Sitting in the Oval Office on Tuesday alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a four-star Space Force general and several lawmakers, President Donald Trump made it clear: He's setting out to finish what former President Ronald Reagan started.
Reagan's 1980s-era proposal for a space-based defense shield against nuclear missiles, dubbed "Star Wars," fizzled. Now, decades later, Trump has announced a proposal he calls "Golden Dome," envisioned as a state-of-the-art missile defense system covering the U.S. that could shoot down ballistic, hypersonic and nuclear missiles -- even drones -- from land and outer space.
Trump said during the White House gathering this week that his Golden Dome would take only three years to complete, be "very close to 100%" effective, and cost only $175 billion. The promises face skepticism from experts and would require big military trade-offs, including possible troop reductions in the Army.
"We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland," Trump said this week.
However, defense policy experts who spoke to Military.com aren't so sure.
They said that, while the immediate fate of the nationwide shield is tied to short-term funding working through Congress, it may ultimately require a long-term commitment of more defense dollars or strategic trade-offs, such as cutting the size of the Army to deliver the ambitious vision being pitched to the American people.
Early Thursday morning, the House of Representatives passed by a single vote the "One Big Beautiful Bill" legislation designed to enact Trump's agenda. The bill includes $25 billion for Golden Dome's development. It now heads to the Senate, where the massive bill faces criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike.
Golden Dome and other military-related funding included in that reconciliation bill has been publicly touted by the Trump administration as part of its proposed $1 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2026, an unprecedented move to push the president's national defense priorities forward.
Ultimately, without that supplemental congressional funding, defense spending will stay the same as last year at nearly $893 billion -- which, as some experts pointed out, is a cut due to inflation.
"The question going forward will be whether those defense top-line increases of above a trillion dollars will be sort of sustainable going forward," Wes Rumbaugh, a fellow in the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Military.com. "Is it sustainable politically to maintain those appropriations? We have problems passing a defense appropriations bill every year, independent of the question of these Golden Dome priorities."
Trump's estimate of $175 billion is within the ballpark of some of the Congressional Budget Office estimates over the next 20 years for Golden Dome -- which provided an estimated range between $161 billion and $264 billion on the low end and $542 billion to $831 billion on the high end.
Gen. Chance Saltzman, the chief of space operations, said during a Politico event this month prior to Trump's announcement that a $500 billion estimate was not too high. Notably, his second-in-command, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein, was tasked with overseeing Golden Dome's development this week.
"I'm 34 years in this business; I've never seen an early estimate that was too high," Saltzman said during the May 15 event. "My gut tells me there's going to be some additional funding that's necessary."
Army Cuts to Foot the Bill
Defense experts said it appears some of the trade-offs to pay for Golden Dome are already coming into focus -- and one bill-payer might be the Army. Military.com reported last month that the service was considering a massive cut of up to 90,000 active-duty troops.
Hegseth wrote in a late-April memo that the Army needs to become "leaner," adding it must prioritize investments such as "air and missile defense including through the Golden Dome for America." Defense experts say that's not coincidental.
"I think one thing has become more clear now, that a lot of the money is going to come from the Army, from end strength and force structure," said Todd Harrison, a defense policy expert with the American Enterprise Institute. "We don't know the details of how much they're cutting overall, but they have made it pretty clear that they're going to be downsizing and they are the bill-payer for Golden Dome."
Retired Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told Military.com that if Golden Dome becomes reality, the Army would likely be a big part of fielding such a mission because the service has historically had a major role in missile defense.
But cutting the "faces," or number of soldiers, would make it more difficult, he said.
"If the Congress and reconciliation provides the money and the secretary of defense lets the Army keep the faces, then Golden Dome's on track," said Ferrari, referring to the massive bill heading to the Senate.
The White House and Department of Defense did not respond to Military.com's questions about potential cuts connected to Golden Dome, questions about the scale of the design, and other inquiries about the program.
Outside of the bill being considered in Congress, defense experts said ongoing congressional support for Golden Dome will be crucial to the program's development.
"If [the Department of Defense] is taking on a very large additional mission, it either has to do less in other areas, give up other missions, or it has to be given more money, more resources," Harrison said.
Without the additional funding and resources, "DoD is going to have to do less of a lot of other things to pay for this new mission," he said.
Reagan's proposed missile shield, formally called the Strategic Defense Initiative, became a target of lawmakers in the mid-1980s. Sen. Edward Kennedy criticized it as ''reckless 'Star Wars' schemes" and then-Sen. Joe Biden called it one of the "most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft."
Similar criticisms are being lobbed against Golden Dome. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters earlier this month that the defense money in the Trump agenda bill is "essentially a slush fund." Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., criticized the bill for funding "boondoggles like Trump's Golden Dome."
Defense experts said even the branding of Golden Dome, the name itself, could make it hard to get funding if the House and Senate flip in the future.
"It really does not help that the president renamed this after his own proclivities for things that are golden," Harrison said. "That ties it to his personality, which is likely to make it toxic for folks on the other side of the aisle. And Republicans have the White House and both chambers of Congress right now but, in a year and a half, they probably won't."
Technological Hurdles Remain
Scientists and defense policy experts have also raised concerns about the effectiveness of the main component of Trump's plan: creating a space-based capability to shoot down something such as an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM.
William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Military.com that his "biggest issue with Golden Dome is that it is the most daunting and least likely to succeed of any major proposed system in recent memory."
He pointed to Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative as a parallel.
"When Ronald Reagan promised an impenetrable shield against ICBMs in 1983, the idea was widely popular. Why wouldn't it be? Having a technical solution to the greatest existential threat we faced at that moment seemed like a no-brainer," Hartung said.
But ultimately the earlier missile shield proposal was "enormously expensive and physically impossible," he said.
Hegseth, during Tuesday's announcement in the Oval Office, also pointed out that the Strategic Defense Initiative wasn't there at that time but claimed that now things will be different.
"President Reagan, 40 years ago, cast the vision for it," Hegseth said. "The technology wasn't there. Now it is."
But technological and strategic hurdles still exist.
In February, scientists with the American Physical Society Panel on Public Affairs revised a 2022 report that looked at whether current or proposed systems could defend against an intercontinental ballistic missile launched by North Korea, which has been testing and ramping up its program for years.
The report stated that defending against "even the small number of relatively unsophisticated nuclear-armed ICBMs" would be a "daunting challenge." Additionally, it estimated that "over a thousand orbiting weapons would be needed to counter a single North Korean solid-propellant ICBM" and "ten times more would be needed to defend against ten launched within a short time."
The scientists also expressed fears that those thousands of space-based defenses could be vulnerable to cyber and anti-satellite threats.
Trump's inspiration for the idea also pulls from Israel's "Iron Dome" defense shield, which protects against short-range missile threats. The Golden Dome program was originally named "Iron Dome for America" in a January executive order signed by Trump but was later changed; Iron Dome is a name trademarked by an Israeli defense firm.
But Israel's missile defense program protects a much smaller land mass, about the size of New Jersey, compared to the sprawling size of the U.S. Trump also said Canada wishes to be part of the protective dome, too, which would greatly increase the land area that would need protection.
In addition to money, defense experts also said that time will be needed to create the Golden Dome system. Three years could be possible for a prototype, demonstration or initial operating capacity, but likely not a fully finished defense shield.
"I think that estimate of the amount of time for a full deployment of the system is, frankly, fairly unrealistic," Rumbaugh said. "They're not going to be able to develop and field such a complex architecture for both cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles inside of that three-year time frame."
Related: Trump Names Space Force Vice Chief to Oversee Golden Dome Missile Defense Project
