A Backgrounder on Trump’s Golden Dome for America

Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration has voiced its desire for an Iron Dome for America that would, in essence, reprise for the U.S. what the Israeli Iron Dome air defense system has done for the Middle East nation.

While the Iron Dome system – developed by Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with U.S. support – has indeed proved quite effective against missiles and rockets launched by terrorist groups along Israel’s borders, it is designed as a short-range interceptor shield and forms just one layer of the country’s larger air-defense network.

What the Trump administration is asking for, in essence, is a replication of Israel’s air-defense network but at a scale more than 400 times larger. That requirement – issued by executive order on January 27, 2025 – calls for deployment and maintenance of a next-generation missile defense shield that will deter any attack on U.S. soil from a host of threats, including ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missile, and other next-generation aerial attacks such as one-way attack munitions and China’s in-development fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS).

President Trump’s executive order tasks the Secretary of Defense to submit a plan for a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield by March 28. The complicated undertaking requires the involvement of all major U.S. service branches, including the Air Force, Army, Navy and Space Force, as well as the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and National Reconnaissance Office.

The contrast of this undertaking versus what Israel constructed over many years (and far less area coverage) is stark. While the Israeli missile defense shield involves four systems – Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Arrow (both 2 and 3) – forming concentric circles around the small nation, the U.S. architecture will need to be composed of different systems and sensors integrated from a variety of different military and intelligence commands and currently governed by separate legal and bureaucratic frameworks.

The White House order also seeks to augment interceptor missiles with non-kinetic systems, such as high-powered microwaves and high-energy lasers, mirroring another Israeli air-defense initiative, the Iron Beam.

What the U.S. expects of the Golden Dome concept is:

• A defense against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.
• Acceleration of the deployment of the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor layer.
• Development and deployment of space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept.
• Deployment of underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities to defeat a countervalue attack.
• Development and deployment of capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch and in the boost phase.
• Development and deployment of non-kinetic capabilities to augment the kinetic defeat of ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks.

Deployment of these defensive layers will ostensibly take place in stages, perhaps numbering four in total.

Along with the Trump administration’s executive order, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) introduced the Increasing Response Options and Deterrence of Missile Engagements (IRON DOME) Act in February.

The provisions of this act are:

• $12 billion to expand missile interceptor fields at Fort Greely in Alaska with new Next Generation Interceptors. These missile interceptors are part of the Ground-based Mid-course Defense (GMD) system with involved contractors being Boeing, Orbital Sciences Corporation, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
• $1.4 billion for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. Lockheed Martin is the prime for THAAD.
• $1.5 billion for PAC-2 and PAC-3 munitions and MM-104 Patriot batteries. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are the prime contractors.
• $1 billion to build Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense infrastructure in Alaska and on the East Coast. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are the involved contractors.
• $900 million to research and develop space-based missile defense.
• $750 million to modernize terrestrial-based domain awareness radars.
• $500 million to research and develop directed energy or missile interception.
• $250 million to complete and certify Hawaii’s Aegis Ashore system.
• $100 million for the procurement and fielding of dirigibles.
• $60 million to develop space-based satellite sensors.
• $63.1 million to build a Missile Defense Complex and Fire Team Readiness Facility.
• $25 million for Missile Defense Agency planning and design activities for an East Coast-based missile defense interceptor site at Fort Drum, New York.

The “Iron Dome for America” executive order also requires that the Pentagon – jointly with the Office of Budget and Management – submit to the White House a plan to fund this directive. The Trump administration is currently working on its fiscal year 2026 (FY26) budgetary outline and therefore seeks to have guidance in how much funding it should request for Golden Dome’s various components before it finalizes a proposal.

Even with initial funding, the implementation of the Golden Dome concept will take years to complete, likely well into the 2030s. Achieving it will require political and national willpower akin to the Manhattan Project, according to Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein.

And it will certainly not come cheap.

No doubt the ambitious initiative will prove attractive to many vendors eager to cinch a portion of the vast workshare opportunities set to open. Whether the concept ultimately emerges as a viable air-defense network like what Israel currently has in place remains to be seen – but it unquestionably marks an ambitious undertaking.