GOLDEN DOME

Golden Dome The Golden Dome is a proposed multi-layer defense system for the United States, intended to detect and destroy various foreign threats—including ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles—before they launch or during their flight. The system would employ a global constellation of satellites equipped with both sensors and space-based interceptors. The architecture has been viewed as similar to the Brilliant Pebbles concept of the 1980s.[3][4] If implemented, the U.S. would be maintaining space weapons in orbit for the first time in its history. On January 27, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the United States Armed Forces to construct a missile defense system. It has been compared to the Iron Dome air defense system in Israel, as well as the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was proposed by former president Ronald Reagan in 1983. The White House has called the program both a dome and a shield, potentially misnomers in that the system would rely on thousands of space-based weapons or "interceptors" distributed around the entire Earth, rather than a fixed dome positioned over the United States. Interceptors are kept staged near the edge of the atmosphere, where they must maintain rapid orbits to avoid falling back to Earth. Their rapid motion allows only a small fraction to be positioned in the right place to act on any given threat, a flaw that critics argue makes the concept less efficient than traditional regional missile defenses such as Iron Dome. Beyond intercepting other missiles, Trump said in 2019 that space-based weapons would be "obviously" used for offensive purposes as well. Cost estimates for the Golden Dome program range from $175 billion (White House), to $831 billion (Congressional Budget Office), to $3.6 trillion (American Enterprise Institute) depending on the architectural details. The wide range largely hinges on the number of space-based missiles and their continuous replenishment costs, as these orbital weapons experience a form of planned obsolescence, with their low orbits leading to early orbital decay due to atmospheric drag.
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How Will the Golden Dome Work?