OPINION — “The Golden Dome for America strategy [President Trump’s proposed nationwide anti-missile defense system] remains centered on affordable and scalable capabilities. In the short-term, we will leverage battle-proven technologies and systems to provide immediate defense against current threats. By improving, multiplying, and integrating existing systems, we can field a credible defense now. However, defeating an increasing number of sophisticated, lower-cost offensive threats with a limited supply of multi-million-dollar [space- and ground-based] interceptors is an economically untenable proposition in the long term.”
That was from the prepared statement of Space Command General Michael Guetlein, Program Manager for the Golden Dome for America project, who appeared last Wednesday before a House Armed Services Strategic Subcommittee hearing held to provide an update on Golden Dome and other Department of Defense (DoD) missile defense programs along with other senior officers.
In announcing the Golden Dome program on January 27, 2025, Trump, in an Executive Order said, “The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the Nation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield; the United States will deter — and defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against — any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland; and the United States will guarantee its secure second-strike capability.”
Last May, Trump predicted, “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 are launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built.”
Guetlein, just before the two-hour session ended, again made clear, cost would be a factor in the system. “If we cannot do it affordable we will not go into production and that’s something that others have not understood. Because we are looking at the threats from a multi-domain perspective, to make sure I have redundant capabilities, and I don’t have single points of failure, so if boost- phase intercept from space is not affordable and scalable, we will not produce it because we have other options to get after it.”
During the hearing, Guetlein and the others made clear what a long, costly and complicated process the Golden Dome will involve.
For example, when Guetlein was asked how many American cities are currently protected by Patriot or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries – the U.S. Army’s existing ground-based anti-missile units he referred to above — he answered, “Today, none.”
I remember back in the 1950-to-1970 Cold War days when the U.S. Army deployed nuclear-armed Nike surface-to-air missile batteries around major cities such as Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and the Florida coast to intercept Soviet missiles or bombers. One example: back then 19 Nike anti-air sites ringed New York City.
As I read Guetlein, Golden Dome will require Patriot and THAAD batteries to be deployed to hundreds of U.S. cities to provide the protection President Trump envisioned.
Today, a single Patriot battery cost $1.1 billion — $400 million for the radar, control station and launchers plus another $690 million for the interceptor missiles, at some $4 million each. In addition, it takes 90 service personnel to operate that Patriot battery. A single battery can protect an area with a 42-mile defense radius, depending on the surrounding terrain, while its radar can track up to 50 potential targets and engage five simultaneously.
A Patriot battery acts as a terminal-phase shield against tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, and advanced aircraft.
The U.S. Army today operates roughly 15-16 Patriot battalions, consisting of some 60 active batteries, with some 30+ stationed within the U.S., while the remaining are deployed in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific region.
A single THAAD battery, designed to intercept short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, typically costs between $1 billion and $2.7 billion. A battery is comprised of six truck-mounted launchers, 48+ interceptors, the AN/TPY-2 radar, and fire control units. Again, some 90 personnel are needed to operate a THAAD battery.
As of June 2025, the Army had just eight THAAD batteries with four stationed overseas — in Guam, South Korea, Israel and Middle East — and four on U.S. Army bases at home.
Supplementing these terminal-phase defense systems, in considering this new Golden Dome concept, is the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), the only operational U.S. system theoretically designed to defend the entire U.S. against long-range ballistic missiles. However, GMD is designed to defend against limited ICBM threats from rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran and not the advanced ICBM capabilities of Russia and China.
GMD consists of a space-based and ground-based global network of sensors and radars to detect and track threats; command, control, battle management and communications; a fire control system that can calculate interception points; and just 44 Ground based Interceptors (GBI), 40 at Fort Greely, Alaska, and 4 deployed to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. President Trump has requested funding for 20 additional GBI interceptors to be deployed in the United States.
Each GBI has cost roughly $90 million and the GMD system as a whole has been estimated to have cost over $40 billion.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in 2021 awarded Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin contracts to develop a Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) as a follow-on to the GBI. In April 2024, the MDA announced it had selected Lockheed Martin as the sole prime contractor for the NGI program’s development phase.
The NGI plan called for the first new interceptors to be operational by 2028 and the final multi-year contract to be worth an estimated $17 billion.
When Guetlein told the House subcommittee last week “Golden Dome for America is not a single or static weapon system, but an integrated ‘system of systems,’” these three – Patriot, THAAD and GMD — are the basic systems I believe he was talking about.
There is also the Navy’s AEGIS shipboard anti-missile system, which also provides midcourse and terminal interceptions. But other than the one land-based AEGIS system in Europe, the remainder appear to be needed to protect the fleet.
Guetlein explained, “The architecture that we’re building is a very flexible open architecture design system so that we can continuously modernize it as the threat continues to mature. It is not a static architecture. So we will continue to upgrade along the way to get after the threat.”
He claimed his new system “will increase the number of threats we can defend against for a fraction of the cost…by building a modular, layered, defense-in-depth ‘system of systems’ where all components can operate independently and, therefore, can be replaced without having to rebuild the entire enterprise.”
Guetlein said, “We are going to deliver an operational capability by the summer of [20]28 that will be able to protect the homeland against a variety of threats. The ultimate objective architecture is going to be $185 billion. That’s $175 billion as identified by the President of the United States and an additional $10 billion to accelerate some space capabilities that were not originally part of our architecture.”
Another House subcommittee witness, Lieutenant General Heath Collins, Director of the Missile Defense Agency, introduced the idea that directed energy weapons, lasers, would also be part of the Golden Dome program.
“We are certainly putting more attention into potentially game-changing directed energy,” Collins said. “Capabilities in an unmanned air platform is what we’re focused on so we can bring that capability to the edge of the fight and thin the herd of UAVs [unmanned air vehicles] – potentially air threats and the like. So, we’re very into that and we’re driving through on that experimentation as we as we move forward.”
Speaking of Patriot and THAAD, Collins said , “We have some very proven systems with incredible capability…We are always driving to figure out how to drive the cost of those down. One through the acceleration in quantities that we’re going to talk about. We’re going to have a
savings in those. But those are pretty exquisite and unique weapons. As we move forward we are continuing to push directed energy and non-kinetics to change the cost equation.”
Near the close of the hearing, Gen. Guetlein was asked to sum up “in layman’s terms,” why Golden Dome was the right option to meet the current threat.
Guetlein responded in part, “We are seeing threats coming from the multi-domain environment meaning they’re coming from air, they’re coming from the sea, they’re coming from space, they’re coming from land. They [U.S. adversaries] have figured out how to get some low-cost threats in there as well to challenge our depth, our defenses.”
Guetlein concluded, “This is driving a demand for increased magazine depth [an adequate supply of interceptors] and a demand for lower cost solutions to get after these sectors. That’s what Golden Dome is focusing on…how to change that defense equation. And we’re doing that through partnerships with industry, partnerships with academia and partnerships with the national labs.”
I believe the truth is, as the U.S. discovered during the Reagan years, that missile offenses will always defeat missile defenses, and while an Iron Dome defense can be set up for a small country – Israel — no Golden Dome can be established to protect a large country such as the U.S.
And, ironically, trying to create a defensive system will eventually lead to a more aggressive offensive arms race than exists today.
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