President Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile shield could cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years, according to a report released this week, including a massive up-front cost to deploy the cutting-edge space-based missile interceptors widely seen as crucial to the project’s success.
Even at that price tag, the Golden Dome would not be an “impenetrable shield” that could fully stop an all-out missile assault on the American homeland, the Congressional Budget Office said in a major study that will fuel questions about the costs and viability of the ambitious project.
The CBO study is one of the most comprehensive looks at the potential costs of the Golden Dome. Mr. Trump wants it to be operational by 2028. The CBO conceded that estimating the costs is difficult given the lack of public knowledge about the Golden Dome architecture — many of those details remain highly classified — and outstanding questions about whether it will be designed to defend literally every square mile of the continental U.S. from potential missile onslaughts launched by China, Russia or other actors.
Even with multiple layers of coverage as part of the most advanced national missile defense system ever built, the Golden Dome still could not repel every incoming projectile, the CBO said.
“Although the notional NMD system analyzed by CBO would be far more capable than defenses the United States fields today, it would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch,” the report said.
The CBO report was released at a crucial moment in the Golden Dome’s technological development and its funding prospects on Capitol Hill. Should Democrats take control of the House or the Senate after the November midterm elections, they could seek to slow down the project or radically alter its scope. Sen. Jeff Merkley, the Oregon Democrat who formally requested the CBO’s Golden Dome study, seized on the new cost estimates to assail the project.
“The President’s so-called ‘Golden Dome’ is nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans. It will do little to advance American national security, while wasting at least $1.2 TRILLION of taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Merkley said in a statement this week.
The Trump administration, along with top military officials and leaders across the nation’s national security landscape, vehemently disagree with that assessment and argue that the Golden Dome is necessary because Russia, China and other actors are making huge investments in their ballistic and hypersonic weapons programs. Mr. Trump has cast the Golden Dome as a landmark project for U.S. self-defense.
“Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they’re launched from the other side of the world and even if they are launched from space. And we will have the best system ever built,” Mr. Trump said during a 2025 White House Golden Dome event.
Inside the price tag
The CBO study assumed four layers of missile interception: one in space, two wide-area layers on the ground, and separate, smaller regional sector layers that could provide extra protection for cities such as Washington or for highly valuable military facilities or national infrastructure.
The ground-based layers likely would rely heavily on existing missile defense capabilities, including Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, batteries. More complex space-based capabilities would be developed and incorporated into the broader system over time.
That layered structure, the CBO said, “would provide the capacity to simultaneously engage multiple missiles launched by an adversary.” Each layer could operate independently if an enemy attack disrupted interaction with national command and control, the report said.
That kind of comprehensive national missile defense system, the most sweeping ever built by any nation, could cost $1.2 trillion over two decades, the CBO said.
“Of the $1.2 trillion amount, acquisition costs for the notional system would total just over $1 trillion,” the report said. “That amount includes costs for the system’s major components — namely, the interceptor layers and a space-based missile warning and tracking system. It also includes costs for general, ongoing research and development and for improvements in the system’s integration and performance.”
The rest of the price tag comes from annual operations and support to keep the Golden Dome up and running, the study said.
Whether the CBO report conflicts with the Trump administration’s own estimates is difficult to know precisely. The White House initially estimated that the entire Golden Dome project would cost $175 billion over three years. Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, the U.S. Space Force’s vice chief of space operations and the administration’s point man on the Golden Dome, recently put the price tag at $185 billion, reflecting an additional $10 billion in space-based systems.
Only about $23 billion has been allocated to the program. The White House’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes another $17.1 billion, bringing the total to about $40 billion so far.
The biggest question is how much funding the space-based interceptor portion of the program will require in the short term. The CBO estimated that the space-based component — a 7,800-satellite constellation capable of engaging at least 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles launched simultaneously — would cost $723 billion just to acquire and deploy. Annual operational costs would drive that cost even higher.
Ground- or sea-based missile defense systems would be far cheaper to acquire and implement, costing about $139 billion.
The CBO estimated that each space-based interceptor satellite would cost $22 million. The CBO said the initial 7,800 space-based interceptors, or SBIs, would need to be followed by at least another 1,600 SBIs every year because each satellite has only a five-year service life.
The study details the tens of billions of dollars required for long-range discrimination radars, command-and-control systems, counterdrone programs to protect sensitive Golden Dome sites from drone attacks, and numerous other associated program costs.
Gen. Guetlein is responsible for coordinating all that. Whether he will truly have the autonomy and sole decision-making power needed to realize the proposal within the tight time frame laid out by Mr. Trump is unknown.
With numerous military branches, federal agencies, Pentagon offices and powerful defense contractors deeply involved, some defense insiders fear the Golden Dome could become a victim of its own ambition.
“Will we get there in three years? Not with the current bureaucracy. But they gave Gen. Mike Guetlein all the authority and responsibility to do that. Now will they let him?” said retired Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of U.S. Strategic Command, among other prominent military roles.
“If they don’t let him, you’ll not get there in three years. We won’t get there in six years, we won’t get there in 10 years,” Gen. Hyten told The Washington Times during a media roundtable at the Space Symposium in Colorado in April.
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