The Trump administration has upped its Golden Dome spending plan by $10 billion to accelerate the development of space capabilities to protect the homeland from incoming aerial threats, according to the four-star Space Force general leading the charge.
“We were asked to procure some additional space capabilities, so we are at $185 billion for the objective architecture,” Gen. Michael Guetlein told an audience today at the McAleese Defense Programs conference.
Some of those space-related capabilities that the Pentagon is working to move to the left include the Airborne Moving Target Indication (AMTI), Space Data Network and the Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), he added. Speeding development of space-based interceptors, however, remains a concern.
“It is not the technology, it’s the scalability of the affordability,” Guetlein said. “Can we scale those solutions fast enough and affordable enough to be effective against the threat? [That] is really where the challenge is going to be.”
Just days after taking the oath of office for a second time in early 2025, President Donald Trump inked an executive order calling for a sprawling, multilayered homeland air defense system. That effort was later rebranded as Golden Dome and handed over to Guetlein to manage with a cost estimate of $175 billion.
Details of Golden Dome remain sparse, with lawmakers continuing to push publicly and privately for more information about the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) contracting vehicle that now has more than 2,400 awardees, according to Guetlein.
“That’s one of the tools that I can leverage to move faster in the acquisition environment,” he added. “But it’s not my only tool, I can use any other contracting vehicles across the entire department.”
While industry and lawmakers await details about the architecture and contracts, there are now nine companies with deals to build out the command and control layer of Golden Dome with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon recently added to the consortium. For now, at least, there is not one company leading the charge.
“The companies “decide what they’re going to build, when they’re going to build it, how they’re going to build it, and who the best athlete amongst them is to build it,” Guetlein said. “Then they hold themselves accountable on a weekly, bi weekly basis. … If at any point during that week, one of them did not carry their load, they can vote that individual or that company off the island.”
When asked how effective that group’s work has been, the four-star general said a recent live demonstration of the capability is “comparable” to the legacy Missile Defense Agency capability.
