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https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/why-the-us-israel-golden-dome-project  

https://theduran.com/why-the-u-s-israel-golden-dome-project-is-just-a-boondoggle  

Why the U.S.-Israel ‘Golden Dome’ Project Is Just a Boondoggle Project

28 July 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On July 27th, Defense Industry Europe headlined “Lockheed Martin CEO says its laser weapon passed first Golden Dome missile-defense test, leading to new Pentagon contract weeks later”; so, I asked ChatGPT:

“Do Russia or China have something like this?: https://defence-industry.eu/lockheed-martin-ceo-says-its-laser-weapon-passed-first-golden-dome-missile-defense-test-leading-to-new-pentagon-contract-weeks-later/” and got:

Yes — but with important qualifications.

The article you linked discusses a Lockheed Martin laser integrated into the U.S. "Golden Dome" missile-defense architecture. That is a very ambitious goal: using high-energy lasers as one layer of a nationwide defense against missiles, alongside interceptors, radars, satellites, and other sensors. Passing an initial test does not mean the U.S. already has an operational laser shield against ballistic or hypersonic missiles; it means a component has met an early milestone.

Russia and China both have military laser programs, but they are generally believed to be focused on different missions.

Russia

Russia has several known or claimed laser systems:

• Peresvet
• Operational since about 2018.
• Believed primarily to blind or dazzle reconnaissance satellites and possibly defend strategic missile units against drones.
• Very little reliable technical information is public.
• Western analysts generally do not believe it is a strategic missile-defense laser comparable to the long-term goals of Golden Dome.
• Zadira
• Russian officials claimed in 2022 that it could destroy drones several kilometers away.
• Independent confirmation of its performance remains limited.

Russia has also discussed aircraft-mounted lasers and anti-satellite laser systems, but these remain poorly documented publicly.

China

China's laser program is generally considered broader and more mature than Russia's.

Known systems include:

• Silent Hunter
• Truck-mounted.
• Approximately 30–100 kW depending on version.
• Intended primarily against drones and other low-altitude aerial targets.
• Has reportedly been exported.
• LW-30
• Mobile laser air-defense system.
• Designed to engage drones and some precision-guided munitions.
• Intended as point defense rather than strategic missile defense.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has also assessed that China is developing increasingly powerful ground-based lasers capable of countering satellites.

Could either stop ballistic missiles?

This is where the answer becomes much less certain.

Current publicly known Russian and Chinese systems appear intended mainly for:

• drones,
• cruise missiles,
• optical sensors,
• reconnaissance satellites,
• and other relatively soft targets.

Intercepting a modern ballistic missile during boost, midcourse, or terminal flight is vastly more demanding because:

• the target is much faster,
• it is often farther away,
• the missile body is hardened,
• and the laser must hold sufficient energy on a very small spot for several seconds.

No publicly available evidence indicates that Russia or China currently operate an operational laser system capable of defending an entire nation against ballistic missile attack in the way envisioned by the U.S. Golden Dome concept.

Comparison

Capability	United States	China	Russia
Anti-drone lasers	Yes	Yes	Yes
Anti-satellite lasers	Yes (development)	Likely	Likely
Operational point-defense laser	Yes (various services)	Yes	Probably
Strategic laser missile defense ("Golden Dome"-type)	Under development	No public evidence	No public evidence

So, if by "something like this" you mean high-energy laser weapons, then yes—both Russia and China have them.

If you mean a laser integrated into a nationwide missile-defense architecture intended eventually to intercept ballistic and hypersonic missiles, there is no public evidence that either Russia or China has deployed an equivalent system. Their known laser programs are directed primarily toward tactical air defense, counter-drone missions, and anti-satellite applications rather than strategic homeland missile defense.

“And would a "Golden Dome" type laser be effective against hypersonic missiles?”

The answer is possibly — but only under certain conditions, and almost certainly not as a stand-alone defense.

The key point is that a laser's effectiveness depends much less on the target's speed than on how long the laser can keep a sufficiently powerful beam focused on the same spot of the target. Hypersonic missiles make that much harder.

Here are the main issues:

1. Tracking accuracy. A hypersonic missile (typically Mach 5–20) crosses the sky extremely rapidly and may maneuver unpredictably. The laser must continuously compensate for that motion.
2. Range. Laser intensity falls with distance because of beam spreading and atmospheric effects. A missile hundreds of kilometers away is far more difficult to damage than one tens of kilometers away.
3. Atmospheric distortion. Water vapor, dust, turbulence, and clouds degrade beam quality. Adaptive optics can compensate for some distortion but not eliminate it.
4. Thermal protection. Hypersonic vehicles are designed to survive enormous aerodynamic heating. Their heat shields and high-temperature materials may also make them more resistant to laser heating, though they are not necessarily optimized against sustained laser illumination.
5. Dwell time. Unlike a kinetic interceptor, which destroys a target in a brief collision, a laser usually must remain on essentially the same point for several seconds to burn through or critically weaken the structure. A maneuvering hypersonic vehicle reduces that effective dwell time.

That said, there are phases of flight where lasers might have greater promise.

• Boost phase. While the missile's rocket engines are still burning, it is relatively large, bright, and comparatively fragile. Destroying it during boost is generally considered the most attractive laser mission. The difficulty is that the laser platform must be close enough to the launch site.
• Terminal phase. If the missile is descending toward its target, a sufficiently powerful local-defense laser might damage it, but the engagement window is extremely short.
• Midcourse or glide phase. This is generally regarded as the most difficult phase for laser engagement because of long ranges, maneuvering, and atmospheric effects (for atmospheric hypersonic glide vehicles).

Does the U.S. believe lasers can do it?

The United States has invested in high-energy laser research for decades. The current concept behind Golden Dome is not that lasers would replace interceptor missiles, but that they could become one layer of a multi-layered defense alongside:

• space-based sensors,
• ground and sea-based radars,
• kinetic interceptors,
• command-and-control systems,
• and potentially directed-energy weapons.

In other words, the expectation is that lasers would complement conventional missile defenses rather than supplant them. Recent U.S. government analyses describe directed-energy weapons as promising but emphasize significant technical hurdles before they can reliably counter advanced ballistic or hypersonic threats.

How do experts view the prospects?

There is broad agreement that high-energy lasers are very effective against relatively slow, fragile targets such as drones, small boats, and some cruise missiles.

For modern hypersonic missiles, there is much less confidence. Many defense analysts believe lasers could eventually contribute to defense, particularly in boost-phase engagements, but there is no public evidence that any country has yet fielded a laser capable of routinely defeating operational hypersonic missiles under realistic combat conditions. The technical obstacles — power generation, beam quality, atmospheric propagation, tracking, and sustained dwell time — remain substantial.

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MY COMMENTS:

So, if Israel or America were to try to use such an anti-missile system against the type of missiles that Russia is the most advanced in and has increasing amounts of, which are evasive-maneuvering hypersonic missiles such as the hypersonic Mach-10 Oreshniks, the laser would fail because of the reasons that ChatGPT specified. The U.S. would have no use for such a ‘Golden Dome’, but perhaps Israel would, unless Iran also has evasive-maneuvering hypersonics. So, I asked ChatGPT “Does Iran have evasive-maneuvering hypersonics?” and the answer was “probably yes,” and mentioned the Fattah-2 missile as one example. Consequently, even for Israel, this ‘Golden Dome’ is mainly a boondoggle to fatten the wallets of the empire’s billionaires. It doesn’t make sense for the publics anywhere, but it does make big cents for the few who supercharge their net-worths this way, while their publics wither and maybe die from the enormous misallocation of resources. 

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.