BLUF: Golden Dome - One Year Later
This time last year - to much fanfare and just as much skepticism - President Trump announced the launch of a massive government program to develop and deploy a missile defense system that would protect the US homeland called, Golden Dome. As Secretary Hegseth put it, Golden Dome is an essential step in reasserting the U.S. military’s capability dominance and deterring our adversaries from utilizing aerial threats.
For those not familiar, the US does currently have an interceptor system, but it is only capable of shooting down missiles during the midphase of a bogey’s flightpath. Golden Dome will take that a step further.
President Trump wants the dome active by 2028, but there are many strategic roadblocks to getting the project off the ground. The program’s director, US Space Force General Michael Guetlein, really can’t move anything forward until the Pentagon decides how experimental space-based systems will be implemented into the Golden Dome. Even so, Gen. Guetlein recently said that the Pentagon has adopted a strict schedule to ensure the system will be able to defend “the entire nation” from all aerial threats by 2028 and even more potential threats by 2035.
Even if we are a year out with little physical progress towards the Golden Dome, the foundation for a successful missile defense policy does seem to be being built. Last year, Congress appropriated an initial $23 billion to fund the initial Golden Dome contracts.
While we wait to see what becomes a reality, let’s remind ourselves that even if all of the technology was ready to launch today, it would still have to make it through the Pentagon’s acquisition process which is no easy feat in and of itself. So with a project as ambitious and technologically advanced as Golden Dome, should we honestly expect it to stay on schedule and be ready by 2028?
Color us quite skeptical. What we are confident of is that everyone - uniformed military and government contractors alike - is motivated to move the ball down the field, so expect to see some type of significant movement before we hit the two-year mark.
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