“This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term, so we’ll have it done in about three years,” Trump said during a press conference in the Oval Office. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from the other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space.”

In addition, Trump announced that the Space Force’s Gen. Michael Guetlein will serve as the direct reporting program manager for Golden Dome. Currently serving as vice chief of space operations, Guetlein will have complete developmental oversight of Golden Dome — envisioned as a multi-layered homeland missile defense shield that will lean heavily on space-based systems.

Trump also signaled that Canada has requested to be part of the Golden Dome project, noting that their involvement would be a “fairly small expansion” but that the U.S. would work with the country on pricing and details.

Golden Dome was initiated following a January executive order that tasked the Defense Department to develop and field an “Iron Dome for America” — subsequently renamed as Golden Dome.

In a statement, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth noted that the Pentagon “has developed a draft architecture and implementation plan for a Golden Dome system of systems that will protect our homeland from a wide range of global missile threats.”

While Trump did not provide specific details on the chosen architecture, officials have previously said it would encompass proven terrestrial-based platforms, as well as several space-based systems — including new sensors and interceptors — that will allow the U.S. to destroy incoming missiles in early stages of flight.

“Our adversaries have become very capable and very intent on holding the homeland at risk while we have been focused on peace overseas,” Guetlein said during Tuesday’s press conference. “It is time we change that equation and start doubling down the protection of the homeland. Golden Dome is a bold and aggressive approach to hurry up and protect the homeland from our adversaries.”

In a statement, Hegseth said that the architecture “will be fielded in phases, prioritizing defense where the threat is greatest.”

However, developing and fielding Golden Dome on Trump’s aggressive three-year timeline will likely not come easy. 

Even with the estimated $175 billion price tag, a previous report from the Congressional Budget Office warned that the architecture would likely require a higher number of space-based sensors and interceptors than previously thought.

“For the lowest-cost alternative that CBO examines here, the reduction in launch costs would cause the total estimated cost of deploying and operating the [space-based interceptor] constellation for 20 years to fall from $264 billion to $161 billion (in 2025 dollars),” CBO wrote in a letter to lawmakers on May 5. “For the highest-cost alternative that CBO examines, the total estimate would fall from $831 billion to $542 billion.”

Republican lawmakers have already proposed a $25 billion down payment on Golden Dome under the reconciliation bill, but that legislation has yet to be approved by Congress.

Despite the budget uncertainty, Trump told reporters that he’s confident the funding for Golden Dome will come through.

“We’ll have a big phase very early, starting immediately with the $25 billion. It’ll cost about $175 billion [when] completed,” Trump said, adding that he believes Golden Dome will be fully operational “in two-and-a-half to three years.”

The Pentagon is currently working with the Office of Management and Budget to develop a plan for funding recommended capabilities that will be reviewed by Trump before he finalizes his budget request for fiscal 2026, according to a statement from Hegseth. 

Others have raised alarm over the technical feasibility of Golden Dome, particularly because many of the radars that would be in the architecture use the 3.1-3.45 GHz band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Pentagon officials and lawmakers have expressed concern that plans to auction off parts of the Defense Department’s spectrum to commercial telecommunications companies could inhibit Golden Dome’s ability to operate.

Lawmakers have also questioned Pentagon officials recently about other technical challenges with Golden Dome, such as the ability to field space-based interceptors and integrate multiple platforms under a single architecture. But Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, noted during Tuesday’s press conference that there are a number of U.S.-based companies — from traditional defense primes to VC-backed startups — ready to tackle the project.

“Our technology sector is head and shoulders above any other place in the world, and they’re going to be a key part of this,” Sullivan said.

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The Golden Dome for America initiative — previously referred to by Trump as the Iron Dome for America — calls for a multi-layered shield for the U.S. homeland. The Space Force is expected to play a central role in setting up the architecture — which emphasizes the need for space-based sensors and interceptors — and the service has already established a cross-functional “technical integrated planning team” and is reaching out to industry.

However, while Golden Dome is expected to include next-generation technologies, there could also be a role for some of the Air Force’s “traditional” capabilities such as fighter jets, suggested Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, the service’s director for force design, integration and wargaming.

Homeland defense is already a key element of the service’s force design vision, he noted during a Hudson Institute event Wednesday.

“This thought of a Golden Dome that protects the homeland, that is completely in line with the force design, and how we do that is completely in line. But I would suggest that the threat and the number of threats and how the threats are being presented, presents new challenges, but it also offers opportunities for … some of the capabilities, the traditional capabilities that we would call mission area three,” Kunkel said.

“When you think about how the Air Force and … the nation has defended itself, we defend ourselves as far away from our borders as possible. And when we build this Golden Dome, we can’t think of this Golden Dome as this thing that stops at the borders. And where we’ll use this air layer is in the countering of, you know, adversary bombers that are approaching our borders and shooting missiles from those borders. So you know that combined arms approach that we took in our force design, it’s equally applicable to this Golden Dome concept where there’s going to be a combined arms requirement for that to counter the different threats that we’re going to see,” he added.

Trump’s executive order directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to develop a plan to field additional missile defense tools noted that it must address the development and deployment of capabilities to defeat missile attacks before launch.

While sensors and weapons will play important roles in the multilayered missile defense architecture, battle management will also be key, Kunkel noted.

“The sense is a big part of it. The effectors are … a big part of it. But this battle management of the whole thing is also a big part of it. I know that Air Force is right in the middle of that with DAF Battle Network,” he said.

The DAF Battle Network fits in with the Pentagon’s next-generation warfighting concept dubbed Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2, which aims to better integrate the sensors, shooters and data streams of the U.S. military services and key allies and partners into a more unified network.

Kunkel sees AI as an enabler of these types of concepts.

“One of the major areas where I think artificial intelligence will help us is in decision-making, you know, that’s in battle management and those types of things, and understanding risk calculus and that. I think it’ll help us in autonomy,” he said. “There are opportunities there where AI can be introduced in some capabilities to achieve even longer endurance, you know, flights or longer-range weapons. And those are some of the areas we’re looking at. But I do think the area that is like ripe for exploitation for artificial intelligence is decision-making and how we do battle management.”

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Communist China is especially dangerous because, unlike other adversaries, it is able to compete with and potentially surpass the United States economically. Many of my colleagues in Congress have appropriately pointed out the urgency with which the United States needs to modernize our economy with the most state-of-the-art technology, a key component of which is building out a robust 5G telecommunications infrastructure. Information flow is increasingly central to our highly digitized economy, and the importance of a modern, optimized 5G telecommunications network is vital. I agree with my colleagues that we need to dominate next-generation wireless technologies to stay ahead of our adversaries and advance strong economic growth. Economic power is military power — just ask the totalitarian adversaries the United States has left on the dust heap of history.

You will find no disagreement in the halls of Congress on the importance of building out America’s 5G infrastructure. Many are frustrated with the slow pace at which the Federal Communications Commission and Congress have been moving to restore spectrum auction authority and open up more spectrum bands for commercial use. Unfortunately, when it comes to how to reach that goal, some are willing to sell Department of Defense (DOD) capabilities for short term economic gain. This would be just as disastrous to our national security in the long run as not developing our 5G networks. 

Many of our military’s most important radar systems operate on the 3.1-3.45 gigahertz (GHz) band of the spectrum, referred to as the lower-3 band. These radars are essential to homeland defense missions and protecting our troops overseas. Right now, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are conducting missile defense missions off the coasts of the United States and protecting our deployed forces in the Red Sea against sophisticated Houthi missile and drone attacks. The Navy’s Aegis Combat System relies heavily on the lower-3 band, using radars to track threats and guide weapons to targets. Forcing the DOD to vacate or share those portions of the spectrum would cost taxpayers dearly — the Navy alone estimates that it would cost them $250 billion to migrate their systems to other bands of the spectrum, and that would take time we do not have with the looming threat of a belligerent Communist China.

Furthermore, on January 27, 2025, President Trump issued a potentially game changing Executive Order directing the DOD to develop and build an “Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield for America.” Before the Senate Armed Services Committee this month, General Guillot, the Commander of Northern Command charged with protecting our homeland, confirmed that NORTHCOM needs unfettered access to portions of the spectrum, and that any Iron Dome for America concept is dead on arrival if the DOD has to vacate the lower-3 band and other crucial portions of the spectrum. In short, the binary choice many in the telecommunications industry are lobbying Congress to make would kill President Trump’s Iron Dome for America and continue to leave the U.S. homeland exposed to an array of long-range strike threats ranging from intercontinental ballistic missiles to cruise missiles to hypersonic weapons. The American people should not accept this. I agree with President Trump’s vision, and therefore want to safeguard the DOD spectrum necessary for developing and deploying an Iron Dome for America, ranging from point defense up to a space-based layer.

Advocates for restricting DOD’s use of the lower-3 band or portions of the 7 and 8 GHz band of spectrum argue that Communist China has been willing to build out some of their 5G infrastructure on those bands. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can arbitrarily turn off or blow out commercial use and infrastructure of any portion of the spectrum whenever they want with no recourse for civilian users, and provide their military primacy in spectrum use. Certainly, that is not a situation the U.S. telecommunications industry is interested in.

The telecommunications industry should abandon its quest to restrict the DOD’s use of the lower-3 band or require it to share all or a portion of the band — a course of action which would materially damage the national security of the United States. The DOD has developed exquisite radars on this portion of the spectrum precisely because of the unique physics there which enable them to function so effectively. There is a reason the CCP is actively advocating that other countries around the world build out their 5G infrastructure on the lower-3 band. It is to limit the capabilities of our most capable radars.

The twofold path forward must be (1) an aggressive pursuit of spectrum sharing technology for use throughout the spectrum (not just the critical lower-3 band), and (2) a thorough and candid assessment of what portion, if any, of the 7 and 8 GHz band of spectrum can be auctioned off to industry without harming national security. From there, Congress can give the spectrum auction authority necessary. This should happen quickly as 5G expansion remains a priority.  

As the United States engages in this competition with Communist China with a renewed vigor under the Trump administration, it is imperative that we not trade national security for economic prosperity. Now is not the time to degrade our military capabilities, especially those capabilities needed to defend our homeland from attack. We never want to send our troops into a fair fight. We want to give them every possible advantage to prevail with minimum losses. That includes crucial bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. I look forward to working with my colleagues to find a solution to the ever-increasing demand for spectrum usage, while acknowledging our need to restrict certain portions for national security.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, chair of the SASC Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, and also serves on the SASC Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities and the SASC Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

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Under the “Iron Dome for America” executive order published in January, Trump has tasked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to create a plan to field a multi-layered missile defense architecture for the U.S. homeland. Given how heavily the directive leans on space-based systems, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said the Space Force will likely have a “central role” in the architecture’s development.

“We are leaning forward establishing this technical IPT to start thinking about it from an overarching perspective,” Saltzman told reporters Monday.

With only a few weeks to develop a strategy and deliver it to the president, the Space Force’s new technical integrated planning team (IPT) is currently analyzing technological maturity, cost estimates and capability gaps of space systems that could be part of the architecture.

“What they’re going to do is pull it together and make sure everybody has got eyes wide open before they start saying, ‘Initiate a program here,’” a senior Space Force official said Monday during a background briefing with reporters. “It’s more of a data collection [of] what do we know, and identify what we know we don’t know.”

The directive calls attention to several ongoing space-based missile defense programs — such as sensors onboard the Missile Defense Agency’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Layer (HBTSS) satellites and the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) tracking layer. Both the MDA and SDA have released respective requests for information that ask for industry feedback on possible space-based capabilities for the Iron Dome for America architecture.

The Space Force official noted that the specificity of the Iron Dome for America directive has been helpful for the IPT as they conduct their analysis.

“What that allows us to do is say, ‘Hey, which of the programs that we already have either in place or in development directly support these requirements?’ And these become high priority, obviously, because they came out in an executive order,” the official said. “Then you do a quick gap analysis — what don’t we have [in] capability or what is so far left in terms of tech readiness?”

At the same time, Trump’s EO calls for deployment of “proliferated space-based interceptors,” a new capability that would be able to defeat enemy ballistic missiles during their boost stage of flight. The Space Force official admitted that they weren’t confident of how far along the Space Force or other organizations are in development of the technology, but added it would likely require more time to develop and field.

“One of the worst things to do is bite off a technical challenge that you can’t solve in a reasonable cost frame [and] a reasonable timeframe,” the official said. “And so we’ll be very forthright with … where we think the technology stands at this juncture. I think we’ve got some research that would give us some indications.”

The Space Force official noted that several organizations — such as the Air Force Research Lab, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Strategic Capabilities Office and others — are conducting research on future capabilities and their technical feasibility.

“That’s why we call it a technical IPT, because it is a search for what technologies are out there,” they said. “What’s required, and where are we in the levels of their readiness? Can we pull it together in a reasonable time frame? That is exactly what’s going on.”

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SDA published a solicitation on Wednesday calling for “executive summaries” from vendors interested in performing 60-day studies focused on leveraging the PWSA and other capabilities into the “Iron Dome for America” — a sprawling effort to improve the United States’ defenses against advanced adversary missile threats. Trump’s executive order about the capabilities, issued Jan. 27, envisions a modernized, multilayer missile defense posture that would lean heavily on space-based systems, including the PWSA.

According to the solicitation, SDA is interested in executive summaries of “novel architecture concepts, systems, technologies, and capabilities” to accelerate future PWSA tranches or create new capability layers that would address other emerging requirements.

“SDA is soliciting executive summaries to study and provide recommendations for an Iron Dome for America architecture. These studies will inform SDA on concepts for such an architecture and how the PWSA could contribute,” the document stated.

Trump tasked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to develop a strategy that includes “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements and an implementation plan” and deliver it to the president by March 28.

While the directive calls for development of new space-based interceptors, it also pushes for expediting ongoing efforts — including “development and deployment of a custody later of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture,” the EO states.

The PWSA is a planned mega-constellation comprising hundreds of satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit, with a transport layer for data relay and communications payloads and a tracking layer for missile warning and tracking sensors. The program is led by SDA, which intends to launch the satellites every two years in “tranches.”

Trump’s executive order gives the agency the green light to develop and deploy a custody layer within the PWSA architecture. Whereas tracking sensors focus on detecting potential missile threats to provide early warning, a custody layer maintains continuous surveillance on specific targets for “left-of-launch” missile defense.

Some of the agency’s ongoing efforts are already developing custody layer capabilities, such as the experimental Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter (FOO Fighter) program and the Gamma variant of SDA’s Tranche 2 Transport Layer. But the new call to industry goes a step further by asking for “opportunities to accelerate technically mature and novel phenomenologies into the PWSA Custody Layer and Tracking Layer.”

The solicitation also seeks input on ways to fast-track Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) capabilities into the PWSA’s tracking layer, referring to sensors deployed on a constellation of demonstration satellites developed by the Missile Defense Agency that launched last year.

SDA has since decided to adopt the same types of sensors — which use high-fidelity, medium-field-of-view cameras suited for sending targeting data to interceptors — in some of its tracking layer payloads. 

Meanwhile, MDA published its own request for information last month that similarly sought industry feedback as to how it could contribute to Trump’s Iron Dome for America. The document asked industry to provide details on “new system-level capabilities, component concepts, upgrades to existing capabilities, or new [concepts of operations] across the kill chain” that could be delivered or demonstrated in two-year time periods, beginning no later than the end of 2026.

MDA’s RFI points to lines of effort outlined in Trump’s executive order, including acceleration and deployment of HBTSS. It does not, however, specify whether that would mean a follow-on program to operationalize the constellation or development of new medium-field-of-view cameras that would deploy on other satellites.

During a posture hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command Gen. Gregory Guillot underscored HBTSS as a key system for accurately tracking hypersonic missiles.

“We have some capability already that can detect intercontinental ballistic missiles, but those are fairly easy to track because of the ballistic profile,” Guillot said. “Whereas the hypersonics are both maneuverable and much faster, so getting the space-based capability to detect and track those that could cue defeat mechanisms in the end is imperative.”

SDA’s call to industry also outlines six other potential topics for the 60-day study: high-fidelity modeling, simulation and analysis capabilities; optimization of the PWSA’s transport layer in supporting missile defense; supply chain analysis; space and ground architectures; on-orbit sensor data processing, multi-sensor track fusion and low-latency dissemination; and software solutions to enable autonomous satellite operations.

According to the solicitation, the agency is considering awarding multiple vendors to conduct studies and “strongly encourages” submissions to be delivered no later than Feb. 28.

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