The U.S. government has unveiled new details about the Golden Dome project, showcasing in a briefing that the advanced missile defense system—championed by President Donald Trump—will consist of four layers: one in space and three on Earth, along with 11 short-range batteries distributed across the U.S. mainland, Alaska, and Hawaii.
The presentation, titled “Move Fast, Think Big!,” was delivered to 3,000 defense contractors in Huntsville, Alabama, last week. It revealed an unprecedented level of complexity in the system that Trump has requested to be completed by 2028.
The estimated cost of the system could reach up to $175 billion. However, the briefing indicated lingering uncertainties about the project’s infrastructure, as the number of launch platforms, interceptor missiles, ground stations, and missile sites required for the system has yet to be determined.
An American official commented, “They have a lot of money, but no target cost for the project yet.”
So far, Congress has allocated $25 billion for the Golden Dome under Trump’s tax and spending bill passed in July. An additional $45.3 billion has been earmarked for the same project in his presidential budget request for 2026.
The Golden Dome is a multi-layered missile defense shield for the United States, inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome but significantly larger due to the vast geographic area it must protect and the complex array of threats it is expected to face.
According to the briefing, the system’s architecture includes four integrated layers:
- A space-based sensing and targeting layer for missile warning and tracking
- A missile defense layer
- Three ground-based layers consisting of interceptor missiles, radar systems, and possibly laser beams
One of the surprises revealed was a new large missile field—apparently located in the Midwest, based on the map shown in the presentation—for the next-generation interceptors (NGI) being developed by Lockheed Martin. These will be part of the “upper layer,” alongside THAAD defense systems, also produced by Lockheed.
