Pentagon says Golden Dome covers everyone, CBO says it will cost $1.2T
The Pentagon told The Center Square its Golden Dome missile shield will protect the entire homeland for $185 billion.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates a notional system consistent with the administration’s missile defense goals could cost about $1.2 trillion over 20 years, roughly $9,300 for each of the nation’s 129.2 million households.
A Pentagon official in the Golden Dome program office, who asked to be identified that way, said the system “protects all Americans to include Guam, Alaska and Hawaii,” and is meant to defend all of America, “not part of America.”
The official would not say which areas the system will defend or whether it uses U.S. Northern Command’s defended asset list, citing operational security, and did not address testimony that not every American can be protected. Northern Command, which maintains the military’s list of defended assets, referred questions to the Office of the Secretary of War, which responded through the program office.
A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who chairs the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, told The Center Square the program’s specifics are classified. The program office briefed CBO for the first time Sept. 25, four months after the estimate was published, and Fischer’s office said the senator “is glad” the two can now “work toward providing a more accurate cost estimate.”
The difference between the two cost figures is more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money, though the two estimates do not cover the same period. The household figure is based on Census Bureau counts for 2020 through 2024. The full $1.2 trillion is roughly a year’s worth of federal net interest payments on the debt; the government spent $1.05 trillion on net interest in the first 11 months of this fiscal year, according to CBO’s monthly budget review for August.
Among the unanswered questions at the subcommittee’s hearing Tuesday: which parts of the country the system will actually defend.
The Pentagon official said the $185 billion covers the program’s objective architecture through 2035, and that the office would need more time to say what the figure does and does not include. CBO’s figure covers 20 years of building and operating the system, and the agency said the department’s number “appears to cover a shorter time frame” and may reflect a different scope of activities and budget categories.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, the subcommittee’s ranking member, pressed the witnesses on what the program’s name promises.
“The implication of the term Golden Dome is a national coverage,” King said. “I think all of you will agree that that is just not in the cards.”
Asked whether every American could be protected under the system, David Trachtenberg, a former deputy under secretary of defense for policy, replied, “No, I’m not saying every citizen can be protected.”
King pressed further.
“So if that’s the case, who decides who’s protected and who isn’t?” he asked.
Trachtenberg said he did not have insight into the architectural plans and expected the system would be deployed in phases.
“I’m a firm believer, Senator, in the old Air Force recruiting motto, aim high,” he said.
Later in the hearing, King returned to it.
“Is it going to protect Cleveland but not Sioux Falls? Is it going to protect New York but not Richmond?” he asked. “I think that’s an unanswered question. And as near as I can tell, protecting the entire country is impossible. And so there are going to be choices made.”
He said the choices have to be made public.
“I just think we need to be a little more real about this and honest with the American people,” King said.
King based the Cleveland and Sioux Falls comparison on Guam, where Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, who runs the Guam Defense System Joint Program Office, told the subcommittee in May 2025 that the island’s missile defense represents “about an $8 billion investment.” Rasch said that figure was not new spending but the cost of systems the services were already building that would be located on Guam.
CBO’s Golden Dome estimate covers the entire United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, and puts the 20-year total at $1.2 trillion in 2026 dollars. The space-based interceptor layer accounts for about $743 billion of that.
Without it, the same system would cost $448 billion over 20 years, according to CBO’s written testimony, though the agency said such a system would not meet the objectives in President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order.
CBO told The Center Square it did not estimate what share of the U.S. population or land area the system would cover, though its testimony says 35 regional sectors would be enough to protect most of the U.S. population. It has not estimated a total cost for an architecture protecting a limited set of sites.
Tom Karako, who directs the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and testified Tuesday, wrote in his prepared statement that defended asset lists and other operational details “should remain closely held.” He also told King that the place to start in deciding what Golden Dome protects is Northern Command’s defended asset list.
Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program’s director, wrote in a Sept. 24 Washington Post opinion piece that estimates “approaching $1.2 trillion and higher” are “sensational projections” that “envision a hypothetical system using legacy technology and outdated cost models.” He wrote that his office has briefed congressional committees “dozens of times over the past year.”
CBO, which is not a congressional committee, told The Center Square it received no information from the program office before publishing its May estimate.
Karako told the subcommittee that both Golden Dome and the broader munitions effort “will stand or fall on 2027 funding.”
The fiscal year ends at midnight. Congress provided about $25 billion for Golden Dome in the 2025 reconciliation law. The administration’s 2027 request seeks $17.5 billion for the program, $17.1 billion of it contingent on a reconciliation package that has not passed.
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