Forty years after President Ronald Reagan first conceived the idea, defense industry leaders say the technology is finally advanced enough to build an invisible protective dome of space-based radars, missile interceptors and laser weapons over the United States.
President Donald Trump, infatuated by the Iron Dome missile defense system over Israel, first ordered the Defense Department to begin drawing up plans for a U.S. version, the ‘Golden Dome,’ in January.
But Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey, so a dome of protection could prove far more daunting for the much larger land mass of the U.S. And the threats to Israel usually come from its neighbors, who use short-range weapons. America’s foes — North Korea, Iran, Russia and China — are half a world away and armed with intercontinental ballistics missiles (ICBMs) and hypersonics, all factors that make the project more challenging for a nation on the size and scale of the U.S.
So questions remain. Will the Golden Dome encompass the entire country, including Hawaii, Alaska and U.S. military bases in locations like Guam? Would it be able to protect against short-range missiles, long-range missiles, unmanned and manned aircraft?
Answers may come at least in part at the end of the month, when the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget present a funding plan for the project to the White House. But defense industry leaders say the technology exists to make a Golden Dome a reality.
‘In our view, it has to kind of be a layered system. Because, you know, shooting a UAV, for example, is very different than shooting a hypersonic vehicle or hypersonic weapon,’ Raytheon CEO Phil Jasper told Fox News Digital. His aerospace company, a major U.S. defense contractor, manufactures the Patriot missile system, Javelin anti-tank missiles and a variety of radar and air defense systems.
The U.S. already employs a layered missile defense system known as the Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) System that uses radar to detect incoming missiles and fire off interceptors.
It has technology like the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery to intercept ballistic missiles and the Patriot to intercept cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft. But the country only has seven active THAAD batteries deployed globally, with an eighth expected to become operational this year.
Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein said weeks ago that building a Golden Dome will require a Manhattan Project-level whole-of-government approach from the missile defense agency, Air Force, Army, Navy, Space Force, Coast Guard and more.
Defense contractors, some of whom have believed a Golden Dome-like project was on the horizon for years, say the protection zone may start around major cities like New York and Washington, D.C., or sensitive military sites before expanding to protect the entire homeland.
‘What I’m understanding [the goal] really is to protect the entire U.S. It is to put a dome around the homeland,’ said Edward Zoiss, president of space and airborne systems for L3Harris Technologies.
Jasper predicted some of these defensive measures could be installed rapidly, as soon as 2026.
‘What the administration has laid out is that building block approach that you can start to protect certain areas, at times, certain regions, and build that out as you continue to produce these systems. And they can continue to come off of production lines,’ he said.
BlueHalo CEO Jonathan Moneymaker said the dome would be ‘less of a technology problem’ and more of an organizational structure challenge.
‘The full potential of all of those capabilities working in conjunction with each other, at that scale, there’s definitely some new elements there,’ Moneymaker said.
John Clark, Lockheed’s vice president of technology and strategic innovation, said the plan will require the Pentagon to ‘think about what it has on the shelf.’
‘There are systems that sit today in the Air National Guard or in our current local defense infrastructure domestically. Those could actually be deployed inside of the U.S,’ he said.
Clark noted that deploying defense infrastructure at home would ‘draw down our current inventory for conflict in the greater world.’ But he suggested that anything pulled out of an Army base today could be backfilled at a later date for global use.
Zoiss, whose company, L3Harris Technologies, has already built satellites for the missile defense agency that could be used for space-based radar systems for a Golden Dome, said the biggest challenge is missiles that no longer follow predictable paths.
‘If you go back to your high school physics class, if you understand the angle and trajectory of a bullet, you understand exactly where it’s going to land because it follows a parabola,’ he said.
‘ICBMs followed parabola trajectories for decades. But a new class of highly maneuverable cruise weapons and hypersonic weapons now don’t,’ he explained. ‘Their endpoint is uncertain. And our defensive systems in the U.S. now have to change to be more robust in order to track that weapon throughout its entire trajectory.’
Space-based radar will be the critical element of threats to the homeland in the future, according to Zoiss.
‘Our challenge is really long-range weapons. You know, it’s weapons progressing large distances that are maneuvering around our current land-based and sea-based radar systems. So, if the weapons maneuver around those systems, that means our current architecture can’t provide fire control ordnance. And, therefore, it has to be moved to space.’
The Golden Dome could draw on missile defense missions already in the works, like the National Capital Region Integrated Air Defense System, which is designed to protect Washington, D.C., from incoming threats and employs systems like the Norwegian National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS).
And it could look to other systems already in the works on a smaller scale. The Army is working on a new Iron Dome-like air defense system in Guam known as the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 system. And it is developing high-powered microwave systems that could knock entire drone swarms out of the sky.
The Marine Corps is planning to field three mobile air defense systems this year, including a modified Iron Dome launcher.
Other needs could be over-the-horizon radar, including filling blindspots in the Arctic region for low-flying missiles that hug the earth’s curvature to avoid detection.
Guetlein said the nation would have to ‘break down the barriers’ between Title 10 and Title 50 of the United States Code, the federal laws that govern the nation’s defense and clandestine operations.
‘Without a doubt, our biggest challenge is going to be organizational behavior and culture to bring all the pieces together,’ Guetlein said.
Much of the funding is expected to be laid out in Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request to Congress, which the White House is working on. Even with initial funding, the project could take years to complete, and it won’t be cheap.
Steven Morani, acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said Wednesday he was working with the private sector to address the ‘formidable’ challenges of the project.
‘Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s executive order, we’re working with the industrial base and supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome,’ he said.