Trump's "Golden Dome" is an ambitious $175 billion missile defense initiative aimed at protecting the United States from a wide spectrum of aerial threats, including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drone swarms, and space-based weapons. Key features of the Golden Dome project include:
- A multilayered defense system incorporating next-generation technologies deployed across land, sea, and space.
- Space-based sensors and interceptors designed to detect and destroy missiles early in flight, even intercepting them in outer space.
- Ground-based missile fields, with plans for a new extensive missile field in the US Midwest to complement those in southern California and Alaska.
- The use of radars, lasers, and three tiers of missile interceptors.
- A domain awareness layer to track threats and layers to defeat both intercontinental ballistic missiles and other aerial threats.
- Leadership by U.S. Space Force General Michael Guetlein.
The Golden Dome is inspired in part by Israel's Iron Dome but aims to protect the entire US homeland from more advanced, long-range threats. It is planned to be operational before the end of Trump's presidential term, with an initial $25 billion allocated and additional funds requested in budgets following that. However, experts have noted that building such a complex and all- encompassing defense system would be highly challenging, costly, and may take decades to complete. The project has been described as a defense system protecting America with unparalleled speed and precision, involving cutting- edge technology that has yet to be fully realized, such as vehicles capable of intercepting missiles during reentry into the atmosphere and space-based laser interceptors. Trump introduced the project with a vision of creating a missile defense shield around the US, comparable in concept but vastly larger in scale and sophistication than existing systems like Israel's Iron Dome.
