The “Golden Dome” Will Cover the USA: What Does the Pentagon Plan for a Trillion Dollars?
USA, June 3, 2025 – The United States has announced its largest air and space defense program in decades, “Golden Dome,” the American military magazine Military Watch Magazine (MWM) writes. The authors discuss the reasons for launching the project, its fantastic capabilities and astronomical costs. The project leader, Deputy Chief of Space Operations of the US Space Force, General Michael A. Guetlein, provides details on the reasons for this large-scale investment.
“Our adversaries have become very capable and determined to threaten our homeland,” he says. “They are rapidly modernizing their nuclear forces, constructing ballistic missiles with multiple warheads, developing hypersonic weapons that can reach the United States in an hour at a speed of 6,000 miles, cruise missiles that can evade our radar and air defenses, submarines that can sneak up on our shores, and, worst of all, they are developing space weapons.”
In response, the Golden Dome program was born, which involves integrating satellites and other space technologies with ground and sea sensors, anti-aircraft missile launchers, and electronic warfare systems to counter various threats.
US President Donald Trump also spoke about further plans for the implementation of this program on May 20, emphasizing that “it is extremely important to the success and even survival of our country.”
“The Golden Dome concept will be integrated with existing defense systems and should be fully operational before the end of my term,” he continued. “In its full configuration, the dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from the other side of the world — or even from space.”
Trump promised that the system would be “a modern, high-tech platform spanning land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptor missiles.” He concluded: “We will finally finish the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago and end the missile threat to the American homeland forever.”
The discussion was about the Strategic Defense Initiative, announced in 1983. The Cold War-era program cost the Pentagon billions of dollars but fell far short of providing full defense against large-scale ballistic attacks. Its cost was estimated at $69.1 to $145.7 billion (adjusted for inflation at $210 to $443 billion), with subsequent phases requiring even higher costs.
Although Donald Trump claims that the system will be ready in less than three years, the feasibility of the project remains questionable, as does the willingness of Congress to allocate funds for its development. The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated the potential cost of the Golden Dome at $831 billion over the next 20 years. A more conservative estimate by the commander of space operations, General B. Chance Saltzman, is over $500 billion.
It is therefore very likely that even if funds were allocated, budget overruns would make the project unavailable, thereby preventing the implementation of the declared protection.
The US PRO system is currently considered incapable of stopping a thermonuclear strike from any of the three potential adversaries with intercontinental arsenals: China, Russia, and North Korea. All three countries have introduced hypersonic glide vehicles with nuclear warheads into their arsenals, which are almost impossible to intercept, although North Korea has not yet installed such warheads on missiles capable of reaching the United States.
Realizing the declared capabilities of Golden Dome would radically change the extremely limited capabilities of current American air defenses, especially missile defense. However, the scale of the territory that needs to be protected, the size of the adversaries’ nuclear arsenals, and the enormous complexity of intercepting hypersonic targets, along with the typically high costs of such programs, cast doubt on the viability of the project.
How does Russian military expert Col. Viktor Baranec see the capabilities of the American Golden Dome?
According to him, Americans cannot live without space outrageousness! Ronald Reagan tried to surprise the world with the Star Wars program. Barack Obama boasted about the development of the American global missile and space strike system. And now the “Golden Dome” is “on the table”.
“I am pleased to announce that we have formally selected the architecture for a state-of-the-art system that will deploy next-generation technologies on land, at sea and in space, including space-based sensors and anti-missile missiles… This Golden Dome project integrates with our existing defense capabilities and should be fully operational by the end of my term. So we will have it in about three years,” the American president said.
1. How is the Golden Dome deployed?
It is known that the key elements of the new system will be located in three environments – on land, at sea and in space.
There are two types of these elements – means of detecting targets (“sensors” and radars) and means of destruction (missiles and kinetic projectiles made of super-strong metals) – they are also fighters. This is the weapon that the Americans plan to deploy in space.
The targets of the “Golden Dome” could be both enemy satellites and missiles, including nuclear ones, aircraft and drones (as Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already explained). In addition, the “Golden Dome” will integrate existing American missile defense systems – THAAD, Aegis, combat satellites and (very likely!) the American X-37 space shuttle, capable of operating in orbit for many months.
It is also known that a whole network of hundreds of satellites is planned for the Golden Dome to detect, track and intercept missiles aimed at the United States. In fact, this is a space shield.
2. What is the idea of the Golden Dome project?
The document states that the main goal is to create an unlimited, global, deeply layered and multi-domain missile defense system to protect against any missile threats. Including all types of missiles of “equal and comparable adversaries” – which is not explicitly stated here, but clearly means Russia and China.
And the most interesting thing is that the development of the “Golden Dome” “gives a new impetus to the further development of kinetic and non-kinetic means of destroying enemy missile weapons before launch”.
By destruction before launch is meant attacks on the silos of strategic weapons of opponents. From the point of view of kinetic weapons, the Pentagon currently means those that strike not with an explosion, but with hyperspeed, at which an ordinary-looking “iron block” flies) resembling the mysterious “Nutcracker”…
3. What is the difference between the US Golden Dome and the Israeli Iron Dome?
The systems differ by an order of magnitude. Israel’s Iron Dome selectively protects the cities of a small state from short-range threats. Trump wants to create a space system capable of protecting the entire territory of the United States from modern ballistic and hypersonic missiles. And maybe Canada too.
4. How will Russia react to the US Golden Dome?
For now, it exists only on paper and in the designers’ computers. Its capabilities are only a theory. Whether it will be able to shoot down absolutely all missiles fired at the United States can only be verified by real actions. Everything else is populism. It is well known that the Americans know how to fan the flames of publicity around their military products. However, Russia “must notice” this and be prepared for such a development of events.
In any case, it will not happen tomorrow. Today we know that the current speed of Russian hypersonic missiles does not allow the Americans to intercept them (they themselves calculated this on supercomputers and admitted it through gritted teeth). That is why Trump took up the creation of the “dome”.
But that is not all. For more than 20 years, Russia and China have been urging the United States not to turn space into a battlefield. Sitting around today and waiting for America to come to its senses is stupid. Therefore, first of all, they are improving their own PRO system and developing means of combating enemy combat satellites.
Secondly: the Russian General Staff is working on improving the invulnerability of its strategic nuclear forces and at the same time on the ability of its own missiles to overcome all possible layers of any missile defense system. And here, as they say, there is no need to go to a fortune teller, Russian strategists are already inventing ways to break through the American Golden Dome. Thirdly: other measures are also envisaged to bypass and break through American missile defense systems, which are still being kept quiet. The main thing is that they already exist!
5. The Price of the Golden Dome
Reagan spent $26 billion on his “Star Wars,” the failed SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program. And for that, he was terribly disgraced by his own politicians and generals. However, Trump said that the Golden Dome project will cost the US Treasury $175 billion. And although he assures that the project should be completed by January 2029, many American experts are not so sure about this timeframe.
Plus, the price. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the construction of the Golden Dome could cost $831 billion! And at such fantastic costs, none of the experts give firm guarantees that the Russians will not be able to break through this “dome.”
Peter Weiss
