Lawmakers Seek Next Steps on Golden Dome

Republicans in Congress are continuing to advocate for President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield initiative. Agencies have begun soliciting proposals for components of the initiative using funds provided by the reconciliation bill passed over the summer. Meanwhile, Democrats continue to raise concerns about the Dome’s cost and fundamental viability.

Golden Dome, as envisioned in the president’s executive order issued in January, would be capable of protecting the U.S. against “any foreign aerial attack,” including from ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The order represents a seismic change in U.S. missile defense policy, which previously focused on defending against a relatively small attack from countries such as North Korea or Iran rather than shielding against any scale of attack from countries with larger arsenals, such as Russia or China.

Since the executive order, Republicans have appropriated nearly $25 billion for Golden Dome, including $7.2 billion for the development and procurement of military space-based sensors, $5.6 billion to develop space-based and phase intercept capabilities, and $250 million to develop directed energy capabilities, via the reconciliation megabill passed in July. That bill passed in a party-line vote, 218 to 214. Additional funding from Congress will likely have to flow through an appropriations process that secures some Democratic votes.

Furthermore, the House and Senate appropriations proposals for the Department of Defense both state that DOD has not provided sufficient details on the plan or its feasibility. The Senate report calls the $25 billion in reconciliation funds a “down payment” that it hopes will provide “near-term enhancements” to the United States’ air and missile defenses, but also states that the shield Trump envisions will take years of work and additional spending. Members of both the House and Senate also framed funding for existing missile defense programs in the National Defense Authorization Act proposals for fiscal year 2026 as boosts for Golden Dome.

Trump announced in May that the project would cost $175 billion and said he expects it to be “operational” before the end of his term. The same month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that, with lower launch costs, the lowest-cost option for deploying and operating space-based interceptors for 20 years would be $161 billion, while the highest-cost option would be $542 billion. Other estimates have come in far higher. Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute whose portfolio includes space policy, produced a report in September that states that an architecture in alignment with “Trump’s performance goal of ‘very close to 100 percent’ effectiveness against the full spectrum of aerial threats” would cost $3.6 trillion total.

The Missile Defense Agency has issued two requests for proposals for Golden Dome, including an ongoing request that covers space-based sensors, interceptors, and effectors, among other technical areas, and another broad solicitation for up to $151 billion-worth of missile defense projects. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is poised to receive a $2 billion contract for a satellite system that tracks missiles and aircraft, using money from the reconciliation bill.

However, “the holistic architecture hasn’t been shared with anyone in industry at this point,” one defense contractor CEO said at the MilSat Symposium last week.

Some Democrats have raised concerns that Republicans are appropriating money for Golden Dome before assessing the project’s feasibility. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in May that the money provided by the reconciliation bill is “potentially a slush fund.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said in September that he is “very skeptical” and believes “the physics are really hard,” adding, “We need a lot more information before we make decisions to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.” Democrats have also questioned whether Musk used his role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency to give SpaceX an unfair advantage in seeking Golden Dome contracts.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), ranking member of the Strategic Forces subcommittee in the House Armed Services Committee, offered an amendment to the House’s NDAA for fiscal year 2026 that would block funding for space-based interceptors until the administration provides a detailed implementation plan.

“This year, in every strategic forces subcommittee hearing, I have raised space-based interceptors and not a single witness could answer fundamental questions that we need to know before spending unknown hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on a program that might not work and that might make us less safe,” Moulton said. He cited Mike Griffin, who served as under secretary of defense for research and engineering in Trump’s first term, saying recently that “in most cases, you do not have a shot from space at an [intercontinental ballistic missile] in the boost phase. You can’t get to it with reasonable probability. And by reasonable probability, I would say greater than a percent or so.”

The committee voted down the amendment. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) argued that it would be impossible to complete full life cycle cost estimates for space-based interceptors without performing the design work that the amendment would prohibit. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) pointed to the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the U.S. Strategic Posture, which said in 2023 that “DOD must look at new approaches to achieving U.S. missile defense goals, including the use of space-based and directed energy capabilities, as simply scaling up current programs is not likely to be effective.”

“Golden Dome isn’t some half-baked idea or vanity project. It’s the result of years of careful planning and a serious review of our own defensive weaknesses,” Crank said.

Other senators have expressed interest in protecting certain spectrum bands for use in Golden Dome and other defense initiatives. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said forcing DOD to vacate or share spectrum bands from 3.1 to 3.45 gigahertz and 7.4 to 8.4 gigahertz “would have real negative consequences” for some of its missions, including Golden Dome.