American energy and defense General Atomics expressed readiness to compete for contracts for the proposed 'Iron Dome for America'.
US President Trump had, a few weeks ago, called for the construction of a multilayer missile defence system capable of countering an array of threats similar to the 'Iron Dome' of Israel to guard against ballistic, hypersonic and advanced cruise missiles.
The claim by the company comes even as the 'Iron Dome for America' is only in the discussion stages.
General Atomics’ aeronautics unit head Dave Alexander told Breaking Defence that a long-range, high-resolution sensor with a “super wide area” of coverage has been under development for a decade and will be ready for production.
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“This Iron Dome is perfect timing for us, and I’d be willing to go into Trump’s office and tell them we’re ready to go today,” he was quoted as saying.
The company plans to field a collection of sensors capable of detecting threats as a ground-based capability and an air layer integrated onto MQ-9 Reaper drones.
A few weeks ago, Gen. Gregory Guillot, who heads the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), had said the top priority in our efforts to meet the direction of the iron dome order to establish increased domain awareness.
“What we’re trying to do, is just to grab available technology combined with this new sensor that we’re talking about, so that we can get out there and scale and do it for a very affordable price,” Alexander was quoted.
