to put together some — before we spend $25 billion or $175 billion or $563 billion or a trillion dollars, put together a group of people to figure out if the physics will work. You could go down a road here and spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars with the taxpayer money, get to the end and we have a system that is not functional. That very well could happen. And you’re doing this just because the President — I understand your role is the Secretary of Defense. You got to execute what the president says. But this idea, you know, might not be fully baked. And you could get in front of it now and figure out and, and find out if you put the right physicist on this and I’m not saying go to the big defense contractors. Going to scientists and I know there’s a questionable relationship with this administration and scientists but go to some scientist. Figure out what we would have to do to build a system. And then make smart decisions before we spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.
Hegseth: Senator, we are doing that. Leveraging existing technologies and not premising the project on aspirational technologies, what we can actually do.
Kelly: Well, $25 billion in the first year is a lot of money. That’s more than just finding out if we have the ability if we can build a system that can handle a full salvo threat, hypersonic glide vehicles, MIRVs, thousands of decoys. Thank you.
There’s some important background here.
A constant theme between the four appropriations hearings Whiskey Pete survived in the last week is the way Trump has bifurcated DOD’s budget next year.
Much of it is in the budget itself — the budget that Whiskey Pete has not yet filled out and is weeks behind deadline on.
But this part of it — the Golden Dome that spends $25 billion with Elon’s company on a physics problem that Senator Kelly says is very difficult to solve — is in reconciliation, the bill that needs only Republicans to pass.
The same bill in which Republicans will raise the debt ceiling by five trillion dollars.
Donald Trump is trying to push a $25 billion slush fund to his fascist tech bro backers on a promise that Mark Kelly thinks won’t work.
And yesterday, Elon just reminded us of how those billions could go — are likely to go — up in flames.
Update: Corrected MIRVs.
Fun fact, Iron Dome for Israel only handles short to mid range missiles and is about 90% successful, i.e. 10% still hit. This is the premise for the Gold Dome even though ICBMs are an order of magnitude harder to intercept.
More than anything, this lark indicates the President’s mindset is still firmly locked in the 1980s.
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How long before Trump tries to dust off the old Nuke-The-Moon plan?
Small note: I think what the transcript renders as MERS might be MIRVs, Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle.
As to Musk, clarely another case of corruption in plain sight. At least one commentary I read online from a rocket engineer was skeptical of Musk’s whole program, i.e., that his hopes for his booster were ignoring some basic physics constraints.
Thank you!
Corrected.
When it comes to home ownership it may as well be MERS = MIRV given how mortgages get diced and sliced up..
So far US ICBM interceptor tests have been 57% successful – on fairly controlled conditions. A full salvo with widely varying threats would be exponentially more difficult. Mark Kelly was being nice, it’s not possible.
Now I know I am old because I remember Reagan and SDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
”
In 1987, the American Physical Society concluded that the technologies were decades away from readiness, and at least another decade of research was required to know whether such a system was even possible.[17] After the publication of the APS report, SDI’s budget was cut. By the late 1980s, the effort had re-focused on the “Brilliant Pebbles” concept using small orbiting missiles. The program was heavily criticized for threatening to destabilize the MAD-approach and to re-ignite “an offensive arms race”.[18] Senator Ted Kennedy derided the program as “reckless Star Wars schemes”,[19] a reference to the space opera film series Star Wars, leading to the popularisation of the monicker. In a 1986 speech, Senator Joe Biden said, “Star Wars represents a fundamental assault on the concepts, alliances and arms-control agreements that have buttressed American security for several decades, and the president’s continued adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”[20]
”
I do not recall the mental state of Ronnie RayGun at this time, but they say history rhymes.
I met an engineer at a party back then who told me he was working on Star Wars (which as you point out most physicists realized was hopeless at the time). He didn’t appreciate it when I guffawed and said “really?” before I could stop myself.
My father was a mechanical engineer who had been in defense work since WW2 ended. *He* thought that program was impossible.
Yep. Nice to see you PJ : )
Those who are interested in learning more about the specific problems associated with Trump’s proposed Golden Dome defense may wish to watch the following YouTube presentation by an Australian defense analyst. (Note – it’s an hour long but it’s packed full of interesting information.)
Perun: Golden Dome & U.S. Missile Defence – What is it, Can it Work, and the Economics of Missile Defence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpFhNXecrb4 (I hope this link passes muster.)
Golden Dome is not Iron Dome. As the Kelly-Hegseth colloquy makes clear what is envisioned is a near perfect defense against a large-scale ICBM attack from Russia or China. In practical terms, that would likely require a space-based weapons platform that can instantaneously identify, respond to, and destroy launch vehicles in their boost phase. And of course, the problem becomes more complex with the addition of submarine or aircraft launched nuclear weapons.
For those who remember Reagan’s Stars Wars defense concept, the physical and scientific problems associated with this have already been studied at some length.
We are talking boondoggle.
Yep. Even a simplistic scenario could disable the dome. Several nations have the capability to launch satellites into space. A satellite carrying an EMP weapon (electromagnetic pulse) could disable many components of the space-based system, including sensors and communications. It’s extremely unlikely that the space-based systems of the Golden Dome (that f’n guy is so fixated on gold…) could be sufficiently hardened against such an attack, or be effective following one.
Dear gods and fishes, an EMP in space while that asshat Musk has north of 7000 satellites in orbit? I can’t even begin to imagine what the effects of the resulting Kessler syndrome would look like on earth.
Plus the effects on the ground!
Perun is awesome..
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Here’s the other fly in the ointment. The Brilliant Pebbles plan (the basis for this “new SDI” ) presumed that the threat would not target the “Golden Dome” itself as a pretext to an ICBM attack on the US or our allies.
Space-based Interceptors make THAT threat strategy even more effective. Those interceptors, presumably in LEO are extremely vulnerable to a half dozen nuclear bombs set off in LEO to foil all communications with the interceptor constellation and to create enough high velocity debris to wipe out Starlink and every other satellite in LEO in a matter of hours or days.
The Golden Dome is not a serious weapon system – it’s another massive grift and it should be called out as such.
Whiskey Pete’s comment that they identified a logjam at the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation is one thing; Hegseth deciding that the best way to break the logjam is to break the office is something entirely different.
What Hegseth is missing is a clear definition of the problem. To him, the problem is the logjam. Get rid of the testing office, and voila! The problem is gone.
In my eyes, and apparently in Kelly’s the logjam is a symptom of something else. Is it an overabundance of testing and documentation and review? That’s a problem in the office, then. Is the problem that military contractors can’t deliver the up-to-spec items they won contracts to deliver? Is it that the contractors don’t want to do the paperwork that documents their work? Is it that the contractors don’t want oversight at all, and simply want the DOD to trust their word on what they’ve done and what their products can do? Those are problems on the contractor side, and cutting the office by 75% will only make that problem worse.
I’ll put my money on the problem being with the contractors.
Kelly’s message to Whiskey Pete is simple: show us your work before you expect us to write a check that large for the first year of this and commit us to enormous checks in every year to come, for who knows how long.
Show your work, because your words don’t add up.
Thanks, Peterr! My thoughts exactly, but much more coherently expressed.
It’s hard to answer a Senator’s informed question when all you know about the subject is what the White House told you to do.
‘Get rid of the testing office, and voila! The problem is gone.’
That reminds me of June 2020, when the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 hit 2 million in the United States and new infections spiked in 20 states as social distancing restrictions were eased.
Then-President Trump said, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.” He also tweeted, “Without testing, or weak testing, we would be showing almost no cases”.
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This reminds me of when Trump said to just stop testing for Covid, then it would go away. See ? Easy peasy, if you don’t know about the problem it doesn’t exist.
Exactly the same thought I had!
Child’s thinking: if you ignore it, it will go away.
Most of us know better long before we get out of grade school.
Object permanence is something we learn as toddlers, like when we play peek-a-boo. Holding our hands over our eyes isn’t going to make it disappear.
Rayne, we also learn that ignoring homework doesn’t make it not be due.
Hegseth’s “solution” in getting rid of the Testing Office is akin to Trump’s 2020 advice to stop testing for Covid b/c then there wouldn’t be more cases! Unbelievable.
Oops– didn’t see BrrGrrDelux’s comment above.
It’s the “One Weird Trick” Administration!
Case in point on immigration: “We can’t handle the backlog of asylum hearings because it’s TOO HARD(tm)!”, which seems like the go-to explanation for every challenge, gaslighting its way around. What a bunch of whiners.
Would it be fair to say that Israel’s “Iron Dome” would be the most sophisticated anti missile system in operation in the world today. Based on images coming from Israel I would say the “Iron Dome” function far below the 90th percentile. The “Golden Dome” as conceived by an ignoramus sitting on a Golden Throne (crapper) is nothing more than a grift from American tax payer dollars, which is a summation of the entire tRump administration and the GOP. No policy, no plan just the largest grift machine since the railroad barons of the gilded age. Just as the lord saved Gilligan from the island he will save America the same way, canceled from the airwaves or in this case world relevancy sans our nuclear arsenal, just as Russia and North Korea.
Israel is roughly the same size as NJ. It’s significantly easier to do than a system that covers the Lower 48 plus Alaska and Hawaii.
Reagan’s Star Wars will never die. The ’80s are back, baby! Honest to God, who was it who said we are always fighting the last war?
Am I the only one paying attention Ukraine? Anyone, anyone, Bueller, Bueller? But sure, in an era of cheap drone weaponry that will proliferate everywhere the Golden Dome is just the ticket! I feel safer already.
Yeah, all that. Hold that thought.
Hegseth, as do most slick-haired mouthpieces in the Make America Gringo Again world, relies on sound-byte babble to impress the Fox veiwership and give them talking points. It doesn’t work nearly as well in court or in conversation with genuine experts.
Probably won’t work in battle, either.
“…Make America Gringo Again…” : p
To repeat a former suggested reading, the book Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen contains wonderful evaluations of the difficulties Marcy and Mr. Kelly are pointing out. It even has a couple events in the book, one of which the golden dome probably could not prevent and another that would render the golden dome itself useless.
But to paraphrase Robert Frost when was that ever a bar to any watch oligarchs keep
it is not golden.
it is gold-leaf.
2nd-in-line to tinfoil-hat.
The “Stars Wars” debacle from the past immediately comes to mind. I was very young during that time. Am I correct in remembering a HUGE amount of money was spent on it and it ended being totally unsuccessful? Weren’t the weapons development companies the recipients of this huge amount of government (our) money?
That program employed a lot of people, if I recall correctly, which may have been a goal of the administration of that time. And perhaps also a goal of Trump as he ineptly and cruelly continues to destroy the strong economy he was handed.
The U.S. seems to have gone IQ regressive. Golden Dome isn’t possible, and neither is Musk’s Starship. More intelligent people than me have explained why Starship cannot work, and is a waste of money and effort, and SpaceX engineers must know that. A booster weighing 150 tons and reaches a speed of 4500mph can be brought back to earth with rockets, but a ‘starship’ that weighs 160 tons, without payload, that reaches 17,000mph cannot. The kinetic energy is far too great to slow it for re-entry. The rocket doesn’t have enough boost and cannot carry enough fuel to set it back on terra firma. Increasing the rocket size means a heavier fuel load and a heavier rocket–it just will not work. Space shuttle designers knew this, and scrubbed speed on re-entry by a series of S turns and then a glide to landing. All NASA engineers knew this, and it is the reason that a re-entry vehicle (Soyuz, Apollo, etc) is small and light and can be brought to earth by parachute.
It’s science fiction, not science, and what a damnable mess
I have a suggestion that would seem to address all the salient points.
Engineer a situation where Musk’s SpaceX is awarded the sole source contract to supply all of the rockets required to launch ICBMs. Musk is amply rewarded for delivering the Presidency as agreed. And the potentially incoming ICBMs, utilizing SpaceX’s rapid unscheduled disassembly technology during the critical boost phase, would remove themselves from the threat matrix. It achieves everything the Golden Dome was designed for, it is as achievable as the current Golden Dome project is and it would be paid for by Russia and China. I see it as a win win win scenario.
SpaceX is pretty good with the smaller rockets. It’s the giant one that doesn’t work.
I think it’s unlikely that SpaceX will get contracts for any ground-based rockets for the Golden Dome. Those are almost certainly going to be solid fuel rockets, and SpaceX only has experience with liquid fuel. The rocket contracts are most likely to go to the parts of the Military Industrial Complex already building the Ground-Based Interceptors and Standard Missile 3 (Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc.) because they have experience with the rockets already in process for missile defense.
SpaceX would definitely be on the short list for any launching space-based infrastructure, but that’s mainly because they’re the cheapest route to orbit for any medium size payloads because they reuse the first stages. They’d probably also be a shoo-in for communications via Starlink. One would hope in the latter case that the military has some ironclad contracts in place that Elon can’t cut off service because he gets a bad case of feels, like he did in Ukraine.
None of this is to say that the Golden Dome is possible, even if we shovel a trillion dollars at the problem. Just that the rockets probably aren’t going to primarily be pork into SpaceX’s maw.
I’m wondering when experience and expertise started counting for something in Trump’s decision-making.
As something other than a negative?
It would take a lot of political capital to overrule all of the federal procurement people, and I don’t think that Trump would spend it that way post breakup. Plus, someone would tell Trump and Whiskey Pete that hiring SpaceX for the job means it’s less likely to be successful, especially in the three years remaining in Trump’s term.
On top of all that, I’m not sure that Elon would want the project. Despite his many military contracts, I don’t think he likes to think of himself as a defense contractor. Building rockets with warheads would put a pin in that balloon. Cooler heads at SpaceX would tell him that there’s so much money to be made on the orbital launch and comms parts of the job that they don’t need to take on the boondoggle of the interceptors.
Thank you Dr. Marcy.
Satisfying when Senator Kelly brings his experience and knowledge to a hearing confronting cocky Hegseth. Senator Duckworth used her experience and knowledge wisely. She didn’t miss a beat.
Tammy Duckworth Tells Sec. Hegseth To His Face That His ‘Failures’ Have Been ‘Staggering’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMQJl5hkWI8
I thought SpaceX launch failures were so frequent and dramatic that the media invented a euphemism for them: “unexpected rapid disassembly.”
I believe that Elon coined that phrase and the media picked it up.
You might need to adjust your snark meter. :-)
In insurance speak, this is known as “involuntary conversion”.
I think that’s a standard aerospace industry euphemism. I used to work for a natural gas utility and the industry euphemism for a gas explosion was (then) “unexpected gas release.”
What Ted Postol of MIT is saying about the Golden Dome has been picked up, mostly it seems, by Russian and Chinese outlets. Here he is on video from a couple of months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqpWkEs5XzI
He thinks it’s apple pie without the apples or the pie and doesn’t think much of Israel’s Iron Dome either.
I don’t know who Ted Postol is, but my initial search indicates he may not be the guy who should be paraded as the voice of reason when it comes to any dome, whether golden, iron, or colander. He’s clearly a Putin guy and, for example, doesn’t understand why Ukraine just doesn’t give up, already. The war in Ukraine is over! according to him.
I would MUCH rather have JPCOA and my Functioning Government back.
There is an axiom in the risk management practice – especially in critical infrastructure risk management – that when an entity implements a risk reduction measure in one place, risks increase in other areas. It’s not a rule you’ll see published anywhere, but I’ve never not seen it play out that way. The trick is to understand and manage both sides of the equations.
So, on one side, we have Whiskey Pete, with his squad-level brain, all aquiver over the prospect of the Golden Dome. Meanwhile, in Moscow and Beijing, the strategic thinkers are also all aquiver – “Please, please, build the Golden Dome”. The Golden Dome will be the Golden Goose which delivers Golden Eggs by the dozens.
We can spend all the time we want to talking about physics and contractors, but once again, we’ve got a bunch of zealots who never read (or read, but didn’t understand) “The Defense of Duffer’s Drift”.
Our primary adversaries (and those around the globe who simply hate us) will come up with all manner or ways to deplore the Golden Dome. That will “validate” the position of this administration, and encourage them to keep diverting more of our treasure into this scheme.
Even if the physics do work out and we get a Golden Condom for at least the lower 48, what about our extraterritorial or remote defense assets. (If Canada opts out and decides to rely more on their new OTH radar and their likely-acquired Saab 340 AEW&C platforms – a more tactical effort — that could leave us with a Golden Bandshell instead of a dome.) But those adversaries will love the way this could all unfold.
Every $100B spent on the Golden Dome reduces the funds available for our many OCONUS installations and partnerships. And I haven’t heard anyone talk about the resources needed to defend and ensure the availability/resilience of the Golden Dome itself. Regardless, we’ll end up with less capability to support our worldwide operations and military defense influence. That also means handing more and more soft-diplomacy over to adversaries like China and Russia, therefore giving many nations less incentive to cooperate and/or coordinate with use. Kiss off U.S. soft power.
Internally, the administration’s efforts to isolate America and increase the costs of staple goods and critical infrastructure could combine with a gradual impoverishment of the middle and working class – a problem for which they may find no solution.
This would be the flip side to that “risk reduction measure” at the top of this post – unmanaged (or unmanageable) redirection of risk.
Re Raven Eye’s comment: . . . . could combine with a gradual impoverishment of the middle and working class – a problem for which they may find no solution. Note: the administration is not interested in solving impoverishment of the middle and working classes — indeed, they WANT to throw the middle and working classes into poverty (with no housing, no healthcare, no employment, no food supply, no education opportunities, etc.)
Of course Whiskey Pete is carrying the water for the Orange Turd’s grandiose concept, just as Caspar Weinberger carried the SDI water for Reagan. Pete is no Casper, though. IMO, the SDI folks were serious about finding the limits of what could be done. There were many smart people enlisted to do this. This time the DoD is in a bind to quickly deliver a wrapped-up package of capabilities to stroke the Turd’s ego. That first package will be a re-branded and somewhat integrated set of capabilities that we currently have. DoD is still trying to figure out what would come after that. Also a question, what parts of the “homeland” should be protected? After 9/11 the D.C. area got more protection and is, arguably, already a “dome”. The heartland would only get a boost for the areas with nuclear missile silos. I wonder when the congress critters will starts saying “me too”, or NIMBY if they bring back the concept of the MX missile riding on a giant rail line to hide in a bunker in your neighborhood. Aah, the good old 80’s.
My guess is that the senior DoD will try to stall the Turd by repacking what already exists and then try to wait out the end of his term. From a budget perspective, DoD will never be able to absorb and spend that much funding, at least using the usual acquisition processes. Un-obligated funds are routinely snatched back by congress during mid year reviews. Will the Turd then get mad at them? Get your popcorn.
Great points, thank you.
Krasnov’s never managed to scrape the 80s off his shoe.
Title: “A Conversation Across Time”
Setting: A quiet, wood-paneled office in Princeton, New Jersey. A chalkboard filled with equations stands behind ALBERT EINSTEIN, who sits calmly sipping tea. Across from him, modern-day Defense Secretary PETE HEGSETH—wearing a tailored suit and a flag pin—leans forward, visibly frustrated.
⸻
HEGSETH:
Dr. Einstein, I appreciate your time. I was told if anyone could validate the physics behind the Golden Dome defense system, it’s you.
EINSTEIN:
Validate? No, Herr Hegseth, I can only offer you the truth. And the truth is indifferent to political enthusiasm.
HEGSETH:
Well, respectfully, the President believes this system is not only feasible, but necessary. A shield in the sky, neutralizing hypersonic threats in real time—it’s a game-changer.
EINSTEIN (smiling faintly):
A shield in the sky? That is not physics, my friend. That is mythology.
HEGSETH:
We’ve got engineers. Algorithms. Billions in appropriations. We just need the equations.
EINSTEIN:
Then you require not engineers, but magicians. What you describe—a global dome intercepting objects at Mach 10, in fractions of a second—would require faster-than-light processing, zero-latency sensors, and omnipresent energy fields. None of these exist. Not even on paper.
HEGSETH:
But we’ve already announced it. Congress is on board. The name is great—Golden Dome. Sounds patriotic. Biblical.
EINSTEIN (leaning forward):
It is not reality that concerns you, but optics. You mistake physics for narrative. Nature, unfortunately, is not swayed by branding.
HEGSETH (defensive):
So you’re saying we shouldn’t even try?
EINSTEIN:
Try, yes. But try honesty first. Tell the people the laws of the universe still apply, even to generals and politicians.
HEGSETH (pausing):
Well, we’ll see what DARPA says.
EINSTEIN (sipping his tea):
By all means. But when they answer with silence, remember—it is not because they lack ambition. It is because they understand gravity.
“…(even Whiskey Pete recognizes) …”
It appears that Whiskey is giving an Israeli general “unusal authority” to make decisions for the American military.
“…Israel’s favourite general and nicknamed ‘The Gorilla’, Gen Kurilla is understood to have been given unusual levels of authority by Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, to determine the American response to the escalating Israel-Iran conflict…”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/06/19/general-michael-kurilla-trump-hegseth-iran/
======
Wait…What? Whiskey Pete has given an Israeli general ” unusual levels of authority” “to determine the American response to the escalating Israel-Iran conflict.”
The drunkard is now farming out U.S. military responses to foreign generals? O.M.G. ***facepalm***
Kurilla may be “Israel’s favourite general,” but that doesn’t mean he’s an Israeli general. Kurilla’s a United States Army general as is shown also in the pic in the article you’ve linked.
***facepalm2***
Never mind. : /
You don’t get rid of a log jam by getting rid of the logs. You figure out how to untangle the logs.
Did the military chiefs really suggest cutting 75% of their scientists and engineers? Or did Musk suggest the cuts with the idea of picking up some talent? Is anyone in the government (with requisite expertise) going oversee the program?
“Gold Dome” name is hilarious, when you think about its value being in part that gold is so famously a soft and workable metal. But I guess it’s better than Magnesium Dome, if I remember my decades-ago chemistry class correctly.
Magnesium is pretty spectacular when it burns, yeah. (A lot of powdered metals do that, under the proper conditions. Not that anyone in the WH would know about stuff like aircraft flares and thermite.)
…because the effete namby pamby wannabe king likes everything gold – even his bathroom throne.
Given his infamous habit of stiffing contractors, I suspect his Golden Dome will end up being more of a very-unsatisfying golden shower. We’re a long way from home:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeC9Kx8_iqU
[FYI – link edited to remove tracking. Please do this in the future before sharing a link. /~Rayne]
If only Pete Hegseth knew what physics was. Presumably, he once knew, but he’s forgotten so much.
We are in the Age of Megalomania. Both of these stories are emblematic of that.
Teapot Dome was a leisurely walk in the park in comparison to what’s going down now, continuously and in every direction.
Megalomania? MAGAlomania?
‘Obsessed with fantasy, possessed with my schemes
I mixed reality with pseudo-god dreams’
cue Black Sabbath (turn it up as loud as you can):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT09jVPElsk
[FYI – link edited to remove tracking. Please do this in the future before sharing a link. /~Rayne]
My apologies, Rayne. I thought youtube links were free of tracking and didn’t check.
Will do so in future.
Aside from the physics end of the conversation, I was struck by the body posture of Hegseth. The way he was leaning away from Senator Kelly made him look like a boy who wanted to get away from a scolding.
Quote still relevant: “I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation programs! Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!”