Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense program—ordered in an executive order early in his first week in office and pitched as a “Golden Dome for America” system—has drawn a far higher price tag than the one Trump previously cited, according to a new Congressional Budget Office analysis released Tuesday. The CBO estimated the program would cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years, dwarfing the $175 billion figure Trump gave last year.
The CBO report, as described by AP, said it reflects “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific Administration proposal,” underscoring that its cost projection is not a precise bill of materials for an exact administration design. The report also noted that the analysis was shaped in part by a lack of details from the Defense Department about what and how many systems would be deployed, which it said makes it “impossible to estimate the long term cost” for Golden Dome.
The program is part of Trump’s push to place weapons in space, and the executive order backing Golden Dome cited a growing threat from next-generation strategic weapons. In that order, Trump wrote that “over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex” and pointed to “peer and near-peer adversaries” developing next-generation delivery systems.
The concept for the missile defense system draws at least partly on Israel’s multi-tier defenses, described in the AP story as often collectively referred to as “Iron Dome.” The envisioned U.S. “Golden Dome” includes ground- and space-based capabilities intended to detect, intercept and stop missiles at major stages of a potential attack.
AP reported that Congress has already approved roughly $24 billion for the initiative through Republicans’ large tax and spending measure that Trump signed into law last summer. The scale of the CBO’s projected total also lands in a broader political debate about who would pay for the program and what the Defense Department can justify to lawmakers, with critics pointing to the size of the estimate relative to Trump’s earlier number.
Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, director of the Golden Dome project, addressed the program’s cost assumptions in testimony last month. AP reported that Guetlein told lawmakers that various groups estimating costs “just take the cost of a legacy system and they multiply it out,” and he said, “That is not what Golden Dome is doing,” adding that “We are laser focused on affordability.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., requested the CBO estimate, and AP reported that he responded by saying the missile defense project is “nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans.” Merkley’s criticism followed last May’s Trump estimate that Golden Dome would cost $175 billion, and it came as the CBO’s prior analysis last year had already put the space-based components at up to $542 billion over 20 years.
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