President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced new details about his “Golden Dome” missile defense program, suggesting the sweeping effort to protect the United States from foreign attacks would be “fully operational” before the end of his term in 2029.
Speaking from the Oval Office alongside several Pentagon leaders and Republican lawmakers, President Trump said the U.S. had “officially selected an architecture” for the system and promised it will be “done in about three years.” Trump added that he’d tapped Gen. Michael Guetlein, currently serving as vice chief of space operations in the U.S. Space Force, to oversee the effort, which he said would cost about $175 billion.
“Once fully constructed, the ‘Golden Dome’ will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space,” Trump promised. He also suggested the Canadian government had expressed interest in collaborating with the U.S. on the program.
Experts on military development and weapons systems praised President Trump's move but cautioned not to read too much into the president’s remarks concerning cost and timeline.
"(Gen. Gutlein is a) great choice, and he is as well positioned as any officer I can think of to lead this effort," said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that advocates increased defense spending and military development.
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However, he conceded that "this is not going to provide 100% protection for every portion of the country. That's not realistic against every possible threat - ballistic, cruise, hypersonic and drone - that's not realistic. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to protect some parts as best we can and build that out over time”.
Earlier this month, Lieutenant General Sean Gainey, commander of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, sidestepped questions from reporters at the Pentagon about how widespread the protection from Golden Dome would be.
President Trump’s executive order to start the Golden Dome development process asked for an "architecture that can encompass several different types of threats, and really increase the scope and scale of that architecture and focus on protecting the homeland holistically,” Gainey said. He added it’s “really hard” to determine how much area the system will cover until further along in the process.
Bowman was also dubious of President Trump’s three-year timeline.
“We're not going to be able to get anywhere close to the more complete protection that the president discussed in three years,” he told Scripps News. “It's just going to take a lot longer than that.”
Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost to deploy a constellation of space-based interceptors capable of defeating just one or two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) would fall somewhere between $161 billion and $542 billion over 20 years, down from a previous high-end estimate of $831 billion due to what the agency said were improvements in cost-effective space deployment.
Representatives in various offices and departments within the Pentagon did not respond to inquiries about how the president arrived at his three-year timeline or $175 billion price tag.
And even that $175 billion cost may stretch federal budgets absent a significant boost in military funding. The Trump administration, in its fiscal year 2026 budget request, sought to maintain Pentagon funding at the same levels as the Biden administration, proposing a Pentagon budget of $893 billion while assuming an additional $150 billion in military appropriations would come from Republicans’ tax spending cuts package.
The president suggested Tuesday that $25 billion of those funds, pursued through Congress’s budget reconciliation process, would act as a “deposit” towards the Golden Dome program. Yet a number of Republican lawmakers, among them Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have suggested the president’s Pentagon funding request is inadequate.
“If one agrees with me that we're confronting the most dangerous geostrategic moment we've seen as a country since 1945, why the heck does it make sense to have an effective defense budget cut?” Bowman posed.
“I admire the Trump administration's peace through strength policy,” he continued, “but you got to put your money where your mouth is.”
Democrats, for their part, have criticized the program as far more costly than its worth and called into question which types of companies might stand to benefit from the lucrative contracts behind it. On May 1, a group of 42 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Defense Dept. requesting a “review” of the contract awards process and raising specific questions about whether Elon Musk – whose SpaceX company already receives billions in federal contracts and is reportedly the frontrunner to build the missile system – has played any role in it.
“If you find that Mr. Musk is using his role in the federal government to secure a Golden Dome contract for SpaceX, we ask that you refer the case to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation,” the lawmakers wrote.
SpaceX did not respond to an inquiry about the company’s involvement in the Golden Dome effort.
Asked about such criticisms during Tuesday’s Oval Office announcement, Trump was blunt: “Well, they’re wrong,” the president told reporters. “It’s about as perfect as you can have.”
