The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has committed $25 billion on Tuesday to build his long-awaited Golden Dome, a missile shield similar to the one used by Israel for defense. A gesture almost symbolic, as that amount would represent a small fraction of the actual cost of such a large-scale project, something that has been in the American imagination, especially among Republicans, since at least the 1980s. Leading the project will be General Michael Guetlein, second in command of space operations for the Space Force. "We are the only ones who will have this unique technology", boasted the president on Tuesday.
"During the campaign, I promised the American people to build a cutting-edge missile shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attacks, and that is what we are doing today. I am pleased to announce that we have officially selected an architecture for this cutting-edge system that will deploy state-of-the-art technologies on land, sea, and space, including sensors and space interceptors. Canada has reached out to us and wants to be part of it, so we will talk to them. The design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term," promised the president. "Today we are completing the work that President Ronald Reagan started 40 years ago to forever eliminate the threat of missiles in the United States."
Trump, accompanied in the Oval Office by Defense Secretary, the controversial and questioned Pete Hegseth, wanted to give some shape to a colossal project, which requires a huge investment, just as Congress is debating the Budget for the coming years, and a coordinated effort between the administration and the leading companies in the sector. A shield requires the latest technology in radars, sensors, satellites, and of course missile batteries deployed throughout the United States.
"The Golden Dome is a turning point, a game changer," said Hegseth. "It is a generational investment in the security of the United States and Americans. President Reagan, 40 years ago, presented the vision. The technology did not exist. Now it does, and you are fulfilling the promise that we will protect the homeland from cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, drones, whether conventional or nuclear. Some said we didn't need it. Since he signed the executive order on January 27, we have made rapid progress on this, but we are here today, and this is just one stage in defending the homeland, something entrusted to us, and we will continue working until it is completed," stated General Guetlein in a brief intervention.
Trump ensures that the Dome will begin to take shape thanks to the "great and beautiful bill" he wants to push through, for which he spent the morning in Congress pressuring his most skeptical legislators. But not everyone is convinced with an economy under a lot of strain and forecasts of a deficit and runaway debt in the next decade. Either Trump gives up tax cuts or huge Defense projects, say the most fiscally conservative Republicans, very concerned about a proposal that will in any case skyrocket the current imbalance in the accounts.
In his address, Trump said that "we are probably talking about a total cost of $175 billion once completed", but that is the lower and unlikely end of the range. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a large-scale system capable of shooting down ballistic and cruise missiles could cost well over $500 billion over the next two decades. In its latest estimates, the office maintains that improvements in missile launch services technology would make a constellation of space interceptors (SBI) "designed to neutralize one or two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) fired against the United States by a regional adversary, such as North Korea" cheaper than initially thought. However, it also assumes that "threats and U.S. policies have changed since the publication of these studies, which could increase the size and total cost of a constellation of interceptors."
In the most optimistic scenario, the "estimated total cost of deploying and operating the SBI constellation over 20 years would decrease from $264 billion to $161 billion (in 2025 dollars). For the higher-cost alternative that the CBO examines, the total estimate would decrease from $831 billion to $542 billion," says its report.
The idea of this Dome, which should be called Steel Dome, but which Trump has named golden due to his obsession with gold and that color, has been on the table since the Republican's first term, and as soon as he returned to the White House this year, he began mentioning it over and over again. He signed an executive order in January calling for a multidimensional national defense program that would integrate existing Pentagon programs with new technologies under development, such as space sensors and weapons.
"As you know, our adversaries have become very capable while we have focused on peace abroad. Our adversaries have rapidly modernized their nuclear forces, building ballistic missiles capable of carrying massive warheads, hypersonic missiles capable of attacking the United States within an hour, traveling at 6,000 miles per hour, cruise missiles that can evade our radar and defenses, submarines that can stealthily approach our coasts, and, worse, space weapons. It is time to change that equation and start redoubling efforts in homeland protection. Golden Dome is a bold and aggressive strategy to quickly protect the homeland from our adversaries. We owe it to our children: to protect them," said the general.
In his speech to both houses of Congress in early March, he stated that as commander in chief, his priority would be "to build the most powerful army of the future. As a first step, I ask Congress to fund a missile shield, a state-of-the-art Golden Dome, to protect our homeland, entirely made in the United States. Ronald Reagan wanted to do it a long time ago, but the technology simply was not available, not even close. But now we have it. It's amazing, actually. Others, like Israel have it, other places have it, and the United States should have it too, right? This is a very dangerous world. We should have it. We want to be protected," he affirmed to applause from his party.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stated last week that China and Russia are developing new hypersonic missiles designed to evade traditional air defense. According to intelligence information, they could increase their arsenals to up to 5,000 cruise missiles by 2035, theoretically being able to attack almost the entire continental United States.
Democrats have expressed doubts about the efficiency of a defense shield. The United States already has 44 missile interceptors deployed in California and Alaska, as emphasized a few days ago by Senator and astronaut Mark Kelly (Arizona Democrat). "I would love to build a system that really works 100%," he said, but "a system that protects the entire country would be incredibly difficult and expensive, and we are not sure it will work," he insisted.
Big companies, on the other hand, have few doubts. "The Golden Dome for the United States is a revolutionary concept that promotes peace goals through strength and President Trump's vision of deterring adversaries from attacking the homeland. This next-generation defense shield will identify incoming projectiles, calculate their trajectory, and deploy interceptor missiles to destroy them in mid-flight, protecting the homeland and projecting American strength," explains the ongoing project by Lockheed Martin. "This is a mission on the scale of the Manhattan Project, urgent and crucial for U.S. security. We are ready to collaborate with the best companies in the sector, both emerging and technologically advanced, to protect our nation," they state positioning themselves to lead the development.