Seven months after President Donald Trump announced plans for a Golden Dome missile shield for America, lawmakers who oversee the Pentagon say they have yet to learn meaningful information about the system’s attributes, cost or schedule.
Trump said in May that the system’s so-called architecture had been “officially selected.” It would be fielded within three years, he said, for a “total cost” of $175 billion. It would include satellite-launched interceptors. And it would protect America “close to 100 percent” from enemy ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles.
Such a system would be orders of magnitude more extensive and expensive than any previously executed, potentially a multitrillion-dollar proposition, experts have said. Few if any of them believe the capability Trump described can be accomplished on the schedule and at the cost he recounted. More likely, they say, is an initial iteration during this presidential term followed by improvements over many years — but ultimately far less defensive coverage than 100 percent, if only for budgetary reasons.
