In the massive reconciliation bill still working its way through the House, Republican lawmakers have included $25 billion in funding for a military project known as the “Golden Dome,” a cutting-edge defense system intended to protect the U.S. from missile attacks.
The project, which has been talked up by President Trump and appears to be based conceptually on Israel’s famous Iron Dome defense system, is still very much in the embryonic stage, and may be little more than a name and a general concept at this point. Harkening back to President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” defense initiative of the 1980s, which was eventually abandoned, Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the development of the idea.
The $25 billion provided by Congress would certainly jumpstart the program, but it’s not clear how that money would be spent. Defense experts have warned that the project would likely take many years and cost many billions of dollars. The Congressional Budget Office recently sketched out some cost estimates for various proposals, which ranged from $160 billion to $528 billion, stretching over two decades.
Those estimates are likely to be on the low side, many experts believe, given the number of design questions that need to be answered and technical issues that need to be resolved, including the nature of the interceptors that would be deployed and the depth or “layering” of the defensive shield.
Gen. Chance Saltzman, the chief of space operations for U.S. Space Force, told Politico last week that unique defense technologies are always shockingly expensive. “I’m 34 years in this business. I’ve never seen an early estimate that was too high,” Saltzman said. “It’s the nature of the business. I think that we don’t always understand the full level of complexity until you’re actually in execution, doing the detailed planning.”
Critics say the cost and complexity would only be made worse if the system is based in space, as expected. John Tierney, the executive director for the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation and who held hearings on missile defense when he served in Congress, said the program is “basically a scam” that is unlikely to work as intended, but will waste hundreds of billions of dollars along the way.
Tierney noted that complex and expensive defense systems run into trouble when the offensive weapons they are targeting are far cheaper and easier to produce — a problem that is greatly amplified in a space-based defense system targeting earth-based weapons.
“Strategically, it doesn’t make any sense,” Tierney told CNN. “Technically, it doesn’t make any sense. Economically, it doesn’t make any sense.”
The bottom line: Expect Congress to start funding Trump’s Golden Dome, but expect to hear a lot of complaints about cost and complexity, too.