Trump announces $175B for Golden Dome defense shield over America – Source: go.theregister.com

In a White House press conference on Tuesday President Trump announced his plans for a defensive network of missiles, radar, space surveillance, and attack satellites that he promised would protect America.

In January Trump signed an Executive Order for what he called the “Iron Dome of America” that would protect the US from ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles. The order called for a mix of space-based interceptors to counter ballistic missile launches, a constellation of small, linked surveillance satellites dubbed the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture [PDF], and missiles based on land and aircraft capable of neutralizing any threat.

The plan is now called Golden Dome, presumably after the president’s favorite color, and Trump announced the first $25 billion in funding would come when his “big, beautiful” finance bill is submitted to Congress. Heading up the scheme is General Michael Guetlein, vice chairman of the US Space Force, and Trump said the Dome would be operational by the time he leaves office.

The president also said that Canada had also asked to be part of the Dome project. He said he was amenable to that, so long as the Canucks paid their way. Furthermore, he said the entire system would be made in America because Silicon Valley was “the best in the world.”

“We think it’s going to be about a little less than three years,” he said when asked about the timeline.”Ronald Reagan wanted it many years ago but we didn’t have the technology. We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.”

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While America has been dabbling in missile defense for more than 70 years, it really kicked off with Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative – aka Star Wars. This envisaged ground-based interceptors that could knock out incoming missiles and satellite weapons systems that could intercept rockets in flight.

The satellite interceptors proved too experimental and expensive but 40 years later, at a cost of around $350 billion, the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is in operation. The system has 40 interceptor rockets in Alaska and four in California, all ready to shoot down an incoming ballistic missile from North Korea or parts unknown. In tests [PDF] it works 57 percent of the time, and that’s when we know the launch time and target destination, and it costs around $4 billion a year to operate.

The interceptor rockets on the GMD are designed to disable a ballistic missile as it travels out into space and back down to Earth. But the president is now talking about something much larger in scale, with a system that can knock out low-flying hypersonic and smart cruise missiles, as well as submarine-based weapons.

This will take a global early warning system and that’s where Golden Dome’s satellite network comes in. The plan envisages a network of interconnected satellites that would spot launches early and space-based interceptors that would be able to intercept any threat.

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This isn’t going to be cheap. According to a report [PDF] from the Congressional Budget Office earlier this month a space-based system like this that was capable of knocking down “one or two” ICBMs would cost between $161 billion to $831 billion over the next 20 years. Given defense contractors are involved it’s unlikely to be at the cheaper end of the spectrum.

So what happens if more than one or two rockets come over? According to a 2024 Department of Defense report [PDF], China currently has around 400 ICBM rockets capable of reaching the US; 550 launchers; and six ballistic missile submarines. Russia has 306 ICBMs capable of carrying 1,710 nuclear warheads, Congress reports, and 192 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Even assuming the opposition doesn’t play it smart and send over a few dummy rockets, as Russia has already done with drones in Ukraine, the Golden Dome systems wouldn’t be able to stop even a medium-sized exchange. In addition, it appears that Russia and China have equipped some of their missiles with decoys to make life even more difficult for defenders.

So with the Golden Dome looking increasingly unviable as a defense, why is it being done? Well, a lot of people will make a lot of money from it. Elon Musk will be happy to help launch those satellites (for a fee) and defense contractors are likely to be salivating at the thought of a blank check, and Trump said today that Congress would fully fund the project.

“It’s amazing how easy this one is to fund,” he said. “Some funding is tough, some is easy. When we say we’re going to save everyone’s lives in a crazy world it seems to be very easy to get.” ®