Congress Wants More Insight into Golden Dome Budget

Lawmakers told Pentagon leaders they want more details about how the Defense Department plans to spend the $23 billion Congress provide to support Golden Dome in last year’s reconciliation deal. 

In a report accompanying the House and Senate’s compromise fiscal 2026 defense spending bill, lawmakers said the Pentagon has yet to provide them details such as the cost, schedule, performance metrics, and a finalized architecture for the project, which the White House has estimated will cost $175 billion over the next three years. 

“Due to insufficient budgetary information, the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees were unable to effectively assess resources available to specific program elements and to conduct oversight of planned programs and projects for fiscal year 2026 Golden Dome efforts in consideration of the final agreement,” the Jan. 20 report states.

Golden Dome is a top priority for the Pentagon. In the early days of his second term, President Donald Trump announced the project in an executive order, calling for an advanced, layered missile defense shield comprised of radars, sensors, interceptors—including those that can target and disable missiles from space.

The department has yet to publicly reveal the details of the overarching system but has said it will include both new and existing capabilities. As such, there is no one “Golden Dome” line in the 2026 appropriations bill, but the legislation does include billions of dollars for programs that will likely feed into the larger system of systems, like roughly $1.4 billion for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program; $1.7 billion for the Space Development Agency’s missile tracking satellites in low-Earth orbit, and $1.5 billion for improved homeland defense interceptors.

The Space Force and Missile Defense Agency have also solicited ideas for interceptors. The Space force awarded its first prototype contracts in November, and MDA has identified 2,440 companies to compete for a range of missile defense contracts, to include Golden Dome.

But lawmakers want more insight into the Pentagon’s execution of the complex, multi-agency effort, and to that end, directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide a comprehensive spending plan to the congressional defense committees within two months of the appropriations bill’s signing. 

“The spend plan shall detail planned obligations and expenditures by program, descriptions, justification, and the corresponding system architecture mission areas at the budget line item level for fiscal years 2025, 2026, and 2027 to include a detailed breakout of discretionary and mandatory funds,” the report states. “The spend plan shall be predicated on the Golden Dome architecture.”

The report also directs the Pentagon’s comptroller to submit a separate budget request, beginning in fiscal 2028, that identifies all Golden Dome-related programs, funding projections, and activities. That document should include an integrated test plan for the effort.

Further, lawmakers want to require Golden Dome Director Gen. Michael Guetlein to issue quarterly updates to defense committees on the program’s status and its progress toward demonstrating initial capabilities in 2028, a stated goal of the Pentagon. 

Speaking in December at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif., Guetlein said the Pentagon has been sharing some Golden Dome details with Congress and defense firms. He and other officials have indicated more public information could come in the near future. 

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