United States President Donald Trump has announced he would sign an executive order calling for the construction of an “Iron Dome” missile defence programme. On Monday, Trump addressed a retreat for Republican lawmakers at his south Florida golf resort, the Trump National Doral Miami, where he pledged to bolster US military assets with executive action later in the evening.
Trump also announced his intention to sign an executive order eliminating what he described as “transgender ideology” from the military, a move that could represent a significant rollback of the LGBTQ agenda being pushed in the armed forces.
Speaking at a Republican congressional retreat in Miami, Trump declared the policy as one of “four new executive orders” he plans to enact related to the military. “To ensure that we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military,” Trump said, reiterating his long-standing opposition to allowing transgender individuals to serve.
The order, titled ‘Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness’, was issued on Monday, just over a week after Trump’s inauguration, as part of a broader effort to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government.
The order says that military service should be reserved for those who are mentally and physically fit for duty. It outlines a policy focusing on troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.
Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who narrowly won Senate approval last Friday, is tasked with implementing the directive. Within 60 days, Hegseth must revise medical standards for military service to align with the order’s objectives.
Over the next month, he will set up a strategy to tackle the issues and submit it to Trump. The US will focus on “restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and reestablishing deterrence,” Hegseth said in a message to the armed forces on Saturday.
The executive order follows a series of actions by the new US president aimed at dismantling DEI programs within the federal government.
On his first day back in office, he signed orders rolling back protections for transgender individuals and terminating DEI initiatives, describing these efforts as moves to end attempts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”
Trump wants ‘Iron Dome’
The US President Donald Trump has also signed an executive order to build a missile shield for the United States that he has dubbed ‘Iron Dome’.
The Iron Dome is the name of one of the most famous air defence systems in the world. The air defence system of Israel is a part of its multi-layered air defence network. Since the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, the Iron Dome and other Israeli air defence systems have been critical in safeguarding Israelis from thousands of rockets and missiles launched by Hamas, Iran, and other Iran-backed groups in the region like Hezbollah and Houthis.
“We need to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield,” news agency AFP quoted Donald Trump telling a Republican congressional retreat in Miami on the day new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took office.
Although it remains a question as to why the US needs an Iron Dome system, as the Iron Dome was designed to protect civilian areas from missile threats, especially in regions with limited warning time. It is ideal for a small nation like Israel as it is surrounded by aggressors on almost all sides and gets regularly bombarded by them. It had to come up with system to save its civilians and cities in quick tie hence the Iron Dome was necessary.
However the US is on a continent far away from its usual adversaries, but now Donald Trump seems to be completely changing the US’ foreign policy. He is now a on a collision course with the neighbouring nations as well as Latin America, while China also continues to rise.
“You know, we protect other countries, but we don’t protect ourselves. And when Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many years ago, luckily we didn’t. We didn’t have the technology then. It was a concept, but we didn’t. And now we have phenomenal technology. You see that with Israel. We’re out of 319 rockets. They knocked down just about every one of them. So I think the United States is entitled to that. And everything will be made right here in the USA, 100 per cent” Trump said.
