Donald Trump has outlined his plans for a ‘Golden Dome’ missile defence system over the United States. The aim is to establish a shield capable of defending against all types of missile threats, including hypersonic missile systems, cruise missiles and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.
The name is a nod to Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ missile defence system, which protects Israeli territory against short-range rockets and projectiles, including mortar and artillery rounds.
The Golden Dome envisioned by Trump is very unlikely to be realised within the next three years
According to the plan, the US Congress is being asked to provide an initial ‘down payment’ of $25 billion, followed by an additional $175 billion over the next three years. Trump stated that the project would be completed within his current term and claimed it would protect the US homeland with a success rate ‘very close to 100 per cent.’
The most ambitious component of Golden Dome is its planned space-based interceptor system. The concept itself is not new. Space-based missile defence was first pursued by the Reagan administration nearly 40 years ago, but the effort was ultimately abandoned, primarily due to major technical challenges and its prohibitive costs.
Since the Cold War, and especially over the past decade, missile defence technologies have advanced greatly. Nevertheless, the Golden Dome envisioned by Trump (along with its projected costs) is almost certainly unrealistic and very unlikely to be realised within the next three years.
For one thing, several of the missile defence capabilities outlined by Trump, most notably space-based interceptors, do not currently exist in the US arsenal and would need to be developed from scratch. While the United States can likely use existing technologies to speed up the process, deploying a missile defence system in space will take years, if not decades.
Cost will also be a major hurdle. An independent study by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that deploying an effective space-based interceptor system capable of reliably defending against a limited North Korean nuclear missile threat would cost between $160 and $540 billion over 20 years. A system designed to defend against the much larger arsenals of China and Russia would cost several times more, likely resulting in a multi-trillion-dollar price tag, and would almost certainly not be 100 per cent successful in defending America from missile attacks.
While the costs of launching military systems into space has decreased drastically since the Cold War – thanks to the rise of private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX that now offer low-cost orbital launches – missile interceptor systems are still very expensive. Conservative estimates suggest that each space-based interceptor – the projectile which is launched to intercept an incoming missile threat – could cost between $100 million and $300 million over its lifetime. To be able to defend against missiles fired from all over the world at the United States, you would need thousands of these interceptors constantly in orbit.
The United States would also need to drastically expand its space-based surveillance and early warning capabilities to support such a system. This would entail additional tens if not hundreds of billions in funding for satellites capable of detecting and tracking inbound missile threats.
Beyond questions of cost and feasibility, serious political and military concerns remain. Even if the United States were to bear the immense expense of deploying a space-based missile defence system that is at least nominally capable of countering nuclear threats, there is little reason to believe that China and Russia would just stand back and let this happen. Both would almost certainly take steps – regardless of the cost – to maintain their retaliatory strike capabilities. It is likely they would either develop anti-satellite weapons or simply boost their warhead numbers.
Indeed, the deployment of a Golden Dome would accelerate the militarisation of space, potentially prompting other countries to follow suit. This may not ultimately be in America’s long-term strategic interests.
Finally, pursuing a comprehensive space-based missile defence system could divert resources and attention from other, more pressing missile defence priorities – some of which are already part of the broader Golden Dome project.
In the coming years, the United States faces a growing missile threat from China. Beijing’s air, ship, and submarine-launched cruise and ballistic missiles will soon be capable of hitting high-value military and infrastructure targets on American soil. Defending against this will require a layered air and missile defence system along the US coastline, as well as protecting critical assets deeper inland.
As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, while feasible, this form of missile defence is costly. But it will become even more challenging to build if already constrained resources are funnelled into an extremely costly space-based missile defence system. For the cost of a single space-based interceptor, the United States could procure between 25 and 75 PAC-3 MSE interceptors – which can defend against a number of Chinese conventional missile threats.
The opportunity cost of Trump’s vision is extremely high, and any serious pursuit would likely prove strategically disadvantageous to the United States.
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