More than four decades after the Reagan administration’s widely derided and mocked push to build a space-based ballistic missile defense system, President Donald Trump is reviving the Pentagon’s efforts to protect the continental United States from foreign projectiles with a defense shield he is calling a “Golden Dome for America.”
Speaking in the Oval Office alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump says the U.S. now has the technology to construct a system to combat not just the intercontinental ballistic missiles that were the subject of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, but against space-based and hypersonic missiles as well.
“In the campaign I promised the American people that I would build a cutting edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack, and that’s what we’re doing today,” said Trump, who added that he was “pleased to announce” that the U.S. has settled on an “architecture” for a “state of the art system” he promised would “deploy next generation technologies across the land, sea and space, including space based sensors and interceptors.”
The president said the proposed system would “integrate with our existing defense capabilities” and would be fully operational by the end of his term in January 2029. He also said it would provide an umbrella of protection for the U.S. and Canada for all manner of modern threats.
“Once fully constructed, the golden dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they’re launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built,” he said, comparing the proposed system favorably to the Israeli Iron Dome, which the Israeli Defense Forces have used for years to protect that small country from medium-range missiles launched by nation states such as Iran and the unguided rockets favored by Hamas and other militant, non-state actors.
Trump said the new U.S. system would do all that, and more by handling threats from “hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles and advanced cruise missiles” using a combination of ground-based interceptors, sea-launched interceptors and space-based systems built in the U.S. by American defense contractors.
“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland,” he said.
The president said the system would eventually cost upwards of $175 billion when completed, and would be started with an initial $25 billion to be allocated in the “Big Beautiful Bill” reconciliation package currently under debate in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Trump also told reporters he was putting Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the current Vice Chief of Space Operations, in charge of the project.
Hegseth, the former Fox News host who Trump tapped to lead the Pentagon over objections from defense experts and some Republican senators, praised the president for pushing the project, which he called “a generational investment in the security of America and Americans.”
“President Reagan, 40 years ago, cast the vision for it. The technology wasn’t there. Now it is, and you’re following through to say we will protect the homeland from cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, drones, whether they’re conventional or nuclear,” Hegseth said before turning the floor over to Guetlein, who noted that American adversaries had “become very capable and very intent on holding the homeland at risk” by “quickly modernizing their nuclear forces” and building out hypersonic missiles, new and more capable cruise missiles, more capable submarines and even space-based weapons systems along the lines of what Reagan had envisioned in the 1980s.
“It is time that we change that equation and start doubling down on the protection of the homeland. Golden Dome is a bold and aggressive approach to hurry up and protect the homeland from our adversaries. We owe it to our children and our children’s children to protect them and afford them a quality of life that we have all grown up enjoying,” he added.
Tuesday’s announcement follows the signing of a January 27 executive order directing the Pentagon to start on the project, which arose out of Trump’s admiration for the Israeli Iron Dome system’s effectiveness at shooting down Hamas rocket attacks.
The U.S. has spent years investing in ballistic missile defense systems with varying degrees of success.
Currently, the Pentagon operates a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system designed to shoot down ballistic missiles during the “middle course” of their flight when they are outside the earth’s atmosphere.
According to the Congressional Research Service, that system relies on radar and satellite systems connected to launch sites in Alaska and California, and while it can protect from some intercontinental ballistic missile threats it has never been considered a match for the strategic missile forces deployed by Russia and China.
Yet American defense officials haven’t seriously pushed for a comprehensive missile defense that could nullify the Russian and Chinese missile threats because U.S. strategic doctrine has always relied on America’s sea, air and land-based nuclear forces as a deterrent.
When reporters asked Trump who in the U.S. defense establishment had pushed for a new missile defense effort and cited assertions by the North American Aerospace Defense Command that current systems were adequate, Trump claimed there was “no current system.”
“We have certain areas of missiles and certain missile defense, but there’s no system. We just have some very capable weapons that hopefully we never have to use, but we have some very capable weapons now,” he said.
Pressed further on whether military commanders had asked for a new missile defense system, Trump admitted that it was his idea.
“I suggested it, and they all said: ‘We love the idea, sir,’” he said. “They wanted it badly, once it was suggested.”
