For more than 60 years, the military has launched reconnaissance, communications, and missile warning satellites into orbit. Trump's executive order calls for the Pentagon to come up with a design architecture, requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield within 60 days.

Such defense systems are extremely costly” with “their effectiveness often being questionable,” one expert said.

But the vision for Trump’s next-generation system, including space-based lasers, is actually much closer to Ronald Reagan’s so-called Star Wars programme, launched in 1983 at the height of the cold war.

President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a “next-generation missile defense shield” that can “defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against—any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland” is technically and budgetarily difficult at best,