Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril are among the companies already awarded Golden Dome contracts.Mother Jones illustration; Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty
Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense dream might seem like something out of science fiction, but it would cost real dollars, the Congressional Budget Office says—about $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, according to a report the federal agency released today.
Trump has held the idea dear since his 2024 campaign, when he made “A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY” to “PREVENT WORLD WAR III” one of his 20 core campaign promises. Later, he rebranded it as the “Golden Dome,” and about a dozen major American weapons manufacturers (and over 2,300 smaller companies) started to compete for the privilege of building a massive interceptor-missile system in the skies over the United States.
As I reported in 2024 and again in 2025, scientists have a lot of questions about how this will work. It would nominally be modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome system, which is designed to protect a very small geographic area (something the US does not have) from improvised missiles launched from within 40 miles (which is also not happening here).
Given those constraints, the administration quickly moved to include satellite-based missile interceptors on their vision board. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein admitted to the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee in April that this Star Wars–esque setup might not be cost-effective, either.
Trump estimated last May that his Golden Dome would cost around $175 billion and be deployable by the end of his term in 2029. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, however, says that estimate was off by approximately one trillion, seventy-four billion dollars.
Even at that staggering cost—almost the entire proposed Pentagon budget this year—the system still wouldn’t block all missiles, the CBO wrote in their report. “The system could be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack mounted by a peer or near-peer adversary,” they said.
“It would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch,” the CBO wrote. “As a result, the strategic consequences of deploying an NMD system with the capacity considered here are unclear.”
Even if the Golden Dome never intercepts a single missile, companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril are likely to profit: they’re among 12 companies that have already been awarded $3.2 billion in Golden Dome contracts.
