Pentagon defends Trump's Golden Dome after $1 trillion estimate

Sana Pashankar, Bloomberg News on May 16, 2026

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The official leading President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome contested an estimate that the highly secretive missile defense shield would cost six times more than forecast, raising questions around the true price tag of the administration’s project.

U.S. Space Force General Michael Guetlein, Golden Dome’s director, said a Congressional Budget Office report relied on incomplete information. The CBO used criteria outlined in Trump’s January 2025 executive order initiating the project and estimated the system could cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years, far more than the administration’s $185 billion figure.

“They did not estimate the architecture that we’re building,” he said Thursday at a conference in Washington a day after the report’s publication, adding that the Pentagon had not released much information “because the intelligence threat is so high.”

The report looked at costly “legacy capabilities” that the current architecture would not rely on, according to Guetlein. “You can’t just take what we’ve done in the past and multiply it forward, or you’re going to get large numbers like CBO got,” he said.

Still, Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican who serves on the Armed Services Committee, agreed with the report that the price tag would likely exceed $1 trillion.

“If built to the president’s vision, as it should be, this will be a multitrillion-dollar project,” he said at the conference. “And I think we just have to be honest with people about that.”

Experts have anticipated that the administration’s cost estimate for Golden Dome was unrealistically low.

Golden Dome would be among other pricey administration endeavors, such as a new White House ballroom and an unprecedented request for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, while the conflict in the Middle East continues. The estimated cost of the Iran war is close to $29 billion, the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jules Hurst, told lawmakers on May 12 after having given a $25 billion price tag at an April 29 hearing.

Congress approved $25 billion for Golden Dome last year and the Pentagon is requesting $17 billion more for the next fiscal year, but lawmakers could be reluctant to continue funding the project if costs significantly exceed estimates.

The CBO declined to comment.

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, in a statement released Wednesday called Golden Dome a “massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for by working Americans.”

Democrats aren’t the only critics speaking out about Golden Dome spending. On the political right, Benjamin Giltner, policy analyst for defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, described the project as “nonsensical” Thursday on the Washington-based libertarian think tank’s website, adding “the costs of this project are worse than initially thought.”

As part of Golden Dome, the Space Force has awarded $3.2 billion for space-based interceptor prototypes to companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX as well as Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., RTX Corp. and Anduril Industries Inc.

These spacecraft, which don’t yet exist, are intended to destroy incoming missiles from orbit.

The initial deals could unlock billions more in follow-on and other space-based defense contracts, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Wayne Sanders.

The CBO report forecasts that the space component, the system’s most expensive, would feature interceptor satellites in nearly polar low-Earth orbit, and cost about $720 billion to develop, deploy and maintain.

Some executives from commercial firms working on these space-based interceptors countered the CBO’s estimate.

“I think they’re wrong, and I think we can be way better now on cost,” said Eric Romo, chief operating officer of Impulse Space Inc. The company from Redondo Beach, California is among the firms working with Anduril to demonstrate space-based interceptors in 2027.

The CBO numbers are based on “hearsay for what the system is going to look like,” said Justin Fiaschetti, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based Inversion Space Co., another Anduril partner. “They don’t have any info on what is actually getting built.”

If the space-based interceptors cannot be scaled affordably, Guetlein said, the Pentagon would not move forward with the program.

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(With assistance from Tony Capaccio.)