Golden Dome Details Begin to Emerge

SIMI VALLEY, Calif.—The Golden Dome air and missile defense shield to protect the United States will have some “operational capability” in 2028, the program’s leader said Dec. 6 at the Reagan National Defense Forum here.

“It will not be the final capability. But we will have the ability to protect and defend the nation against advanced threats by the summer of 2028,” Space Force Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, the officer in charge of the program, said of the ambitious effort championed by President Donald Trump.

Guetlein acknowledged the complexity of the task but said a “solid plan” is already in place.

“We believe we can get there,” Guetlein said. “I think we’re on a good trajectory, but I will tell you, it is not a ‘gimme putt.’ It is an extremely complex thing that we’re getting ready to do, and there’s a lot of risk in there.”

The Pentagon has said little publicly about the challenging program, and it is still unclear what it will exactly entail, though the ultimate cost is expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars.

“There are likely people in that audience that I don’t want to know what we’re doing,” said Guetlein, defending the secrecy. “I’m still hoping that we can start opening up dialogue in the new year.”

While little information has been publicly released, more details are being shared on a classified basis with defense firms and Congress, Guetlein said on a panel with Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), and Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden. Fischer, who is chair of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, said she was satisfied with the information she has received.

The project, which was established by an executive order that Trump issued in January, is designed to expand the system that was designed to defend against North Korea’s ballistic missiles and other modest threats into a system that can defeat more advanced and numerous ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles, multiple sizes of drones, and more novel threats such as fractional orbital bombardment systems.

A new web of sensors, interceptors, and command-and-control capabilities is expected to make up the system, including space-based interceptors and data-transfer and missile-warning satellites.

Guetlein reports directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg, giving him authority over much of the program’s structure. Golden Dome will not be a built-from-scratch project, Guetlein said, and will use existing systems and programs being pursued by the services.

“We are focused on the entire homeland, to include Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam,” he said. “We won’t bring all that to bear immediately. The Army is already working really diligently to protect Guam today. When they have got that capability in place, it will become part of Golden Dome.”

Golden Dome is just one of a number of high priority defense programs being pursued amid considerable uncertainty about what the Pentagon spending levels will be in future years, to include across-the-board nuclear modernization; a major shipbuilding program; the Air Force’s F-47 fighter, and more.

“We received a historic boost in funding last year, and believe that is only just the beginning,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the forum, referring to the $156 billion budget reconciliation legislation that was added to the DOD’s proposed budget for 2026.

But it remains unclear what spending levels will be in future years to advance programs that have also been dogged by inflation.

“Have we made a decision yet on another reconciliation bill? No, we have not. We will make sure that we continue to grow. There will not be a hole there,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told the forum.

Though few details about Golden Dome have been released, Guetlein provided the most detailed public accounting of the program to date.

Guetlein said work has begun on novel capabilities, such as space-based interceptors. According to the general, 18 Other Transaction Agreements have been awarded for space-based interceptors. So-called OTAs are a flexible type of government-industry arrangement designed to advance technology, rather than procure a specific weapons system. Space System Command announced the deals in late November, though it did not say how many contracts were awarded.

“That’s now off and moving,” Guetlein said.

As for more traditional interceptors, Guetlein said that Feinberg’s office is “working really, really hard to scale out the industrial base … to expand the magazine depth of our weapons” and that the Golden Dome office has “injected our requirements into that process.” Even before Golden Dome, the U.S. military already had a high demand for more interceptors for the THAAD and Patriot ballistic missile defense systems.

“They are already moving out on acquiring the interceptors that we need for Golden Dome,” Guetlein said, without naming specific systems.

Trump’s executive order, which predated Guetlein’s role, also highlighted Space Force sensing and data transport efforts.

“We are in discussions with the department on the need to acquire more transport capability, which is the ability to move data through space, more sensing capability, more missile warning [and] missile track capability. We are waiting on those contracts to come in and to be able to move forward on those, but we have given our needs to the department.,” Guetlein said.

Meink, acknowledging the Department of Air Force’s role as one of “providers” to Golden Dome, said he and Guetlein “talk a lot about those schedules” regarding the capabilities the Space Force and Air Force may contribute.

Guetlein said tangible efforts were also underway on the architecture’s backbone.

“We have a team of industry partners working on the command and control and fire control software already. We’re on-ramping others into that,” he said. “So we have already moved out … on our contracting strategy.”